November 20, 2024

Hvaldimir the Great


Hvaldimir the Great
Hvaldimir and a fan.  Ein Dahmer, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The life of Hvaldimir, the mysterious whale first spotted off the coast of Norway in 2019 fitted with a camera mount and a tag inscribed in Russian, has been chronicled in a new BBC documentary, "Secrets of the Spy Whale."

Hvaldimir's name references "hval," the Norwegian word for whale, and "Vladimir," a Slavic name stemming from the root vladi, meaning "to rule."

Hvaldimir grew in notoriety after being accused of being a spy trained by the Russian Navy. The documentary features Ukrainian zoologist Olga Shpak, who said she is “100%” sure Hvaldimir was trained by the Russian military, but does not believe the whale was a spy. Instead, Shpak said, he was assigned to guard a naval base in the Arctic Circle. Hvaldimir eventually escaped this Arctic base, due to his being, in Shpak's view, a "troublemaker."

When Hvaldimir showed up off the coast of Norway, Russia’s marine mammal research community “immediately identified the beluga as one of their own,” the BBC reported. “A message came through the chain of vets and trainers that they had lost a beluga whale named Andryukha,” Shpak said.

Hvaldimir-Andryukha died in August 2024 of a bacterial infection. 

 

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