BY ALEXANDER HARO
Hvaldimir, a beluga whale that became an internet phenomenon for possibly being a Russian spy, has died. According to reports, a father and son in southern Norway found the whale’s body over the weekend.
Hvaldimir first came into the public eye when he appeared in 2019 near Ingoya, an island off of Norway. He was wearing a harness with a mount for a small camera at the time, and it was stamped with “Equipment St Petersburg.”
He was strangely comfortable around humans and responded to hand signals, which led to the presumption that someone had trained him. His name is a portmanteau of the word Hval, which means “whale” in Norwegian, and Vladimir, after the president of Russia.
When he first showed up, he routinely rubbed himself against boats in an apparent attempt to get the harness off. Eventually, a fisherman donned a survival suit, leapt into the chilly waters off Norway, and cut him free. The whale continued to interact with humans and vessels, playing fetch — he famously returned a cell phone and a GoPro on separate occasions — and asking for food. He even let people pet him.
A beacon of hope
“Hvaldimir was not just a beluga whale,” the Marine Mind NGO said on social media. “He was a beacon of hope, a symbol of connection, and a reminder of the deep bond between humans and the natural world.”
Although Russian officials have never responded to the allegations that Hvaldimir was trained to be a spy, Norway’s domestic intelligence agency had strong suspicions that he was, in fact, part of a research program to be one before he entered Norwegian waters.
As of this writing, there’s no clear answer to what caused his death.
“It’s absolutely horrible,” marine biologist Sebastian Strand, who worked with Marine Mind, told NRK (Norwegian public broadcasting). “He was apparently in good condition as of [Friday], so we just have to figure out what might have happened here.”
This story first appeared on The Inertia.
