There’s a theory that early Europeans started saying “brown one” or “honey-eater” instead of “bear” to avoid summoning them, and similarly my friend has started calling Alexa “the faceless woman” because saying her true name awakens her from her slumber
English has an avoidance register used in the presence of certain respected animals, which sounds fancy until you realize it’s spelling out w-a-l-k and t-r-e-a-t in front of the dog.
Iceland does! They are the illhveli, literally “evil whales”, and they live to kill you. They love nothing more than killing and eating humans and sinking their ships. Their greatest enemy is the steypireydur (that’s blue whale to you), which is the greatest of the good whales and the protector of sailors.
All evil whales are, well, evil. So evil that if you speak their name at sea, they will hear it and home in on you. So instead you use all sorts of euphemisms for their names. Also if you try to cook their meat it literally disappears from the pot. That’s right, they’re so evil, you can’t even eat them.
They include such types as the hrosshvalur (horsewhale), with big eyes and a red mane and tail. This is probably the best known and most feared of the lot.
The raudkembingur (redcomb) is especially cruel and bloodthirsty even by illhveli standards. If you manage to escape it, it will die of frustration.
Good luck escaping the mushveli (mousewhale) though, it has legs! And will clamber onto the beach in pursuit!
Or what about death from above? The stökkull (jumper) leaps high into the air and pile-drives boats to pieces.
Meanwhile the skeljungur (shellwhale) sits in the path of boats and lets them get wrecked on its shelly hide…
… while the sverdhvalur (swordwhale) slices through boats with its dorsal fin.
The katthveli (catwhale) is relatively harmless though. It meows.
The same can’t be said of the lyngbakur (heatherback), a classic island fish that lets sailors get on its back and then dives, taking them to a watery grave.
The nauthveli (oxwhale) on the other hand specially targets cattle, attracting them into the sea with its bellow before tearing them apart.
How can you avoid all these murderous whales, like the taumafiskur (bridlefish) here? Any of a number of ways, including getting a steypireydur to help. There are substances, ranging from angelica to sheep dung and chopped fox testicles, that they find abhorrent. And you can distract them with loud noises and barrels.
For more, I assure you this link will answer all your questions.
I’m looking, but it’s late at night and I’m falling asleep. Can anyone tell me who the artist is? I want to ask if the reference materials looked similar to existing sea creatures, or if that was their own take (absolutely brilliant either way)
Most of these whales look extremely similar to various Toothed Whales / Odontoceti, several others look like alternate sea critters, and most of those counterparts could reasonable cause havoc to ships and inspire these designs. That being said, it could be an artist’s interpretation by an artist with marine knowledge, but it’d also be pretty dope if it turned out the source material looked remarkably similar to these specific whales too.
I hope I have some amount of marine knowledge… in most cases these whales are so well described they can be easily pictured, and sometimes there are drawings of them! For instance, from Jon Gudmundsson we have the raudkembingur with a rather beaky face
and the hrosshvalur/stökkull (he combines both), which is where I got the dappling and the huge eye
Then there’s Ortelius’ map of Iceland which shows the stökkull leaping but doesn’t give it the fleshy blinders it’s supposed to have.
Meanwhile the hrosshvalur… I mean… look at it!
A different school of art you could say. See also the steypireydur (blue whale) by Ortelius
versus Gudmundsson’s version, indicating more familiarity with the animal
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