 As marine creatures that reside in either the depths or the poles , humans knew very little about whales over the course of history ; many feared or revered them . The Nords and various arctic tribes revered the whale as they were important pieces of their lives . In Inuit creation myths , when ' Big Raven ' , a deity in human form , found a stranded whale , he was told by the Great Spirit where to find special mushrooms that would give him the strength to drag the whale back to the sea and thus , return order to the world . In an Icelandic legend , a man threw a stone at a fin whale and hit the blowhole , causing the whale to burst . The man was told not to go to sea for twenty years , but during the nineteenth year he went fishing and a whale came and killed him . 
