{"id":204,"date":"2019-07-04T15:37:25","date_gmt":"2019-07-04T15:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/?p=204"},"modified":"2024-04-06T16:33:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T16:33:00","slug":"understanding-denial-a-visit-to-the-faroe-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/?p=204","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Denial: a Visit to the Faroe Islands"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

First published in the NASGP Newsletter in June 2018 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What can public health in UK learn from the Faroese tradition of whaling about changing cultural traditions?<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The Islands and the Whales<\/a> is\n a documentary by lawyer-turned-filmmaker Mike Day. It isn\u2019t simply \nabout whaling in the Faroe Islands. It\u2019s an exploration of the practical\n and emotional obstacles which make it so difficult to change people\u2019s \ncustoms, and how a doctor has worked to overcome them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On bleak, treeless and sparsely populated islands life exists on the \nmargin. Pilot whale meat has kept the Faroese alive for centuries. The \ngrind \u2013 grindadr\u00e1p<\/em>, the whale hunt \u2013 doesn\u2019t just secure the community\u2019s food, it is a shared act which cements social cohesion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Faroese way of life is under threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faroese whaling is sustainable, but the sea in the coves where the \nwhales are corralled and slaughtered runs red with blood. And red blood \nis a red rag to the militant animal rights groups who are determined \nthat the Faroese should abandon their livelihood. When screen goddess \nPamela Anderson emerges from the sea like Aphrodite, leading a group of \nwet-suited Californian eco-warriors in a full-frontal attack on whaling,\n the Faroese listen politely. They are well aware how whaling is viewed \nby environmentalists. But they aren\u2019t going to be harangued by people \nwho haven\u2019t done their homework. \u201cYou should become vegetarian\u201d, say the\n eco-warriors, who drive to Walmart for their greens. Vegetables won\u2019t \ngrow in the thin Faroese soil, and imports are prohibitively expensive \nas well as environmentally costly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tradition is changing, but through science, not scolding. Pilot whales are at the top of the marine food chain. In 1977 it was recognised that mercury accumulates in whale flesh, and in the flesh of people who eat whale meat. Dr P\u00e1l Weihe, head of public health in the Faroes, and Faroese himself, started a research programme to evaluate the risks. He persuaded his fellow islanders to donate hair, blood and umbilical cord blood samples, to keep dietary diaries and to allow their children\u2019s physical and mental development to be monitored. The tests have revealed that most Faroese have a worrying level of mercury in their bodies, the dietary diaries show that the more whale products they eat the higher it is. The developmental studies correlate deficits in children\u2019s attention, memory and various cerebral functions with dietary pre- and post-natal mercury exposure.

Dr Weihe\u2019s research has led him to issue ever more restrictive advice about the consumption of whale products. The hospital long ago stopped serving whale. At first, the Faroese were advised not to eat whale liver or kidney, which accumulate 100 times more mercury than the flesh. Then to eat meat and blubber only once a week. Then, only twice a month, or not at all if pregnant or planning a pregnancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Faroese managed to live with the natural giant; now they are paying the price of industrialisation generated thousands of miles away and from which they get little benefit.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Only a Faroese could have tackled this sensitive issue, says Dr \nWeihe, but even he has suffered some abuse from some local people. Can \nyou be truly Faroese if you don\u2019t take part in the grind, eat whale \nmeat, savour the blubber? And the damage the mercury does isn\u2019t \nimmediately obvious, so the advice on their diet, like advice on \nsmoking, drinking and exercising, is easy to reject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A young man with a high level of mercury can\u2019t accept that he should stop eating whale products. His wife, a nurse who has assisted Dr Weihe with the studies, sits with her two little girls on her knee and struggles with cognitive dissonance. But it is she who eventually decides that for the children\u2019s future the family should change their diet. He husband is unwilling, but her anxieties persuade him at least to say that he will eat whale less often.

As another Faroese man said, \u201cIn the past, nature was a giant, and humans were so small. Now it\u2019s the other way around\u201d. The Faroese managed to live with the natural giant; now they are paying the price of industrialisation generated thousands of miles away and from which they get little benefit. The glue which binds them together is being dissolved by forces outside their control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The days of the Hulduf\u00f3lk, the traditional guardians of the Faroes, \nare gone. Like many traditions which until a few years ago underpinned \nlife in Britain. No magical thinking can bring back the past. Moving \nfrom pre-contemplation \u2013 denial \u2013 to contemplation and then to action \ncan be a slow and halting process. People need time and space to change \ntheir thinking. If you\u2019re being asked to give up something important, \nyou need acceptable alternatives. Opinion leaders are crucial for a \npublic health campaign to be successful. In the Faroes, the mothers have\n led the change. It\u2019s taken 20 years, but the message about the dangers \nhas got through to pregnant women who now have much lower levels of \nmercury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Islands and the Whales is not polemical. It shows how real people\n struggle with the difficulties of living in their remote, beautiful but\n challenging islands. The solutions to problems are rarely \nblack-and-white and there is a complex web of issues and viewpoints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GPs in Britain have to navigate through choppy seas of emotion, helping patients towards a compromise between what science tells us and what their beliefs and experience tell them. Denial is hard to overcome, and we bring to dialogues with patients the baggage from our past consultations. Watching this film, perhaps with students or colleagues, a visit to the Faroes could inspire us to review our own customs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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First published in the NASGP Newsletter in June 2018 What can public health in UK learn from the Faroese tradition of whaling about changing cultural traditions? The Islands and the Whales is a documentary by lawyer-turned-filmmaker Mike Day. It isn\u2019t simply about whaling in the Faroe Islands. It\u2019s an exploration of the practical and emotional obstacles … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Understanding Denial: a Visit to the Faroe Islands”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judith","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9392,"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/9392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}