Common minke whale this mistake during Foyn's whaling operations in the Varanger Fjord between 1868 and 1885." It has formerly been known as the little piked whale, the lesser or least rorqual, and the sharp-headed finner. American whalemen in the 19th century simply thought of them as "young finbacks" or a "Finback's calf", apparently under the impression that they were juveniles of their larger relative, the fin whale. They were also called zwergwal (German: "dwarf whale") or vågehval (Norwegian: "bay whale"). In Japan they are called koiwashi-kujira ("little sardine whale") or minku-kujira ("minke whale"). In Greenland they are known by the Danish name
Moby Dick (whale) evil, the ocean, and the very universe itself. Yet the symbolism of the White Whale is deliberately enigmatic, and its inscrutability is a deliberate challenge to the reader. Ishmael describes the whale’s forehead as having wrinkles and scars on it that look like hieroglyphics. He muses on the difficulty of understanding what he saw: Moby Dick (whale) Moby Dick is a fictional sperm whale who is the main antagonist in Herman Melville's 1851 novel of the same name. Melville based the fictional whale partially on a real albino whale of that period called Mocha Dick. Ishmael describes Moby Dick as