Concept

Við Áir

Summary
Við Áir is a former whaling station on the east coast of Streymoy in the Faroe Islands, near the village Hvalvík. Við Áir means "by the rivers" (á means "river" or "flood"; áir is the plural form). The whaling station Við Áir, was the last of seven whaling stations to be built in the Faroes, it was built in 1905 and run by the Norwegian company Chr. Salvesen & Co until 1930. They were not unknown in the Faroes, as they had already in 1897 put money into the station in Norðdepil. It is the last of its kind in the Northern Hemisphere, two others remain in the Southern Hemisphere, in Albany, Australia and in Grytviken, South Georgia, out of a total of 214 such whaling stations worldwide built by Norwegians, only these three remain. In 1936 it was taken over by the Faroese company P/F Sperm, and was rebuilt and modernized a bit, at this point there were only two whaling stations left in the country, Við Áir and Lopra. By this time whale stocks in the North Atlantic had diminished and results were not particularly good. In their first year the two boats Falkur and Heykur only managed to shoot 17 whales for the station Við Áir. In 1937 the hunt went better and the two boats shot 43 whales each, while a decent catch, it wasn't enough to make things run smoothly. In 1938 P/F Sperm bought another boat Ribeira and the following years the hunt was about 100 whales pr boat, but the onset of World War II stopped all whaling activity. And the company had to sell the boat Falkur to repay loans. During the second World War, all whaling activity stopped, only to resume in 1945. P/F Sperm continued after the war, but whale stocks had by now diminished so much that it was hard to make the economy work. The company went bankrupt in 1952. And the bank Sjóvinnubankin took over ownership of the station. The company Heykur rented the station in the period 1952-1954 after which the company Partafelagið Hvalarakstur rented it until 1958. The station stopped producing whale oil with export in mind in 1958.
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