On the far side of Reykjavik’s Old Harbour, in the Grandi district, in a big ol’ warehouse, you can meet a whale. You can meet lots of whales. If the weather is too bad, or you’re too emetophobic, or you’re dubious about the ethics, and you’re not going out on a boat to look for whales in the wild, you’re guaranteed to find them at Whales of Iceland.
This huge exhibit opened in 2015 to bring whales to the people, and to bring the story of the world’s largest creatures and their vulnerability and the state of the ocean to people’s attention. Its space is all lit in blue to make you feel like you’re underwater and the entire warehouse is hung with life-size models of whales, starting with dolphins, porpoises and the smaller ones, moving into the larger toothed whales and then across the other side, to the baleen whales, which are the ones that sieve plankton through baleen plates in their mouth rather than eating with human-style teeth. Yes, there’s a blue whale. It’s posed as if it’s leaping, with a great curve in it, which I presume is to make it fit into the warehouse.
If you’ve thought in advance to bring your headphones, you can use their wifi and either the audioguide app or QR codes to find out about the whales. If you haven’t, there’s a tablet next to every whale showing the information that appears on the audioguide: their size, lifespan, population and information about that particular species. There are also two free guided tours a day. Finally, there’s a huge screen hidden away in the Fin Whale Room at the back, which shows the documentary Sonic Sea, which is about the damage noise pollution in the ocean can do to whales. We all by this point know about the damage plastic pollution does to the ocean, and the effects of rising sea levels and overfishing but I’d never considered that the ocean is getting too noisy.
I was very interested in seeing these life-size whales. I was astounded at the size of the orca, which was far bigger than I expected. On the other hand, the belugas seemed tiny. One day I’m going to get over to Heimaey to see Little White and Little Grey in their permanent habitat out in the bay and see what size they are. The website says they’re about four metres long each. I didn’t take a measuring tape but I’d swear the Whales of Iceland beluga is less than half that.
And then there’s the blue whale. Fellow Brits, you’ve spent the last ten or fifteen years listening to the QI klaxon whenever large creatures are brought up – because Alan Davies’s “the blue whale!” has become a legend. Perhaps I was imagining something legendary. The biggest creature on the planet. A leviathan. A behemoth. Did it meet my expectations? …. I don’t know.
There’s a huge gulf between knowing that “whales are really big” and seeing them for yourself. Yeah, they’re really big. Are they as really big as I expected? Are they bigger? It’s hard to know because I’ve never really painted an accurate visual picture of what I expect from a blue whale, or any other whale. That thing hanging from the ceiling is really big. It makes an elephant look like a hamster. But then again, I saw a model (or stuffed?) moose in a museum once and I swear that thing would dwarf an elephant. No. It’s not as big as the legend painted it to be. I don’t think I’d want one to come alongside me when I was in a boat, no matter how big the boat. My kayak would be tipped over instantly and even a ferry would definitely feel a collision with something that big. But it’s not the colossus of QI’s klaxon legend – because that klaxon, in trying to deny all the myths about the blue whale, has nonetheless built it up to something enormous.
Obviously, in this day and age, part of the fun of somewhere like Whales of Iceland is taking photos with whales. Let’s be real, you can’t do this anywhere else. I found somewhere to prop my camera and got timer selfies with the bowhead and the orca but without an accomplice, it’s impossible to get a selfie with the blue whale. There’s nowhere to put the camera and it’s just too big to get into a hand-held selfie.
The other thing I found interesting was the whale library on a table at the back. By this point, I’d already had quite a long day, or at least it felt like it. I’d walked from downtown Reykjavik around the harbour, been to Aurora Reykjavik (that blog is coming next) and I still had the Lava Show and Flyover Iceland to do. I wanted to sit down. The cafe wasn’t open, although the smell of hot chocolate emanating from it was making me really hungry. So I sat on the sofas at the back and leafed through books about whales. There books to help you identify whales and other sea creatures, there were books specifically about whales, there were dry PhD theses about all things whale and all things sea, there were books for kids and reference books and I found two particularly interesting. One was a tiny little book called The Book of Whales by Katka Koncova, which was an illustrated guide to various whales – created specially for this museum and available to buy in the gift shop. So I did. The other, which I wish I’d taken a photo of the cover of, was a comic book-isation of a PhD thesis about narwhals. I emailed Whales of Iceland what little I knew and they very helpfully informed me that it’s Myths of the Tusk by Owen Curtsinger. Sadly, I haven’t managed to track down my own copy yet.
And then, yes, there’s the gift shop. Lots of toy whales, mugs and posters with whales on, jewellery with whale tails on and the aforementioned Book of Whales. I dithered over some jewellery before deciding I didn’t need any more bits and pieces from Iceland and the book would do me just fine. Will I go back? Ehh… probably not. Unless you’re really into whales, once is probably enough. Once you’ve seen lots of fibreglass whales, you’ve seen lots of fibreglass whales. Definitely worth doing once but not something that excites me enough to do a second time.
