At about 8.30am on a bright July morning on Vágar, one of the 18 Faeroe Isles, I got a telephone call from the tourism office. “Hi Tim, it’s Sunrid. I’m afraid your guide cannot take you on a tour of the island today. Some whales have been seen off the coast, and Holgar has taken out his boat to help to round them up.”

“Any chance I could watch?” I asked. “Well . . . if you agree not to take any pictures, perhaps it would be OK.”

Like hunting communities the world over, the Faeroese are fiercely protective of a tradition that the rest of the world frowns upon. Perhaps you have seen images of whale slaughter in the Faeroes, or of dolphins being butchered in Japan: dozens of dead and mutilated animals floating in shallow waters that have become, literally, a bloodbath. I have and I find them deeply shocking.

But these killings happen on average twice a year on Vágar and this was a rare opportunity to try to understand why the Faeroese are so passionate about it.

Whale watching off the Irish coast

Humpback whales are one of nature's most spectacular sights and you don't have to travel far to see them, says Ian Belcher

Related Links

• Brittany Ferries bids to reduce whale collisions

Thirty minutes later I was on a road that runs around the edge of a long, narrow channel — a kind of mini-fjord — looking out to sea. I was not alone. Hundreds of locals had also dropped everything to watch. The sense of excitement — not to say bloodlust — was palpable.

“You can see the boats forming a semicircle around the mouth of the channel,” explained a bearded man in his seventies. “The whales will be in front of them. Slowly they will drive them in, down the fjord, towards the village. I would love to be out there, but I am too old now.”

Over the next hour we watched the semicircle gradually draw in. About 45 minutes later I caught my first, heartbreaking glimpse of the whales as their heads broke the surface. They were pilot whales, about 5m long, which look and swim like large black dolphins.

“We should go down towards the village now,” the old man said.

I joined the crowd waiting patiently, spellbound as the whales’ last minutes unfolded. Sometimes the animals would stop, as if they were looking for a way out, before resuming their charge towards land. Closer and closer they came, their fear and exhaustion horribly apparent.

When they were 100m from the shore they hesitated once more. Death was upon them and they seemed to know it. Then, suddenly, a tremendous din erupted as the men in the boats and the people on the beach began roaring and yelling, banging on pots and pans, blowing car horns — making all the noise they could to force the whales into one last desperate push towards the shallows.

Men gathered on the beach as though about to go into battle, brandishing colossal knives, tensed and eager. As the whales hurled themselves forward, their butchers waded into the water and began an orgy of slaughter. The carnage lasted about five minutes. Thrashing tails and plunging arms, churning waters, shouting, groaning. But the men were methodical, moving as fast as they could; a knife plunged through a whale’s spinal cord just behind its head leads, they tell you, to death within seconds.

The sea turned crimson. Hair, beards, sweaters, spectacles became stained with blood. Watching all this were numerous children, some of themtoddlers. It was a proper family event, with a bizarrely festive atmosphere.

The location of the Faeroes in the North Atlantic, between Scandinavia and Iceland, makes these islands inhospitable to livestock rearing and crop-growing, and whale meat, besides making a welcome change from eating puffins and guillemots, has been, for centuries, a vital source of protein and vitamins. Later that day, as we inspected the 36 carcasses, I was told that the meat would be divided among the community, with those most in need getting a larger share.

It had been a gruesome spectacle. But not an outrage if set against, say, the brutal reality of factory farming in this country. Unlike the average Briton, when a Faroese child eats a whale steak for dinner, he or she is under no illusions about the true cost of that meat. And that, it seems to me, is something for which the Faroese do not have to apologise.

Bloodbath or necessity? Have your say using the comment form below

Times recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• The UK and Ireland's 25 best Christmas events
• Chalet Chef 2010: the winners