Editing Cetacea (section)

==== Middle Ages to the 19th century ====
{{See also|History of Whaling|Cryptid whales}}
[[File:La Baleine.jpg|thumb|left|Depiction of baleen whaling, 1840]]
[[File:Im Februar 1598 an der holländischen Küste gestrandeter Walfisch.jpg|thumb|right|Stranded sperm whale engraving, 1598]]

[[St. Brendan]] described in his travel story ''Navigatio Sancti Brendani'' an encounter with a whale, between the years 565–573.{{citation needed|date=October 2024}} Most descriptions of large whales from the Middle Ages until the whaling era, beginning in the 17th century, were of beached whales. [[Raymond Gilmore]] documented seventeen sperm whales in the estuary of the Elbe from 1723 to 1959 and thirty-one animals on the coast of Great Britain in 1784. In 1827, a blue whale beached itself off the coast of Ostend. Whales were used as attractions in museums and traveling exhibitions.{{citation needed|date=October 2024}}
Whalers from the 17th to 19th centuries depicted whales in drawings and recounted tales of their occupation. Although they knew that whales were harmless giants, they described battles with harpooned animals. These included descriptions of sea monsters, including huge whales, sharks, sea snakes, giant squid and octopuses.{{citation needed|date=October 2024}} Among the first whalers who described their experiences on whaling trips was Captain [[William Scoresby]] from Great Britain, who published the book ''Northern Whale Fishery'', describing the hunt for northern baleen whales. This was followed by [[Thomas Beale]], a British surgeon, in his book ''Some observations on the natural history of the sperm whale'' in 1835; and Frederick Debell Bennett's ''The tale of a whale hunt'' in 1840. Whales were described in narrative literature and paintings, most famously in the novels ''[[Moby-Dick|Moby Dick]]'' by [[Herman Melville]] and ''[[Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas]]'' by [[Jules Verne]].{{citation needed|date=October 2024}}

Baleen was used to make vessel components such as the bottom of a bucket in the Scottish National Museum. The [[Norsemen]] crafted ornamented plates from baleen.{{citation needed|date=October 2024}} In the Canadian Arctic (east coast) in Punuk and [[Thule]] culture (1000–1600 C.E.),<ref>{{cite journal|title=The circumpolar zone|last1=Cunliffe|first1=B.|last2=Gosden|first2=C.|last3=Joyce|first3=R.|journal=The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology}}</ref> baleen was used to construct houses in place of wood as roof support for winter houses.<ref>{{cite journal|author=J. Savelle| title=The Role of Architectural utility in the formation of archaeological Whale Bone Assemblages|journal=Journal of Archaeological Science|volume=24| issue=10|year=1997|pages=869–885|doi=10.1006/jasc.1996.0167| bibcode=1997JArSc..24..869S}}<!--|access-date=4 September 2015--></ref>