Whaling v whale-watching: Will Iceland ever stop the hunt?

The aisles in Saelkerafelagid, the supermarket section in the Kolaportid flea market, are usually bustling, with shoppers filling their carts with fresh seafood and local produce.

- Elisa Lioe

REYKJAVIK - The aisles in Saelkerafelagid, the supermarket section in the Kolaportid flea market, are usually bustling, with shoppers filling their carts with fresh seafood and local produce.

One section, though, is conspicuously sparse. The whale-meat section attracts only the occasional glance from the odd curious onlooker, who does not usually linger.

Mr Fridrik Armann Gudmundsson, the owner of Saelkerafelagid, said his store is one of only 10 remaining in Iceland that sell whale meat, and probably the only one in Iceland's capital Reykjavik selling smoked whale.

Here, smoked whale meat costs 9,890 Icelandic kronur ( S$97) per kilogram. One pack of sliced whale meat weighing about 100g is sold for about 1,300 Icelandic kronur.

When asked for his stand on the ethics of whale hunting, Mr Gudmundsson said it is a difficult question.

"I can say from the heart that I understand, actually, that people want to stop the hunting of whales," he said in halting English. "But then, I am actually one of the people in the older generation and I want to continue whale hunting, to stick to the old tradition."

He argues that whales also compete with Iceland's fishing industry for the catch it needs for food production.

But changing attitudes in Iceland towards whaling are driving the debate on whether it should be banned. More fundamentally, people are asking if the catching and eating of whale meat is an Icelandic tradition.

A 2023 Iceland Nature Conservation Association survey found that 51 per cent of Icelanders opposed whaling, up from 42 per cent four years earlier.

Consequently, the Nordic island-state, which is famous for whale-watching tourism, grapples paradoxically with the hunting of these endangered animals.

An international moratorium paused whaling in Iceland in 1986, but it was restarted in 2006. Now, it is one of only three nations, alongside Norway and Japan, that still permit commercial whaling.