300 year old whaling station unearthed in Iceland

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Iceland chafed mightily against the moratorium levied by the International Whaling Committee on hunting the world’s endangered cetaceans. According to whaling advocates, Iceland possessed a tradition of subsistence whaling stretching back to the 12th century: Icelanders, they claimed, had long depended on supplies of whale meat and had developed a real taste for this fare. Environmentalists, however, suspected darker motives. Icelandic whalers, they charged, planned to sell tons of whale meat into a voracious Japanese seafood market, where cetacean flesh commanded top yen. In 2006, the whalers had their way: Iceland resumed a commercial hunt for whales.

I mention this because of a fascinating archaeological story that surfaced in the Icelandic press two days ago. Along the rocky shores of Steinsgrímsfjördur in northeastern Iceland, archaeologists have now unearthed remains of a 17th century Basque whaling station—complete with a facility for rendering whale fat, a workshop for making barrels for whale oil, and a residence and cemetery for the Basque whalers.