Whale hunting in the Faroe Islands | DW Documentary
I’m going to a bay on the Faroe Islands. To a pilot whale hunt. Lots of people have tried to film a pilot whale hunt on the Faroe Islands. But they’re often chased away. We know about drones that have been shot out of the air. That tires have been removed from people’s cars.
I don’t really know how they’ll react to us. A quick warning: some people may find some of this footage hard to watch. This documentary tells the story of how I got here and why this bloody tradition still exists. My name is Christian. And sitting next to me is Andreas, who does the editing.
We made a film in September 2021 about a dolphin hunt on the Faroe Islands for a German news channel. More than 1,400 dolphins were killed here. And in just a single day! These images went around the world in 2021, because no one had ever documented
The slaughter of such a large number of dolphins before. And, to be honest, those were images I was then unable to forget. People around the world have protested this kind of hunting. The images upset me. And I wanted to know more. We got a camera team and flew north.
The Faroe Islands are in the North Atlantic between Scotland, Norway and Iceland. Just over 50,000 people live here. Everyone knows everyone. It was very important to me to keep an open mind on this trip. I wanted to understand, not judge: Why are people still killing pilot whales and other dolphins here?
I travel a lot, but it looks different here. Wild and rough. We’re headed to the capital Tórshavn, where most of the Faroese live. The perfect place to meet people who can introduce us to the world of whale hunters. I’m waiting for Petur.
Petur is a young man who lives here on the Faroe Islands. He’s also a filmmaker. He shot that footage back in 2021. I want him to take me to the place where it all happened. Can you take me to the place where all the dolphins were killed? Yeah, sure.
It’s about 15 minutes from here. Petur Sigur ðí Króki told me he was born on the Faroe Islands and grew up in a small village. In 2021 he realized that something special was happening. He showed me the place where the animals were slaughtered. This is the beach? This is where it all happened?
Yes. It’s very quiet at first, but you can feel the tense atmosphere. Everyone who takes part gets ready. Watch where the whales land. Because when they’re close enough, you have to be ready. And then you start to kill. You slaughter as fast as you can.
Petur said he didn’t take part in the hunt back then. Instead, he filmed … this footage. It has gone around the world. If you don’t like the sight of blood, please look away for a moment. An agonizingly long time was needed for the few overwhelmed hunters
To kill the more than 1,400 white-sided dolphins. Instead of a few minutes – as is usually the case for a hunt the slaughter took at least half an hour. Have you ever seen such a slaughter? No, not like that. How do you personally feel about it? Do you think this kind of hunting
Should continue here on the Faroe Islands? It’s complicated. When I was young, I took part myself and helped my father. It gave me something. But then I joined the other side more and more. More or less. How can something like this be a tradition killing animals in this way?
It depends where you come from. Some traditions are brutal. I wouldn’t call it a tradition either. It was a necessity. In times when there was nothing to eat. Some called it a gift from God. A gift from God: maybe understandable when there’s nothing to eat. But why still do it today?
Petur says his father also hunts whales and dolphins. And we’ve been invited to come over. The front door is open. Is it OK if we just come in? This man eating muesli is Jens Mortan Rasmussen. Petur’s father and a whaler. His mother doesn’t want to be filmed.
Jens, on the other hand, has no problem with it. He’s a teacher and it’s obviously not the first time he’s explained to a city kid like me why they kill whales here. I’ve just seen this picture. In Germany, you would hardly hang a picture of pigs
Or cattle being slaughtered in your living room. But you do it: why? Because we live close to nature. Have you ever seen a pig being killed? Probably not. It happens behind closed doors. Here, even small children are sent to the slaughterhouse to see it.
That’s why you don’t see this in German living rooms. But please: Germans also like slaughtered animals because they like to have meat on their plates. Isn’t that hypocritical? I think so. We know that dolphins are very intelligent animals. Why do you think it’s right to kill them? Why do you think it’s wrong?
I’m not saying that. I’m asking how you justify it. I work with people who are extremely unintelligent. I don’t think intelligence is the criterion that gives me the right to kill animals. It’s our food. We eat dolphins. Harsh words from a teacher. Jens seems irritated. The whalers know that most non-Faroese
Don’t understand and oppose the whaling. We watch a video by Sea Shepherd, an organization that has campaigned against the hunt for years. The animal rights activists anger many of the locals. See all the effects and music they use? But videos like this go viral and people comment on the hunt as brutal.
Shall I tell you how I see it? It’s the best advertising we’ve ever had. Really? Why do you think that? You are advertising the grindadráp and thus also activating young hunters. When Sea Shepherd came back to the islands in 2012, there was a hunt here. There were suddenly so many young people,
We couldn’t teach them to kill so quickly. And the young people stayed. Whatever the activists do they have the opposite effect. The animal rights activists denounce the whaling but Jens defends it as a necessity. Who’s right? We can ask the Sea Shepherd activists themselves.
But first, let’s recount what we know about dolphins and the hunt for them. The Faroese hunt different types of dolphins: white-sided dolphins, for example but they’re mainly interested in pilot whales, which are also dolphins. They’re very social and live in groups known as pods.
If they are spotted and the weather is right, the Faroese call for a hunt. Like they have for hundreds of years. The hunters then rush out to sea and drive the animals into the fjord with their boats to kill them in the shallows. They always record how many they kill.
An average 630 pilot whales per year. And about 265 other dolphins. The Faroese say the animals are not endangered. Hundreds of thousands live in the seas. They don’t understand why activists still have a problem with whaling. I’m trying to get in touch with Samuel from Sea Shepherd.
The activists usually rent small apartments or houses somewhere. I want to meet them and find out where they are on the island. Maybe they’ll get in touch soon. Finding them is not that easy. He just replied. We can meet at 5pm. We get the address and head out. Hey. I’m Samuel…
It wasn’t that easy to find you. We looked on the map and then had to do a few laps. But now we’ve made it. We notice cameras filming the courtyard as we arrive. They were installed after the team suspected their car had been tampered with. I meet Aleksandra Lechwar from Poland.
Why did you come to the Faroe Islands and join this group? I am a marine biologist and have started studying whales. They are beautiful, fascinating animals. But we don’t know much about them. They are still a big mystery. What is happening here makes me sad. Personally, I think the killing has to stop.
Do you understand the criticism from locals who say Sea Shepherd isn’t interested in tradition? You would just make videos of blood in the sea, put some dramatic music on it, but not explain why they’re doing it? I understand that the tradition has been around for many years.
Killing animals was necessary in order to survive. But nowadays, in our opinion, it is no longer. It only causes suffering for the animals. Samuel Rostøl and his co-workers try to film every whale hunt with drones. The footage shows the animals don’t even have a fighting chance.
Perhaps the worst thing is that the hunt for the animals can last many hours. Long before it actually starts. They say themselves that they form a wall with their motorboats that makes noise. To drive the animals in a certain direction. You see the way the animals swim. It’s not normal.
They try to escape because they’re scared, very fast, much faster than they would in the sea. The animals don’t stand a chance Exactly, there’s a wall behind them, land on the sides. There’s only one way left. a path to a lethal dead end. You often hear the argument here:
Well, we kill because we eat the animals. Is it true that they always eat the whole animal? I would say they eat most of it. But we don’t know exactly what happens later. Whether they keep it or throw it away. They cut the animals open and take out the biggest pieces of meat.
Under the fat. And many leave the rest behind Can you show me the place where you think they dispose of the bodies? Yeah, sure. They check the lug nuts on their car before we leave. They’re afraid of more sabotage. We drive north, to a steep gorge.
Here they throw the carcasses over the cliffs. They fall into the sea and are scattered by the waves. There’s a lot of meat left on the bone that they could have used. The activists took this footage at a different gorge. It’s supposedly from 2022 and prove the Faroese
Don’t use all parts of the dead animals. I can’t get too upset about it. We do the same with other animals. If you go to the supermarket which I do and buy your meat there, chicken or beef, the animals were killed in the slaughterhouse. Here it’s just made public, say the hunters.
Can you understand that argument? You’re absolutely right. The animals here had a good life before they died. Many animals that we eat as a society didn’t have that. The animals were kept to be killed. That’s not right either, we believe. It’s wrong. But what would be the solution? That nobody eats meat anymore?
Well, ideally yes. But that’s not really realistic. Ideally, you wouldn’t have to kill them at all. I think that would be the best solution. The activists have been coming here for years and believe attitudes are slowly changing. They claim some Faroese are also against whaling,
But that many of them don’t dare speak up. We want to support people who approach us and say, I’m against it but I can’t make it public because it would be bad for my business relationships and social situation. I’m surprised by what Samuel says,
That perhaps not everyone on the islands supports the pilot whale hunt. But many Faroese don’t want to be criticized from outsiders. Why? I find someone who might know. This is Sjurdur Skaale. He’s considered a colorful character on these remote islands. He was an actor and journalist and is now a politician.
How would you describe a typical Faroese – man or woman? It’s someone who loves freedom. When I was a little boy, I used to visit my grandmother in the South. I remember listening to the radio news at the kitchen table one morning. It was about war and conflict in the Middle East.
I remember her saying: The world, the world. The world is a bad place. What she meant was that it’s good that we don’t belong to this world. That we are on the outside. The Faroe Islands officially belong to Denmark. But I realized early that for the Faroese, the kingdom is far away.
The islands have been largely autonomous since 1948. This is the Prime Minister’s office. The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Faroese have faced repeated criticism for hunting pilot whales, including by the EU, which prohibits the hunting of dolphins through various species protection agreements.
Just one of the reasons the Faroese decided not to join the EU. What do you think about the pilot whale hunt? I’m all for it and I take part whenever I can. I’ve also killed a few whales myself. They live freely until they are driven into the fjords
And killed with a sharp lance within a few seconds. Then they are dead. Of course, there is also suffering when they are driven into the fjord. Then they panic. But we have to compare this with the common breeding of pigs, for example.
These animals only live to end up on our plates at some point. So if you compare it to pilot whale hunting, I think we’re doing better. Can you take me on a whale hunt one day? If there’s one today, I’d love to do it. A sarcastic response.
He knows perfectly well that it’s unlikely there’ll be a hunt today. It can take days or weeks before the animals are spotted in the Atlantic. Someone will have to call us when one starts. Witnesses one while here on the islands would be an enormous stroke of luck.
And I’d have to know the right people. Young men are apparently particularly keen on hunting. I look for new clues and end up in the north-east with a group of young rowers. One will become a key figure. They train with wooden rowing boats and race
Village against village on open water throughout the summer. When we start, we have about 60 beats per minute. Wow. 60 strokes a minute? I was on a rowing machine in the hotel this morning. That was pure coincidence. And I saw on the display that I could do maybe 20 strokes.
They allow me to accompany them anyway. Rowing is too hard to talk. The wooden bench is rock hard. The smell of sweat is everywhere. But it’s fun. Fortunately, they don’t want to go out to sea with me. One of the rowers is Jon Rói Høgnesen. He seems to take rowing very seriously.
We do this for two hours a day. For the next two months. The wooden boat is incredibly heavy. We can only get it out of the water if everyone helps. They used to go whaling in similar boats, explains Jón Rói. He’s 18 and grew up in the village of Gøta.
He works in a small museum nearby. We arrange to meet. He shows me the room most popular with tourists. The one with exhibitions about the whaling. I often come here with large groups of visitors. And this is for whale hunting? Yes. They used to hunt with a knife and this spear. Wow.
That spear is heavy. Now they use hooks like this. It goes into the whale’s blowhole. And a rope hangs from it. It’s used to pull them out of the sea. And that’s what we use to kill the pilot whale. It’s very simple and much more humane than the knives we used to have.
Why is it more humane now? If you use it right, it goes straight and deep into the brain. You want a quick death? Yes. That takes two seconds. Very fast. And you don’t have a hunting license yet, do you want to get one? Yes! Why? There’s no particular reason.
A few people listen to Sea Shepherd or the world out there. And the other half are pretty stubborn. I belong to that side. I hope the hunting tradition will live on for a few hundred years. We’ll see. Can I touch it? We ask Jon Rói if we can meet his family.
His mother doesn’t want to be filmed, but his father John and his older sister Laura agree. John even cooks for us. Whale meat with potatoes. That looks delicious Our fastest song: Thank you for eating. Amen! I am touched by their hospitality. But I’ve also read that the meat is full of toxic substances.
I still want to try it to understand why it is so important to them. It tastes a bit like beef. I’m surprised. How often do you actually eat whale meat? Not that often. More often in the past. About 10 years ago, we ate it very often. About twice a week.
Why has that changed? I don’t know. There’s more pizza now. There are studies that show that this meat contains mercury. Do you think about that, does that scare you? I think only pregnant women worry about that. And you? No, I’m not pregnant. Some have gone over 100. I don’t see the problem!
If you eat it once a week, it’s not so healthy. But once a month is no problem. So how dangerous is whale meat? At least one person on the Faroe Islands says it should have been off the menu for a long time. Christian, nice to meet you.
Pál Weihe is something of a medical luminary here. He has discovered that whale meat is toxic because it’s full of mercury. So much so that he has even detected it in breast milk. What distinguishes pilot whale meat from cod, for example? Cod has 100 times less mercury. 100 times. That’s a big difference.
The muscles and fat of pilot whales contains lots of mercury and other toxins because the animals are at the top of the food chain, where it accumulates. Pál says eating it is particularly dangerous for pregnant women. They pass the poisons on to their unborn children.
Pál and his team have been studying the contamination extensively since the 1980s. What can actually happen if I ingest too much mercury? You can see from the figures that those who have ingested too much mercury suffer from developmental disorders. You don’t get green ears. But it does have an effect.
Some researchers suspect eating too much whale meat can trigger Parkinson’s disease. I ate whale meat once. Pál very often when he was young. Can you tell the difference? Let’s do a test. Elsa Helmsdal has worked with Pál for years. All she needs is a few hairs.
I take it you don’t eat whale meat anymore? Yes, not for a long time. I told you so. The women of the Faroe Islands are on my side. I’m really curious to see the results of the mercury test. I’m already starting to think about what I’ve eaten lately. You got 0.75.
Is that high or low? I have no idea. That’s low. I have twice as much as you. Quite normal for men here. What is the highest value you have ever measured? 40? Yes. Wow. What do you say to these people? We talk to them and advise them carefully.
But some don’t want to be advised. Pál’s institute has warned everyone against eating whale meat and fat. But we soon see his words have had little effect on whaling on the Faroe islands. We were just sitting at breakfast and got a call that there’ll be a grindadráp a whale slaughter today.
I don’t know yet whether it’s a false alarm, but we’re trying to get there as quickly as possible. It’s going to be tight, because it’s at the other end of the island, in the far north. I have to step on it.
The tip came from Jón Rói’s family, the one who served me whale goulash. Looks like they were right: suddenly I see the whalers’ boats. Unbelievable. I wouldn’t have expected this. You can’t see the animals yet. Right now I can only see the boats. It’s like a wall coming towards us.
The whalers are even allowed to drop everything at work to come down here. We don’t know how they’ll react. The whalers don’t really like cameras. No idea what’ll going to happen. We’ll see. The animals are still far away. I look for Jón Rói’s family
And am delighted to see him coming straight towards me. Hey Jón Rói! Nice to see you again. Can you explain what’s happening? Yes. They drive the pilot whales towards the beach. There’s a hunting guide there who tells everyone what they have to do right away. Will you be joining us? Maybe.
It’s important that you don’t interfere. If someone tells you to stop filming, stop. Okay. I don’t think anything will happen to us with Jon Rói and his family by my side. But several people want to know who we are. They want to know if you are against hunting You can say we’re neutral.
I’m surprised. It’s not just whalers here. Men, women, children. Everyone is here. The whole village apparently. Are they all joining in? John has a whaling license. That’s why he is allowed to take a spear. His son Jón Roi is only allowed to help pull the animals into shallow water. Once again, a warning:
What is about to happen is not for the faint-hearted. Man, they’re so big. From one second to the next. I see Jón Roi’s father in the crowd. I get the feeling everyone knows what to do. But I’m paralyzed. Completely overwhelmed. And I don’t know what to do.
In just three minutes, 19 pilot whales are dead. The dead animals are pulled back into the water and dragged to the harbor. I’ve read so much about it. Suddenly you’re standing here and, bam, it happens. It all happened so quickly. I can’t really say what it’s done to me yet.
It just happened too fast. I think I need more time to process it emotionally. But there’s just something deeply archaic about it. Everything becomes automatic. I find Jón Rói in the crowd again. It didn’t go quite so well for him. I was hit on the leg with a hook.
You were on the hook, what happened? Someone must have thought I was a pilot whale. I thought all the animals had been killed. But then I notice something. He got away. Escaped? Yes, probably under a boat That doesn’t happen too often, does it? No. But whales can’t survive on their own.
That’s why we always try to kill them all. But this one has left. If he doesn’t find a new group, he’ll die. The dead pilot whales are brought to the harbor. I think about how, a moment ago, they were just swimming as a pod through the Atlantic.
And now they are lying dead. Neatly arranged in the open. I’ve never seen such a large, dead animal. How many people can live from a catch like today? Can you estimate how many families are getting meat now? 200. And they’re getting some now? Yah
Can you understand that there are people who are annoyed by this sight and wonder why you are still doing this? Of course I understand that. But they don’t see the whole picture. We eat this meat. It’s part of our nature. And in the past, we even had to eat it.
Is it still necessary today? Well… We just do it. We eat it. We could survive without it. But it’s one of the few local foods we have. We have potatoes, fish, sheep and whale meat. The rest is imported. The animals are then slaughtered. Everyone can help.
Nobody has to pay for the meat and fat. It’s free. Anyone who helped with the hunt or just happens to be there gets something. It’s quite strange. It’s like a folk festival. The whole village is here and everyone is waiting for their piece of meat. There’s a distinct smell. These dead animals.
They don’t smell particularly good. But nobody’s bothered. There are families, little children. I saw small children trying out a knife for the first time. I can really get a sense of how they’re all growing up around this. Completely normal for the people who live here. But not for me.
Jón Rói’s sister Laura also helps bring the meat home. Some of our team struggled with filming the whaling. And as it turned out, it would not be the last time. I still can’t quite understand why so many people here have no problem with whaling, despite the known health risks.
That’s why I pay Elsa another visit. She collected the hair samples at the research institute. Friends of yours are coming today? Yes, our knitting club. All the women on the Faroe Islands have a knitting club. We revisit the topic of mercury in whale meat. The negative consequences are well known.
There is a study from 2014 that shows that 99% of people are aware of the recommendation not to eat whale meat. But they don’t stick to it? Not all of them, of course. But the young women stick to it. After all, they are the ones who give birth to the children.
Elsa’s friends arrive. Most of them don’t eat whale or dolphin meat. I want to know why. I don’t eat it because I just don’t like it. But my husband is crazy about it. It’s in him somehow. He has a boat too. Yes, he loves it.
I remember not being able to watch it as a child. Especially when the little whales were lying there on the beach. I didn’t like that. But then you get used to it like everything else. And then it’s just part of the tradition on the Faroe Islands.
Most Faroese are politically conservative and local politics are dominated by men. I want to know whether that’s a factor. Nobody in politics is calling for a stop to whale hunting. It’s a very hot potato. If you’re against it as a politician, you won’t get any votes.
I do have the impression that people in their 20s have a different attitude. But maybe they don’t go to the knitting club. At least that’s my impression. But it’s not the majority. The women on the islands hardly eat whale meat any more, especially if they want to have children.
But most of the men just carry on. I thought this would be the end of the film. But things turn out differently. We get word of another hunt. At first we thought we wouldn’t get a chance to film this at all. But now we got our second tip.
I think that’s because we’ve gotten to know them. We’ve earned a bit of their trust. They know we won’t cause trouble when we come to see and film. The water’s red. They’ve started. The roadside is already pretty full when we arrive. Something is different.
The chase doesn’t end on the beach, but at a small cliff. We’re a little late this time. Look, one is getting away! The whalers are having trouble catching one of the whales. They just won’t let it get away. Now men are jumping into the open water and trying to somehow
Get on top of the whale. They told us the hunt usually ends quickly and the first one we saw really went fast. But this one’s getting out of hand. The animal keeps getting away. And it’s a real fight to the death now.
The boats keep sending it back towards land, where the whalers are waiting. There he is. Still alive. This is intense. The fight for life and death goes on for half an hour. Right in front of my eyes. Dozens of young men are standing in the cold water.
They just won’t want to let the whale go. Just as they don’t want to let go of their tradition something I’ve really learned during this trip to the Faroe Islands. I’ve also learned something about myself: I couldn’t hunt and kill pilot whales. Could you?
Whales and dolphins. Around the world, they inspire people. These animals are intelligent and social. Encounters with them are described as transformative. But in Europe, there are also people who kill whales and dolphins.
As part of the so-called Grindadráp, or whale hunt, hundreds of pilot whales and other types of dolphins are slaughtered every year in the autonomous Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic, which belong to Denmark. In September 2021, more than 1,400 animals were killed in a single day.
“When I saw these pictures, I was horrified,” says journalist Christian Blenker. So, he goes in search of Faroe Island whalers. He wants to know: “Why do men with knives and harpoons still go into the water today and cause this bloodbath?”
Pilot whale hunting is not about commercial exploitation. The hunters and their families divide the meat among themselves and eat it, although consumption is discouraged by authorities because of the meat’s high mercury content.
For this documentary, Christian Blenker traveled to the Faroe Islands with filmmaker Matthias Sdun. Today, he has the answer to his question – and it wasn’t the one he was expecting.
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49 comments
How revolting, what an awful place.
Disgusting monsters
If this were China, the comments section would have gone insane…. However, because it is a European country, we see many people defending the practice.
Traditions can be bad. As times change so must traditions. Some places it is tradition for child marriage, doesnt mean it is right. Some traditions must stop as times change, when we become more educated of the state of the world or have access now to different methods of getting food. Anyway, just my two cents. I dont see damaging/outdated traditions as a valuable excuse for continueing things that would otherwise be discouraged or not continued.
Having said that, killing animals is a part of life, and i would be a hypocrite to denounce it. Killing within means can be permitted, as long as the animal population can handle it and the methods used are humane as possible or done traditionally. Laws like this have been made before, its important to protect animal life and respect it.
Shooting drones and damaging car tyres simply means what you are doing is wrong and you don't want it known. Where is the common sense in humans gone at 🤷🤷🤷
Traditions are the crutches with which the past is trying to slow down the future.
OMG…😭
Mag buot msm mo… Gi kaon man… Wala usiki🎉
barbaric
i have no issue with hunting for culture ,mwacha mila ni mtumwa
Tradition is no excuse for cruelty.
Booking me a ticket to the island soon))
Great documentary. I see it from both sides. I think everyone should eat less meat but killing a whale that has lived completely naturally it's entire life is a lot better than standard farming practices. I think the images of the blood in the water are impactful and are obviously going to affect some people but just imagine all the blood from the dead cows and pigs and everything else. Abattoirs are much much worse than the shores of the Faroes.
If they didn't waste that then no problem
Somehow the more people are removed from our traditional way of living the more they cry out for what needs to be done in order to get food and eat, a biological necessity. The city generation today think it's all about tree hugging and they would faint if they had to slaughter a chicken. Nature is not all lovey dovey and we are part of that whole system. As long as you treat the animals well, do not torture them unnecessarily, and do not overdo it and not cause extinction of any species. I would even go as far as saying that the ones who are still more connected to our Mother Earth understand this cyle much more deeply. If you have ever killed an animal in order to use it as food you have a much more profound understanding of the sacrifice that was made compared to someone who buys some processed and ready to eat meals in the supermarket.
To be honest I dont care if its a tradition or something they started now. Would it matter if it was a tradition to kill humans for example? Of course not. So no need to bring up the culture/tradition card. This community has its way of living and I, as an outsider, I should be the last to tell them how to live as long as they do nothing different than other communities smaller or bigger arround the world. Sure I dont like any animal killing and recently I stopped eating meat but that doesnt make me moraly correct or entitled to tell to these people how to eat, hunt and live. Also, fish that come from aquaculture tend to suffer much more than those free dolphins/whales. Start the viva la revolution from other bigger and most important stuff than this rural area with a strong community sense.
what was that old saying? "the sheep lives in fear of the wolf… only to end up in the shepherd's table…" kind of similar in this case… on so many levels…
PoS 👎🏻
selective sancti😊ning and propaganda. UNDERSTAND AND NOT TO JUDGE? smells like selective western propaganda.
People who are upset or devastated by this should watch a real nature documentary. Nature is way more cruel than this.
They should be thrown in Jail that's terrible
Pure cruelty😡.
Poor whales😢😢
In 9 days, it will be the year 2024. Come on, people. Stop this inhuman act🙏🙏
Carma will do the job, I'm sure of it.
Its the same as killing pigs, cows, chickens etc. In the west the killing is done behind doors. At least these people are hunting and killing and then eating their food.
unbelievable
There are so many things humans need to change in order to evolve. Humanity still in diapers as we say in my place.
azores islands >>>> faroe islands
Great documentary 👍.
So sad
I can't even watch this: horrible 😞!
I'm sorry but if your alive and reading this it's because of the consumption of other living things. Not sure how you come to the conclusion that the things you kill make you morally superior to that of someone else choices. Just because you paid someone else to kill it doesn't change the fact it was killed for you to consume.
Such barbarism. How can people be so unnecessarily cruel and inhumane? You don't need it…they clearly enjoy the violence. "Close to the nature"…what a barbaric archaic response. Shouldn't such a rich country be more educated?
Thanks a lot for the great documentation which gives good awareness to lots of people's…👍👍🐬🐬🦭🐋
Exactly they kill for a living……!!!
Nothing wrong .!!
only people think wrong..!!
I always wanted travel to Faroe island. It's really beautiful there. However after seeing this documentary, I have doubt. I know I have to respect their traditions but I am also wondering why can't we evolve. Our world isn't the same as it hundred years ago, why we still need to hold on to the old traditions. Thank you DW for this amazing documentary.
Savages
This is disgusting 🤮
Stupid
Very difficult to watch.
If it's for food. LET THEM EAT.
Faroe Islands has limited agriculture its understandable
Ok, so Faroese kill 1,000, but it's 100,000 dolphins that are killed per year
Tradition vs dictators. No one eats the whole animal anymore. Look at your burgers and chicken nuggets or vegetables. No I’m even eats the whole vegetable. Not to mention more animals die due to growing vegetables and fruits then actual live stock in farms.
why you not think about creulity when eating cows and pigs
This is living
Let's stop the killing of all animals. Says the pixie.
Seems like a harkening back to their Viking past. Returning from a raid with boats full of treasure and slaves.
35:35. Wrong word. The animals were slaughtered on the beach. Now they're being "butchered".
There are some tribes in New Guinea that still practice ritual cannibalism. Should we also respect their traditions and do not arrest thosce locals who occasionally kill and eat someone? Maybe it's a bit weird to eat humans in 21st century? Or kill whales for a peace of unhealthy meat when there is plenty of food in local stores?
🐳🐳 Not all "traditions" are worth keeping or repeating. Come on, Faroe Islands and Japan, let this unnecessary, cruel practice of whale hunting be a thing of the past!