The Killer Whale Journals by Hanne Strager

Author:Hanne Strager
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2023-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7 The Whales in the Potato Field

Until late afternoon, June 6, 1981, had been an ordinary day by the shores of Austnesfjorden in the Lofoten Islands. It was cold, maybe just 10°C, but that is not unusual for the beginning of June in this part of Norway. There were clouds around, but the sun was still high in the sky because it was already that time of year when it never sets at these latitudes. It was a calm day, with little wind, and the reflections of the high mountains around the narrow fjord were undulating slowly in the water. A group of maybe 20 to 25 killer whales had been swimming in the middle of the fjord for some hours. They kept going back and forth: perhaps they were hunting for herring, perhaps they were just resting and hanging out. Occasionally their blows could be heard across the water. It was quiet except for the seagulls flying over the water. Their shrieks mixed with the melancholic calls of the curlews guarding their territories on land.

Seeing killer whales here wasn’t unusual. The fjord was a good place for herring, and various species of whales would occasionally venture into the bottom of the fjord to hunt them. But late in the afternoon, Kjartan Krane sighted something odd. He had been out the whole day planting potatoes in his field, which ran all the way down to the water’s edge. From time to time he had stretched his back, checked on the weather, and glanced at the whales out in the fjord. But now when he looked up, he noticed that some of the killer whales had split from the larger group and were swimming at high speed toward the shore right at the edge of his potato field. To his astonishment, a big male at the front of the group continued into the rocky shallows among the kelp, then slowed down a little bit before launching itself with a sudden jerk right onto the beach.

Kjartan watched dumbfounded as the other whales, one by one, almost as if they were patiently awaiting their turn, followed the male and beached themselves next to each other on the shore. Before he could think of anything to do, 14 huge black-and-white animals were lying on the beach. After a little while, the big male and four of the smaller ones somehow managed to wriggle backward and reenter the water, but the remaining nine animals seemed to be stuck.

Kjartan rushed down to the shore, but he was unsure what to do; they were lying well out of the water, much too far up the beach to get themselves back in. And Kjartan knew the tide was going down. He turned around and ran the other way to look for help.

I learned these details not from Kjartan Krane himself but from his daughter, Sigrund Krane. During the first year I served as cook on the Old-Bi, the incident was only a few years old, and still fresh in the mind of many.

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