Sandefjordmuseene (''Hvalfangstmuseet'') is a museum located in

Sandefjord Sandefjord () is a city and the most populous municipality in Vestfold og Telemark county, Norway. The municipality of Sandefjord was established on 1 January 1838. The municipality of Sandar was merged into Sandefjord on 1 January 1969. On 1 ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. It is dedicated to the whaling industry and is the only specialized museum on the subject of whales and whaling in Europe. Since 2009, the museum has been associated with the Vestfold Museum (''Vestfoldmuseene''). It is one of the largest whaling museums in the world, and Europe's only museum dedicated to the whaling industry. Sandefjord Whaling Museum houses a full-size recreation of a 21-meter

Blue whale The blue whale (''Balaenoptera musculus'') is a marine mammal and a baleen whale. Reaching a maximum confirmed length of and weighing up to , it is the largest animal known to have ever existed. The blue whale's long and slender body can ...

, which hangs from the ceiling in one of its galleries. ''

Southern Actor ''Southern Actor'' is a former whale catcher, currently a museum ship based in Sandefjord, Norway and owned by Sandefjord Museum. It is the only whale catcher from the Modern Whaling Epoch still to be in its original working order. Over 100,000 ...

'' is based on Museum's Wharf and is a part of the museum. It is the only

whale-catcher A whaler or whaling ship is a specialized vessel, designed or adapted for whaling: the catching or processing of whales. Terminology The term ''whaler'' is mostly historic. A handful of nations continue with industrial whaling, and one, Jap ...

from the Modern Whaling Epoch still in its original working order. The museum was visited by over one million people from its opening until 1994.

History

Dørnberger - Flensing av blåhval, Whalers Bay, Deception Island

The Whaling Museum in Sandefjord (''Hvalfangstmuseet i Sandefjord'') was inaugurated as a donation from Consul

Lars Christensen Lars Christensen (6 April 1884 – 10 December 1965) was a Norwegian shipowner and whaling magnate. He was also a philanthropist with a keen interest in the exploration of Antarctica. Career Lars Christensen was born at Sandar in Vestfold, Norw ...

, the son of Norwegian shipyard and ship owner, Christen Christensen. Its full name is "Commander Christen Christensen's Whaling Museum". The building was designed by architect Niels Winge Grimnes (1885-1922). When it opened in 1917 the museum building was one of the first original museum buildings in Norway. Lars Christensen had two main goals when opening the museum; to inform the public about the

Antarctic The Antarctic ( or , American English also or ; commonly ) is a polar region around Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau and other ...

and its fauna and animal life, as it was a relatively unknown continent at the time, and to tell the story of

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industry ...

as an industry. The museum was visited by H.M.

King Haakon VII Haakon VII (; born Prince Carl of Denmark; 3 August 187221 September 1957) was the King of Norway from November 1905 until his death in September 1957. Originally a Danish prince, he was born in Copenhagen as the son of the future Frederick VI ...

on his first official visit to Sandefjord on June 23, 1920. Since its opening, the museum has experienced some major changes including an expansion in 1981. Today, the Whaling Museum's aim is to be a central institution in the presentation of a wide range of material connected to the history of whaling as well as the ecology and management of whales and their habitat. The museum's photo collection consists of 150,000 photographs around 30,000 of which are related to whaling. The museum is host to a host of international conferences related to marine life and to whales. Exhibits include ''

'', a whale catcher built 1950 for Chr. Salvesen & Co. of

Leith, Scotland Leith (; gd, Lìte) is a port area in the north of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, founded at the mouth of the Water of Leith. In 2021, it was ranked by ''Time Out'' as one of the top five neighbourhoods to live in the world. The earliest ...

. Today the restored vessel is a

museum ship A museum ship, also called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are also used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the small numb ...

open to the public. The former whale catcher is both a living museum and a passenger ship.

Gallery

File:Busen 2 whale catcher model (HS.03831-1).jpg, Model: ''Busen 2'' File:Hvalkokeri Vikingen - skipsmodell.jpg, Model: '' Vikingen'' File:Star VI+VII whale catcher model (HS.02804-2).jpg, Model: ''Star VI+VII'' whale catcher File:Sir James Clark Ross HS.02802(4).jpg, Model: ''Sir James Clark Ross HS'' File:Modell av Grytviken kirke (HS.03422).jpg, Model: Grytviken Church built by Reidar Th. Karlsen in 1999

References

Other sources

*Wexelsen, Einar (1993) ''Vel blåst! Kommandør Chr. Christensens Hvalfangstmuseum 75 år'' (Sandefjord: Hvalfangstmuseets publikasjon nr. 28)

External links

Hvalfangstmuseet websiteVestfoldmuseene IKS website
{{coord, 59.131, N, 10.227, E, display=title, source:dewiki Whaling museums Whaling in Norway Maritime museums in Norway Museums in Vestfold og Telemark Buildings and structures in Sandefjord

History

Gallery

See also

References

Other sources

External links