Exposing the Faroe Islands

The Faroe Islands is among the remotest places in Europe. It sits in the North Atlantic between Iceland and Scotland and is effectively a client vassal of Denmark. Roughly 45,000 people live on the Faroes, and they are a tight, small community. The islands were settled sometime in the ninth century and it has remained unique, with its own cultural identity.

The country is beautifully rustic and wondrous. It is Midgard as Odin sits one-eyed perched in the fog of a mountain. Peel back this Tolkienesque skin however, and the majesty evaporates. The Islands have a merciless tradition of massacring dolphins. They will kill roughly a thousand every year in what they call a grindadráp, which is a kind of whale herding. Pronounced with a short-i vowel sound, very similar to grinned. It ends in the brutal slaughter of pilot whales although they are known to target many species of small cetacean. This is rooted in tradition and although many claim it is for subsistence it is in reality a community blood sport.

They will kill pregnant mothers, weaning calves, juveniles and even none hunted species.

This is not for subsistence. Pilot whale meat is poisonous anyway as we will explore later. The hunters sally to harass and drive a pod of dolphins, stressing and wearing them out, towards a designated kill-beach. Where they force them to beach themselves and grind butchers then drag them onto shore and cruelly kill them.

For a grind to occur, cetaceans must be sighted. A fisherman or anyone in-fact must, (by law) call that in to the local authorities. It is not common to seek a hunt rather the dolphins must approach the islands on their own. When the local decision is made that they will pursue the pod (it is rare they turn down such opportunities) Faroese boats sally forth. They surround a pod and hold it in stasis using sound waves from their engines to form a kinetic barrier under the sea. They then drive the pod to a designated kill beach (there are 26 around the islands) where many folk around the land have gathered with tools and manpower to perform the killing.

A grindadráp is opportunistic by nature and reveals the predatory and vulture-like underbelly of the Faroese tradition. A grind can be announced at literally anytime during the season. Interestingly there actually is no grind season but statistically they occur between May and October. Presumably beyond those months it is to dark and inconvenient for the Faroese to bother. The monotony of village life can be broken any minute by the call of the grind, and it is treated very much like a spectacle in their custom. Like a public execution but worse. I saw countless children and families brought along to participate and enjoy the event. On one occasion I was told to step behind a barrier and looked across to see a very young child holding a specialist grind knife walking forward to the beach. I obviously puzzled this to the police officer and his response was, "only those participating may cross."

The huntsmen waiting on the beach setup long lines with hooks (a blásturongul which is a gaff-hook that they ram into the blowhole) and prepare the beach. They then rush into the water to drag them further ashore. Men in the water attempt to saw through the whale's spine using a mønustingari which is a spinal lance which sort of resembles a short spear. They then use a grindaknívur (a traditional hunt knife) to slash the neck.

This is a brutal death. Men rushing into the waves to ram a hook into a whales blowhole. To heave it through the water and saw their spine and slash their throat. Grindadráp's very often become drawn out and disorganized although the killing happens very quickly. There are laws and rules around a grind - such as what weapons can and can't be used. However, grinds can be called across the islands and it could be impossible to rally cameras and get there in time to observe. The Faroese have a rich viking heritage and the grind is a part of that history. We should consider in the 21st century whether tradition is a good enough vehicle to cause all this suffering.

On the 19th of June I witnessed a grind at Leynar where pilot whales were herded through the Vestmanna fjords. After hours of the faroese attempting to beach the whales, they escaped. Through sheer determination they managed to wear down the hunters and they survived that day.

I spoke to Samuel Rostøl who is the founder of Veganpreik and Leaf over Beef, who was at Leynar, "It's the best thing I've ever seen in my life... when there is a grind called and you prepare yourself and suddenly the boats just go away. All that blood that was rushing in anticipation of the horrors to come, all of a sudden there is freedom. I've never experienced such a positive rush."

I asked Samuel if he'd ever seen any dolphins escape. "No whales EVER escape," he says . "Sometimes it takes longer for them to complete a grind but they're determined." He notes that I'm not the first to ask this about the Leynar grind. Pilot Whales escaping is unheard of, and very rarely ever happens. It hasn't been witnessed in any of Samuel's years of observing and investigating. "It's magical it really is. It shows the pure power and intelligence of the whales, they're really smart and they know a lot of what's going on." Samuel tells me.

This next gallery is the alternative. I witnessed a grind at Sandoy on the 29th June where over 100 pilot whales were slaughtered.

I was too late to the Sandoy grind that day. Sandoy is an island off the main landmass and by the time I got there, the killing had already taken place. I arrived to see over one hundred dead pilot whales lining a beach. The water was stained a thick syrupy red. There only a handful of Faroese grindsmen left on the beach to try and drag the bodies onto boats which took them to the nearby harbour so they can be butchered. They spend the rest of the day and often into the next, dissecting the whales and ordering them before disposing the rest back into the sea. There are lots of misconceptions about this process which I will address later in the feature.

Once the whales begin assembling at the harbour, the Faroese begin to sort them. They carve into their cheeks their number and in their fins they carve how many 'skins' a whale is. Skins refer to the size, the more skins the bigger the whale.

What happens to the whales / meat?

If a grind occurs on the mainland then the meat is shared for free to all the participants of the grind and their families. The spotter gets a large portion and it's divided equally. When it occurs on an island off the mainland (like at Sandoy) then the meat is divided up to ALL residents of the smaller island. I spoke to many Faroese who didn't wish to be published in this feature but were very welcoming in teaching me about their culture.

They tout this as subsistence and what they don't eat gets dumped back into the ocean which is beneficial for wildlife. Many explained that due to the rising cost of living, especially in the faroes where lots and lots of foods and products are imported, they need the grindadráp to feed themselves. The problem is that this is not true - for multiple reasons...

In 2020 Michael Monberg, the former head of the Vegan party in Denmark met with Pál Weihe, a professor of public health. I met with Michael on the 13th of June in rural Denmark and we spoke at length of issues around cetacean conservation. Michael gave me kind permission to include his interview with Pál in this feature.

"It's unfortunately evident that the oceans have been used [as a dumping ground for an array of pollutants]. Take Mercury for example, from human activity it gathers in the atmosphere then rains down to the ocean floor. Here it is transformed into organic mercury which accumulates through the food chain..."

Whales are high in the food chain. When whale meat is consumed mercury will accumulate in human tissues, their blood and their brains. Pilot whale meat is poisonous. And this is mostly known by the faroese who actively only tend to eat only a portion a month - which then questions the whole subsistence argument in slaughtering whales.

Michael spoke to me about his experience in the Faroes.

After speaking at length with Michael in Denmark I investigated myself the appetites in the Islands. I was interested in the cost of living argument. It's true things are very expensive there and it is all imported so I can understand some hard times. This is untrue also however. I conducted an investigation into their food waste. It's a small island and I checked regularly all their supermarkets waste. Things must be scarce if you need dolphin meat to survive. What I found shocked me. The Faroes are a very rich country, the average GDP is well over £55,000. it is listed among the world's wealthiest nations.

This is evidence that there is an abundance of food in the Faroe Islands. All these photos were taken on one night on the 23rd of June. There is enough food already to comfortably throw away heaps and heaps of fresh ingredients. If there was a real shortage of food that people could afford, this level of waste would not exist. There is no justification to slaughter countless cetaceans, it is a de-facto blood sport. "There's no actual real reason apart from that [sport]." Michael Monberg told me back in Denmark. "There is an abundance of food, a lot of it imported from Denmark, that just gets thrown away. If there are food issues there they should start at that rather than starting at killing cetaceans."

The traditional sport targets pilot whales but is known to target any small cetacean. On the 29th July 2022 they targeted a pod of one hundred bottlenose dolphins. This was officially the largest bottlenose massacre in recorded history, tied with a slaughter back in 1898. In the slaughter and disorganization they lost a dolphin. Below is that dolphin, found in the days after that massacre. It illustrates the hypocrisy in justifying the killing.

After the whales are butchered at the harbour, they are scattered to the population using big trucks. They are collected in the following days and dumped at sea. In many of the photos above, there remains plenty of edible meat and usable parts, a lot is wasted.

These photos are hard viewing, they are of young dolphins, infants and juveniles. Mothers and fathers and friends. Cetaceans are incredibly intelligent mammals. They are capable of complex emotions and cognition. We still have so much to learn about their language and social culture. The health of our oceans is declining and for years we have abused our planet and polluted our oceans. The ecosystem below the waves is very important to our environment, dolphins play a really crucial role in regulating that. The cruel tradition of the grind is a cruel torture on a beautiful creature that doesn't need to be abused. The killers of these sentient and intelligent self-aware beings are remorseless serial killers.

This is Palli Ásbjørnsson, and he could well be the only Faroese native who is outspoken against the grind. He is an incredible human being who has sacrificed his own standing in the community to be a part of the change he wants to see in the world. We spoke at length where he explained how hard it is. "It is very difficult being separated from communities you've known your whole life. Always worth it though, [it's] disgusting what they do to our oceans."

I could not find another human being native the Faroes who speaks out against the grind. If any exist who do not agree with the tradition they do so in silence. "I just hope that soon, people here realise they can make the change."

The purpose of this short feature is not to judge a people or culture we don't understand. It is to further expose a practice that many people may still be unaware of - one that directly threatens our planet and causes unnecessary suffering.