In the 1800s, Norway rose to prominence by revolutionising whaling technology. The turning point came with Svend Foyn (pictured), a Norwegian sealer-turned-innovator often referred to as the father of modern whaling. Foyn was born in Tønsberg in 1809 and had spent years in the Arctic sealing trade, which gave him the experience to tackle the problem of hunting larger whale species. At that time, traditional methods could only reliably catch slow-moving whales, such as right whales, or rely on chance strandings. Foyn recognised that to hunt the swift, powerful rorquals (such as blue, fin, and sei whales) which frequent Norway’s coast, a faster ship and a deadlier weapon were needed.

After studying others’ experiments (American whalers had trialled a rocket harpoon in the 1860s without commercial success), Foyn devised a practical solution. In 1864, he outfitted a small steam-powered vessel and, after several trials, patented an explosive-tipped harpoon cannon in 1870—a device that would change whaling forever. His harpoon was fired from a mounted cannon; when the barbed head struck a whale, a grenade charge detonated inside, ensuring a swift kill or lethal injury. This innovation, coupled with faster steam catchers, suddenly made it feasible to chase and take down the previously untouchable big whales of the North Atlantic.

Foyn launched Norway’s first modern whaling company in the 1860s out of Finnmark. Early attempts were modest – his inaugural voyage in 1864 yielded only a few whales – but by the 1870s Foyn’s methods proved extraordinarily effective. He established a shore station at Vadsø and negotiated a monopoly license from the Norwegian government (1873–1883) to keep competitors at bay while he refined the business. Foyn’s crews hunted primarily rorquals, towing the floating carcasses back to shore for processing. Nearly every part of the whale was utilised: blubber was rendered into oil (for soap, lamp fuel, and later margarine production), bones and meat scraps were boiled down into guano fertiliser, and baleen found ready markets in industry.

One thing Foyn struggled to do was create a local appetite for whale meat – 19th-century Norwegians were not keen on eating whale, so the flesh was mostly discarded or turned into animal feed. Nonetheless, profits from oil and baleen were rich. Soon, other Norwegians sought to join in the action. Even while Foyn still held his monopoly in the 1870s, unofficial whaling stations popped up (one of the first competing companies was founded in Sandefjord, in southern Norway). When Foyn’s exclusive rights expired, a veritable whaling rush ensued. By the late 1880s, dozens of Norwegian whaling ships were prowling coastal waters, and catches skyrocketed – in just two years (1885–1886), over a thousand fin whales and nearly 150 blue whales were taken off Norway’s coast. This uncontrolled harvest began depleting local whale stocks, and coastal fishing communities began to notice changes.

Conflicts soon arose between traditional fishermen and the new whaling industry. Northern fishermen, in particular, blamed whaling for poor fish catches – they believed the removal of whales (which some fishermen thought helped herd herring toward the coast) was one cause of dwindling fisheries. A notable incident was the Mehamn uprising, in which fishermen fought back against the whalers and destroyed the whaling stations. Whether or not the science behind this claim was sound, the economic rivalry was real. In the 1880s, Norwegian lawmakers, pressured by hundreds of petitioning fishermen, imposed the world’s first whaling restrictions to protect regional interests.