The whale museum in Húsavík opened in the spring of 2019 an auspicious anniversary exhibition on the occasion of the museum's 20th anniversary a year earlier.
In the near future, chapters from the museum's history will be published here at hvalasafn.is. We start the game in 1992, but like all good stories, there is a bit of backstory.
The origin of the Whale Museum in Húsavík can be traced back to experimental whale-watching trips that were first set out from Höfn in Hornafjörður in the summers of 1992-1994. On the first trip, there was a British guide named Mark Carwardine together with Ásbirn Björgvinsson, who later founded the Whale Museum in Húsavík. It was a long voyage or about 8 hours. In 1994, whale-watching trips began in Húsavík with Arnar Sigurðsson, who ran the company Arnar's Sea Trips. A year later, several groups came to see whales in Húsavík, among others from Discover the World. The number of whales had decreased in the vicinity of Hafnar, and the sailing time was much shorter at Skjálfand. The area was known to be an old whaling area, so there should be whales to be found. A course was held in Keflavík in 1995 where whale watching as an industry was discussed. Foreign speakers, including Erich Hoyt, were brought in to give an insight into this industry, which would later become huge. This past summer, two whale watching companies operated in Húsavík, Norðursaigling and Arnar's Sea Tours.
