Whales of Iceland is a museum with life-sized whale and dolphin models. It is Europe's largest whale museum which was opened for the first time in 2015. The museum is located in the harbour area of Reykjavík, and thus, easy to reach before or after a whale watching trip. I have visited Whales of Iceland in a summer and was very pleased with the experience I made in the museum. Read more about my experiences with Whales of Iceland in this blog entry.
Whales in Iceland
Humpback whales. Minke whales. Or fin whales. The waters around Iceland are important for a great variety of different whale species. Including dolphins like orcas or white-beaked dolphins and porpoises like harbour porpoises.
According to the Icelandic Whale Watching Association there are more than 20 different whale species that can be observed around Iceland. Although there are typically "only" about 8 common species which are frequently seen on a whale watching trip.
Apropos whale watching. A good place for whale watching is Húsavík.
Information: Do you want to know more about the Icelandic Whale Watching Association? If yes, please visit their website to get more information about the whales found around Iceland and their work. They list responsible whale watching companies and even recommend whale-friendly restaurants.
Reykjavík, as well, is an interesting starting point for whale watching.
I went on several whale watching trips in Iceland. Three in total. I went on two trips in Húsavík and on one in Reykjavík. I saw two whale species and one dolphin species on all trips together. On one trip there were some harbour porpoises around, but as fast they showed up, as fast they vanished again, and thus, I didn't see them.
I knew their behaviour already from a previous whale watching trip in Flensburg – in the north of Germany. Harbour porpoises are indeed quite elusive animals.
Although the outcome of my trips did not seem great – compared to the more than 20 species that live around Iceland – I saw two species in Iceland for the first time like minke whales (on the left) and white-beaked dolphins (on the right).
To be more precisely, minke whales around Iceland or in general in the northern hemisphere, respectively, are also known as Northern minke whales or common minke whales. There is another minke whale species in the southern hemisphere and there might also be two or three subspecies of Northern minke whales, and even a “dwarf” form in the southern hemisphere. However, further research still has to be done to clarify the taxonomic status of minke whales and their worldwide distribution.
I unfortunately missed again fin whales in Iceland. I already missed them in the Azores. I hope next time I will see them, as they are apparently frequently seen in the waters of Iceland.
I also very wish to see one day orcas in Iceland. I have heard that there are even good chances to see them in winter.
Nevertheless, to see whales in Iceland, it is necessary to pick a whale watching company to get out to the sea.
In Húsavík I decided for North Sailing and in Reykjavík for Elding. Please read more about my whale watching trips in these other blog posts.
The most common species, however, I observed in Iceland was the humpback whale. While I did not see minke whales in Húsavík (it was bad luck), I saw humpback whales both in the waters around Húsavík and Reykjavík.
I am always happy to see humpback whales. I had already seen them in Australia, in South Africa and in the Azores.
And now in Iceland.
As I want to help getting more and more information about whales around the world, I regularly contribute photographs of whales I made on whale watching trips to the citizen science platform Happywhale. I think it is a good way to contribute to science and learning more about the whales we found in the oceans.
A way to identify individual whales is to use the underside of a fluke of a whale which acts as a fingerprint.
I am convinced that the more information we get about whales or about specific species, the better we can protect them.
There is still so much out there we do not know.
If you want to know more about whales, a whale watching trip is a good way. Or why not visit a whale museum? Like the one in Húsavík or in Reykjavík? In Germany, there is the Ozeaneum in Stralsund, which is also a great place to discover new things about the ocean and its species. Which place would you recommend?
This blog post is about the museum in Reykjavík – Whales of Iceland. Please read more about the museum in the next paragraph.
Information: Do you want to share your photographs of flukes of previous whale watching trips? Please visit Happywhale, register and upload your photographs. Maybe someone else has already seen "your" whale on another whale watching trip in another part of the world?
Whales of Iceland – The museum
A male sperm whale can grow up to 16 meters. A humpback whale up to 18 meters. And a blue whale even up to 33 meters.
Just imagine standing next to a blue whale. How would you feel?
Well, I felt quite small.
Yes, small. But of course, I did not stand next to a real blue whale. I stood next to one of the 23 life-like sculptures exhibited in the museum Whales of Iceland in Reykjavík.
The blue whale is an impressive animal and in the museum Whales of Iceland you can feel its unique status among all other animals. It is the largest and heaviest mammal that has ever lived on earth – although it only almost exclusively feeds on tiny crustaceans called zooplankton.
Just take your time in the museum. Stand next to the sculpture and feel its size!
In Iceland, blue whales are apparently most frequently seen off the north-east coast. Unfortunately, I did not see a blue whale in Iceland. You really need luck, and of course, you need to be at the right spot at the right time.
However, I must admit that I was not that unlucky that year… Just a few months before my visit to Iceland I saw a blue whale. Not in Iceland, but in the Azores.
I did not see the full size of the blue whale in the Azores – its body is just too long – but it was still a great and unforgettable experience to be almost next to a real blue whale!
In the museum, instead, you can look at a blue whale’s whole body. I was impressed how slender a blue whale is – something I could not see in the wild.
Interesting: Typically, blue whales of the southern hemisphere are larger in size than individuals of the northern hemisphere. The longest blue whale ever found was a female in the waters of the Antarctic.
Nevertheless, there were many more sculptures to be marvelled at in the museum.
Like, for example, the sculpture of a North Atlantic right whale.
In the museum I realized how lucky I had already been in my life. I had seen blue whales before, but also right whales. However, not a North Atlantic right whale, but a Southern right whale in South Africa.
While right whales in the North Atlantic are extremely rare, right whales in the North Pacific and especially in the Southern hemisphere are better off.
Right whales are slow swimmers and due to their callosities on their heads easy to identify.
Information: According to the IUCN, North Atlantic right whales are "critically endangered" and there are only about 200 to 250 individuals left. North Pacific right whales are "only" "endangered", but their total population seems to be unknown. On a global level Southern right whales are still "least concern", but again, their population status is unknown.
A closely related whale species is the bowhead whale.
The bowhead whale is a whale of the Arctic and Iceland is just at the southern edge of its distribution. I have never seen a real bowhead whale in my life, but I think this is an extremely interesting species. Bowhead whales are considered as the longest-living mammals and they might reach an age of more than 200 years.
There are two more whale species sculptures of Arctic whales.
On the one hand the beluga (on the left) and the on the other hand the narwhal (on the right). I have never seen both species so far in the wild and Iceland might not be the best place to observe neither belugas nor narwhals. An individual beluga whale might wander and explore waters out of its distribution range. However, luck is necessary to spot a beluga in Iceland. In the case of the narwhal, no individual has been seen alive so far in Icelandic waters.
In contrast, a frequent visitor of Icelandic waters is the orca or killer whale, respectively.
Orcas are, however, dolphins. They are the largest dolphins of the dolphin family and can be easily recognized by the black and white coloration. There are several places in Iceland where orcas can be seen. I very hope to share my experiences about orcas in Iceland one day here on this blog.
The Whales of Iceland museum also has some more nice sculptures of other dolphin species like the one of the common dolphin (above on the left), the Atlantic white-sided dolphin (above on the right), the striped dolphin (below on the left) and the common bottlenose dolphin (below on the right).
These four dolphin species are not frequently seen on whale watching trips in Iceland, although they also live in Icelandic waters.
The Atlantic white-sided dolphin prefers deep waters, and thus, they are usually not often observed close to the coast during a whale watching trip.
Common dolphins and striped dolphins, in contrast, rather prefer warm-temperate and tropical waters and only few individuals might wander further north to Icelandic waters. Thus, they are also not very often seen on whale watching trips.
I had seen striped dolphins and common dolphins (on the photograph) that year in the Azores just a few months before.
There are also common dolphins in South Africa. They have a similar appearance like the common dolphins in the Azores.
Common bottlenose dolphins have a wide distribution, and thus, I was lucky enough to have seen them already at various places like, for example, in South Africa, in Spain, in Slovenia, or in the Azores.
Information: Do you know Guiana dolphins? Guiana dolphins are like bottlenose dolphins and common dolphins of the dolphin family. Guiana dolphins, however, do not occur in Icelandic waters. Please read one of my previous blog posts to learn more about these dolphins in Brazil.
As bottlenose dolphins rather prefer tropical and temperate waters, they are not regularly seen in Iceland. But still, they might appear on a whale watching trip now and again.
There were two more species I was lucky enough to have seen already in the wild.
On the one hand, the pilot whale (on the left) on the Canary Islands, and on the other hand, the sperm whale in the Azores (on the right).
As they also might show up in Icelandic waters, there were also two sculptures of them in the Whales of Iceland museum.
There are so many more sculptures to explore and feel in the museum like the ones of the probably most common whales in Iceland. Humpback whales and minke whales.
There are also sculptures of less known species in Whales of Iceland. Beaked whales are, in contrast to other whales, less known. I stood next to the sculptures of a Sowerby’s beaked whale, a Cuvier’s beaked whale and a Blainville’s beaked whale (on the photograph).
Little is known in general about beaked whales, as they are typically species of the deep ocean and rarely appear at the water surface.
A good way to explore the museum is by using an audio guide and stay at every sculpture for some time to not only take up all the information, but also to feel the size of the 23 different whale and dolphin species.
There is also a big screen in a separated room where I saw the documentary Sonic Sea. But you can also just sit in the room and look at the beautiful footage of whales when no documentary is shown.
As there is much to explore in the museum, I recommend to visit the museum for at least half a day.
Important: Did you know that most Icelandic people do not eat whale meat? Only about 2% of the Icelandic people eat whale meat on a regular basis. Foreign visitors are the main force for the demand of whale meat. Please do not eat whale meat in Iceland!
How to get to the museum
The museum Whales of Iceland is located at the harbour not very far away from the whale watching companies in the street Fiskislóð 23-25 – Reykjavík 101. There is also a bus that stops close to the museum (number 14). However, it is also possible to get to the museum easily by foot.
The museum opens at 10 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m. Please visit their website to get up to date information.
I paid 3.400 ISK as an entrance fee.
Information: Are you interested in visiting another museum about whales in Iceland? If yes, please visit my blog post about the Whale Museum in Húsavík which is another interesting place where you can learn more about whales of Iceland.
More information
Official website of Whales of Iceland
Website of The Icelandic Whale Watching Association
Be a citizen scientist for Happywhale
Have you ever been in the museum Whales of Iceland in Reykjavík? Or do you know another good museum about whales and dolphins? Please let me know in the comments.