A BESTSELLING Scottish writer has attacked the “hypocrisy” of people who condemn the annual whale cull in the Faroe Islands, which led a Scottish town to sever links with its twin town in the islands earlier this month.
Craig Robertson, whose 2014 novel The Last Refuge was set on the Faroes, said it was wrong and counterproductive to condemn as “disgusting” the grindadrap, which involves the slaughter of hundreds of pilot whales. Councillors in Wick did so when they cut all ties with the town of Klaksvik.
Robertson, who travelled to the islands and spoke to whalers as part of his research, said: “They have become increasingly resentful of the lecturing tone of coverage of the grindadrap, particularly as they view it as being based on misinformed and hypocritical opinions.As a result, there is a deepening determination to protect their culture and to carry on regardless of the world’s disapproval.”
Writing in The Sunday Times, he added: “It is all too easy for us to sit in judgment of the Faroese, but in our rush to condemn them I think we might forget some of our own failings. In Scotland it has been ruled legal to shoot seals in order to protect the salmon industry. We defend the guga hunts on the Outer Hebrides. We cull deer and badgers.
“Perhaps we should be looking closer to home before we start to point the finger at other countries. The cows or chickens or lambs that end up on our dinner plate don’t die peacefully in their sleep. Is there really a meaningful difference between a whale having its spinal cord severed or a cow having a bolt shot into its skull? Surely if one is wrong then both are. We shouldn’t let graphic images of the grind blind us to the fact that all animals killed for food face a bloody end.”
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Robertson also argues that there is a risk that in directing moral outrage at the Faroe Islands we miss far greater threats to whale conservation, including marine pollution and global warming.
Councillor Gail Ross, the Caithness civic leader, and two council colleagues have contacted Jógvan Skorheim, mayor of Klaksvik, to say her town should not be associated with the whale hunts. She said that, while there may have been reasons for culling in the past, in 2015 it is “cruel”, “unnecessary” and “barbaric”.
Faroese supporters say the grindadrap dates back 1,000 years and that it reduces the amount of food that the islanders must import.