‘We can carry on for ever’: meet Iceland’s last whale hunter

For Kristjan Loftsson, the 80-year-old who is more or less singlehandedly keeping the fin whale hunt alive, comparisons with Moby-Dick's obsessive hero Ahab are an honour'. Will opposition to the dying industry finally catch up with him?

The courteous agreement to an interview came with a twist in its tail. Shall we have lunch? Do you eat whale meat?" asks Kristjan Loftsson, 80, the last hunter of fin whales in Europe, and a man unafraid of controversy.

For more than five decades Loftsson has stubbornly swum against the tide, whether that be public opinion, domestic regulation or an almost complete international consensus. When they compare me to [Captain Ahab in] Moby-Dick, that's an honour," Loftsson says of the 19th-century tale of a seafarer's bloody quest for revenge against a whale that had bit off his leg.