// JavaScript Document Tomorrow\'s (referred to as storyText below) // 4. a link if you'd like one (referred to as storyLink below) // STORIES = [ ['slideshow/images/0_monica_baby.jpg', 'LIFE, CULTURE AND TRADITIONS', 'In this photo essay, FRONTLINE/World producer Monica Lam looks beneath the surface of Faroese life.

PHOTOS: Greg Niemeyer

I went to the Faroe Islands in the summer of 2006 with my husband, Greg, and our younger daughter, Medina, then 9 months old. Greg is an artist and photographer, and he took all the photos in this essay, as well as supported our production team by driving us around the islands and striking deals with the locals for fresh fish.

We came here to learn about methyl mercury levels in pilot whales and how the growing tide of research about the impacts of mercury is affecting the culture here, where pilot whale is commonly eaten. To the Faroese, the pilot whale is at the center of much community life, not only because it can make up to a third of a family\'s diet, but because of the old traditions surrounding the hunt itself. I wasn\'t sure that we would get to see a whale hunt; we were outsiders and the protests against whale hunting aimed at the Faroese during the 1980s had made many of the islands\' locals wary of strangers with cameras', '1', '8'], ['slideshow/images/1_bour.jpg', 'The Witch\'s Finger', 'You can stand in the village of Bøur and look across the bay at the strange shapes of the Witch\'s Finger and Tindhólmur. On the other side of those jagged chunks of basaltic rock is the open Atlantic, where a traveler would have to row 300 miles before hitting Iceland. Like most villages in the Faroe Islands, every house has a view of the sea. When I first arrived in mid-July, the sun didn\'t set at night, but skipped along the horizon for a few hours before rising into the sky again.

We stayed in a summer house in the village of Sørvágur, which you won\'t find recommended by any tourist book. Not because it lacks charm, but because there\'s no hotel, no restaurant and no one refers to the streets by their names. Residents were reticent at first, but when I eventually met a few, I learned that they\'d been watching me for days, and watching the antics of my husband, who was playing the distinctly untraditional role of babysitter. Once the ice was broken, I got a full tour of the village from Eileyg Weihe, a postal worker who let me ride on the back of her moped as she sped up and down the hilly roads delivering mail.', '2', '0'], ['slideshow/images/2_whales_harbor.jpg', 'After the Hunt', 'It was toward the end of our stay when we got a call that a pod of pilot whales had been spotted near the island of Eysturoy. The sun was bright but softened by a hazy layer of clouds -- it was a perfect day for filming, and probably for whaling. We dropped what we were doing and jumped in our car to get to the bay where the whales would most likely be driven.

Watching the hunt unfold, I was struck by the level of coordination among the hundreds of men who participated. Word that the hunt is on spreads rapidly over the phone, and the reaction is immediate. Those who own a boat speed out to meet the pod and chase them into shore. The rest of the men grab their whaling hooks, ropes and knives and wait on the beach to kill the whales once they\'ve floundered in the shallow water. Few words are exchanged, and there\'s not much gesticulating. The hunt is over quickly, and everyone falls quiet for a little while, as if to savor the exhilaration of the hunt before it fades away.', '3', '1'], ['slideshow/images/3_whale_boy.jpg', 'Dividing the Catch Between Young and Old', 'As soon as the hunt ended and my heart rate slowed, I looked around at the people gathered on the beach. A wash of red blood lingered in the water, but no one seemed frightened or disgusted by it. In fact, many of the onlookers were young mothers who had brought their children, swaddled warmly in strollers, to watch.

The atmosphere was festive, upbeat. Everyone knows that they will get a share of the catch, even if they didn\'t actively participate in the hunt. This is a tradition that the Faroese are very proud of: The whales are divided among the community, from young to old, in a practice that stretches back centuries. The person who spotted the whales first always gets the biggest whale. The Faroese vouch that no money changes hands because the whales are a resource to be shared by everyone.

I later checked in a few grocery stores to see if I could buy some whale meat, but as I\'d been told, there was none for sale. Except for a few restaurants that offer whale on the menu, I found that the best way to sample local cuisine was through an invitation from a local.', '4', '2'], ['slideshow/images/4_forklift.jpg', 'Measuring the Whales', 'The Faroese rely on a traditional system of measurement to catalogue and divide the whale catch. Under the direction of a local foreman, the whales are measured with a custom ruler, where each marker is successively closer to the next. The marks approximate the quantity of usable meat and blubber in a particular part of a whale.

A mature pilot whale weighs between 1.5 and 3 tons, and each whale provides enough meat and blubber to stock several families\' larders for several months. In the hunt that we saw, there were 132 whales in the pod. They were divided into 1,903 shares. About 700 shares went to the hunters and their families, and the remaining 1,200 shares went to other families, elderly individuals and a distant village that hadn\'t seen any whales in a long time. The Faroese have handwritten records of every hunt since 1584, with details of which families shared each whale.', '5', '3'], ['slideshow/images/5_olavur.jpg', 'A Teacher and a Fisherman', 'Ólavur Sjurdarberg is a typical whaler: He has a full-time job as a high school administrator, and he also teaches math and science. No one is a "professional" whaler in the Faroes. Whales are usually spotted by someone out on a boat, fishing for cod -- one of the Faroe Islands\' main commercial exports.

Sjurdarberg gave us our first taste of whale blubber and meat in his kitchen. Salted whale blubber is translucent and tough, and usually eaten in thin slices. Whale meat can be cooked either like a steak or wind-dried like a jerky. It tastes like a cross between liver and fish. We also tasted other Faroese specialties, such as wind-dried lamb meat and dried cod.

As head of the Pilot Whalers Association, a conglomeration of fishermen who oversee whale hunting in the islands, Sjurdarberg promotes the practice and often finds himself defending it to the outside world. He explained to me that the bloodiness of whale hunting is not unique. "Always when you kill an animal, you will see blood," he said. "If you would kill [a] pig in a swimming pool, then [the] swimming pool would turn to red."', '6', '4'], ['slideshow/images/6_mykines_cliffs.jpg', 'Nowhere to Grow', 'There is little that grows here besides grass. "We have some rhubarbs and potatoes," says Dorete Bloch, who runs the Faroese Museum of Natural History. "All other things you have to import." Only between 2 and 6 percent of the islands is arable, and though I saw a few gardens, I didn\'t see any cultivated crops.

Rhubarb and potatoes day in, day out is a harsh diet for even the toughest Faroese, and they have developed several ways to catch and raise their own food. The islands are home to more sheep than people, and most families keep a flock that they graze in the mountains and cull for meat each fall. We learned that Faroese children have a unit in school to teach them how to slaughter sheep, because it\'s considered a basic and necessary skill. And the cold and forbidding waters that surround the islands provide a host of other choices -- from fish to sea birds to pilot whale. Ólavur Sjúr∂arberg, the whaler, is fond of saying, "The ocean is our garden."', '7', '5'], ['slideshow/images/7_boat_repair.jpg', 'Fishing for a Living', 'Fishing, fish farming and fish processing employs approximately 20 percent of the labor force in the Faroe Islands, according to the government. Fish exports accounted for 94 percent of total exports in 2004. The Faroese Food, Veterinary and Environmental Agency (FVEA) monitors the levels of various pollutants in fish caught around the islands. The waters around the Faroes are pristine, and according to the Agency, so is the seafood. But the pilot whale, which travels far and wide during its yearly migration, is a different story.

Maria Dam, a scientist at the FVEA, has been taking samples of pilot whale tissue for decades. As long-living predators at the top of the food chain, pilot whales gather and store up toxins in a process known as bioaccumulation and biomagnification. They\'re a living record of what\'s in the world\'s oceans and how these waters are changing. Dam and her team have found not only methylmercury in whales, but also DDT, PCB, flame retardant and synthetic musk (commonly used to make perfume). "I don\'t think there has been any instance where we have looked for a contaminant and didn\'t find it in the pilot whale," Dam said.', '8', '6'], ['slideshow/images/8_3boats.jpg', 'Pollution Meets the Pristine', 'The Faroe Islands exist at a crossroads of traditional life and modern convenience. We had a high-speed Internet connection in our summer cottage and cell phones that worked anywhere in the islands. As a self-governing administrative division of Denmark, the Faroes can import any modern appliance, from laundry machines to motorcycles. They even have fast food.

The Faroese scientists who test for pollutants in their high-tech labs are working in the delicate territory where old and new clash. These scientists want to know what\'s in traditional food sources like pilot whale meat and blubber. But as pristine and isolated as the islands may seem, they\'re finding that they\'re still vulnerable to chemicals from around the globe.

Mercury has natural sources but is also a byproduct of coal-fired power plants and certain manufacturing processes. Faroese doctor Pal Weihe, who has been testing his own people for two decades, has found small but significant deficits in children who have ingested methylmercury through a diet that includes pilot whale. Weihe\'s work is seen by some as a threat to the central Faroese tradition of whaling; yet others view it as a contribution of knowledge that has had impact around the world. ', '0', '7'] ]; function switchStory(story) { document.getElementById("storyImage").src = STORIES[story][0]; document.getElementById("storyTitle").innerHTML = STORIES[story][1]; document.getElementById("storyText").innerHTML = STORIES[story][2]; //document.getElementById("storyQuote").innerHTML = STORIES[story][3]; document.getElementById("storyLink").innerHTML = "\"Next\""; document.getElementById("storyLinkb").innerHTML = "\"Back\""; return false; } // -->