Whale conservationist thwarted plot to sink Icelandic whaling boats

An Icelandic whale conservationist stopped foreign men from sinking whaling boats and setting fire to a whaling station in Hvalfjord in 1981, mbl.is reports. The plans were thwarted five years before whaling boats were sunk in Reykjavik harbour in 1986.

The story is told in a new episode of the crime programme Sönn sakamál, now available on Síminn Premium. Presenter Sigursteinn Másson speaks with Jón Baldur Hlíðberg, who was active in the nature conservation group Skuld, which opposed whaling.

Jón Baldur says he was asked in May 1980 to meet Frenchman Jean-Paul Fortom-Gouin, Panama’s representative to the International Whaling Commission, who wanted to contact Icelandic whale conservationists. Through him, Jón Baldur also met Briton Roger Retting.

The initial plan was to sink the boats at the dock. Jón Baldur offered to carry it out but delayed the plan and did nothing. Later, another Briton contacted him. The man, a former North Sea diver who had been injured while sandblasting, planned to set fire to the whaling station in Hvalfjord and destroy its equipment. Jón Baldur persuaded him to abandon that plan, but the man then proposed sinking the boats instead.

Jón Baldur pretended to cooperate, kept a backpack for the man and delayed the preparations. In a July 1981 interview with Morgunblaðið, he described plans to use an incendiary mixture capable of causing serious damage, as well as arrangements for approaching the boats and leaving afterward.

When he realised he could not delay the men any longer, Jón Baldur went to the police. “They didn’t need me for anything,” he says in the programme.