Basque whalers

Basque whalers were fishermen throughout the coast of Vasconia, dedicated to whaling around the 13th and 16th centuries. Whaling began along the coast of the Cantabrian sea. The species hunted was the right whale (Balaenidae, also known as “the Basque whale”). 

Intensive whaling along the coasts forced the Basques to perfect their whaling systems until being the first to reach the North Sea and progressively to Iceland, continuing on to the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland (Ternua in Basque) in Canada.  Besides whales, they also searched for furs and especially to fish cod.

These commercial relationships with the locals resulted in the appearance of pidgin (a language characterised by a combination of syntatic, phonetic and morphological features of one language with another, without maintaining a structurally stable grammar); basque-icelandic and algonquin-basque in Newfoundland and Labrador.