Along the trade routes of Europe during the Middle Ages,
thousands of the beautiful white tusks, which spiral to a
tapered point, were sold as so-called unicorn horns or
“alicorns”. People traded gold and valuables for an “alicorn”
they believed to have magical cure-all properties, when in fact
the horn was the tooth of a whale, or cetacean, from Arctic
seas. The scientific name of the narwhal is Monodon monoceros.
It belongs to the cetacean suborder odontoceti or “the toothed
whales”. The long tusk is a unique feature among odontocetes,
which also include sperm whales, pilot whales, dolphins and
porpoises. Although it is renowned for its single tusk, some
male narwhals do in fact, have double tusks. The pallid and
mottled colouring of the adult narwhal's skin and its summertime
habit of logging, or lying inactive at or just below the
surface, could be reasons for its common name from the Old Norse
of nar (corpse) and hvalr (whale). Qilalugaq tugaalik is the
Inuktitut name for the narwhal. Distribution and Mi