Resisting the tide We can carry on hunting for ever, says Iceland's defiant last whaler

The courteous agreement to an interview came with a twist in its tail. "Shall we have lunch? Do you eat whale meat?" asked Kristján Loftsson, 80, the last hunter of fin whales in Europe, and a man unafraid of controversy

- Daniel Boffey

For more than five decades Loftsson has stubbornly swum against the tide, whether that be public opinion, domestic regulation or an almost complete international consensus. "When they compare me to [Captain Ahab in] Moby Dick, that's an honour," Loftsson said of the 19th-century tale of a seafarer's bloody quest for revenge against a whale that had bitten off his leg.

Loftsson's home country of Iceland is one of the few states in the world that defies the International Whaling Commission's ban on commercial whaling, along with Japan and Norway. However, in Norway, the other European outlier, they hunt the minke whale, whose populations are considered stable.

The continued use off the Icelandic coast of grenade-tipped harpoons to kill fin whales - one of the world's largest animals and categorised as endangered by the WWF - has been a cause celebre for environmental movements for decades. At the centre of the controversy has been Loftsson, who has run Hvalur, Iceland's only whaling company, since inheriting the business on the death of his father, Loftur, in 1974. Memorable moments have included famous clashes on the high seas with Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior ships through the 1970s and 80s and the sinking of two of his whaling vessels in November 1986 by activists from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Last week Loftsson agreed to meet at the wood-panelled Þrír Frakkar restaurant, in Reykjavík.