The predecessor of the Húsavík Whale Museum was a small exhibition in Hotel Husavik that opened in 1997. At the time whale watching was beginning its third season in Húsavík's Skjálfandi bay and the growing popularity gave the Húsavík Hotel's manager Páll Þór Jónsson the idea to open an exhibition dedicated solely to whales. He contacted Ásbjörn Björgvinsson and convinced him to move to Húsavík, create the exhibition and to be the official caretaker.

Ásbjörn went to London to meet Natural history museum's curator Richard Sabin. The main purpose was to learn whalebone cleaning as London's Natural History Museum is the biggest skeleton museum in the world. Richard Sabin has been in some connection with Húsavík whale museum ever since. He for an example directed operations when whalebones were dug out in Keflavík á Strandum in 2001 which you can read more about in the museum's biology room. Most recently Mr. Sabin was one of the headliners at the Whale Museum's annual Whale Congress in 2019.

The predecessor of the Whale Museum in Húsavík was a small exhibition in the hall of the community center on the upper floor of Hótel Húsavík, which opened in 1997. At that time, whale watching tours were scheduled for the third year in a row from Húsavík, and the hotel manager of the local hotel Páll Þór Jónsson got the idea to open an exhibition in the hotel dedicated to whales. . Ásbjörn Björgvinsson was hired to lead the work and moved north with his family in January 1997.

Ásbjörn went to England to the British Museum of Natural History to meet Richard Sabin, the museum's curator, in order to learn how to work with whale bones, which has the largest collection of skeletons in the world. Richard Sabin has been associated with the museum and Húsavík all along the streets ever since. To film, he managed the excavation of whale bones in Keflavík on the Strand in 2001, but that meeting is better understood in one of the museum's exhibition spaces.

Richard