Whaling Heritage and its Uses in Contemporary European Societies

HERICET will be the first project of its kind to look in detail at the different meanings and uses of Europe?s whaling heritage across multiple sites, economies, and cultural histories, considering in particular some of the ways in which Europes twenty-first-century tourism industries are continuing to draw inspiration from and capitalize upon the continents whaling and maritime past. Bringing together case studies from seven European-region countries (Germany, Greenland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the UK) that all used to hunt whales and in a few cases still do the project will use mixed-methods research to map the complex materialities, mobilities, and memories of European whaling cultures onto present-day economic and cultural activities. Its two principal objectives are 1) to gauge the success with which contemporary tourism destinations (from San Sebastian in northeast Spain to Nuuk in southwest Greenland) are managing to draw on and creatively refashion the diverse cultural histories and heritages of whaling; and 2) to consider the practical implications of these refashionings for current EU cultural and environmental policies that are looking to weigh the economic opportunities that cetacean-based tourism provides for local coastal communities against the need to ensure the welfare and sustainability of cetaceans themselves.