information:extraction
In myth, literature and art

As marine creatures that reside in either the depths or the poles, humans knew very little about whales over the course of human history; many feared or revered them. The Vikings 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.

Whales played a major part in shaping the art forms of many coastal civilizations, such as the Norse, with some dating to the Stone Age. Petroglyphs off a cliff face in Bangudae, South Korea show 300 depictions of various animals, a third of which are whales. Some show particular detail in which there are throat pleats, typical of rorquals. These petroglyphs show these people, of around 7,000 to 3,500 B.C.E. in South Korea, had a very high dependency on whales.

The Pacific Islanders and Australian Aborigines viewed whales as bringers of good and joy. One exception is French Polynesia, where, in many parts, cetaceans are met with great brutality.

In coastal regions of China, Korea and Vietnam, the worship of whale gods, who were associated with Dragon Kings after the arrival of Buddhism, was present along with related legends. The god of the seas, according to Chinese folklore, was a large whale with human limbs.

In Vietnam, whales hold a sense of divinity. They are so respected in their cultures that they occasionally hold funerals for beached whales, a custom deriving from Vietnam's ancient sea-based Champa Kingdom.

Whales have also played a role in sacred texts. The story of Jonah being swallowed by a great fish is told both in the Qur'an and in the biblical Book of Jonah (and is mentioned by Jesus in the New Testament: Matthew 12:40.). This episode was frequently depicted in medieval art (for example, on a 12th-century column capital at the abbey church of Mozac, France). The Bible also mentions whales in Genesis 1:21, Job 7:12, and Ezekiel 32:2. The " leviathan " described at length in Job 41:1-34 is generally understood to refer to a whale. The "sea monsters" in Lamentations 4:3 have been taken by some to refer to marine mammals, in particular whales, although most modern versions use the word "jackals" instead.

In 1585, Alessandro Farnese, 1585, and Francois, Duke of Anjou, 1582, were greeted on his ceremonial entry into the port city of Antwerp by floats including "Neptune and the Whale", indicating at least the city's dependence on the sea for its wealth.

In 1896, an article in The Pall Mall Gazette popularised a practice of alternative medicine that probably began in the whaling town of Eden, Australia two or three years earlier. It was believed that climbing inside a whale carcass and remaining there for a few hours would relieve symptoms of rheumatism.

Whales continue to be prevalent in modern literature. For example, Herman Melville 's Moby Dick features a "great white whale" as the main antagonist for Ahab. The whale is an albino sperm whale, considered by Melville to be the largest type of whale, and is partly based on the historically attested bull whale Mocha Dick. Rudyard Kipling 's Just So Stories includes the story of "How the Whale got in his Throat". A whale features in the award-winning children's book The Snail and the Whale (2003) by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.

Niki Caro 's film the Whale Rider has a Māori girl ride a whale in her journey to be a suitable heir to the chieftain-ship. Walt Disney's film Pinocchio features a showdown with a giant whale named Monstro at the end of the film.

A recording of Song with a Humpback Whale by a team of marine scientists became popular in 1970. Alan Hovhaness 's orchestral composition And God Created Great Whales (1970) includes the recorded sounds of humpback and bowhead whales. Recorded whale songs also appear in a number of other musical works, including Léo Ferré 's song " Il n'y a plus rien " and Judy Collins 's "Farewell to Tarwathie" (on the 1970 album Whales and Nightingales).