Final tribute to Keiko

Hundreds of Norwegian schoolchildren bid farewell to Keiko the killer whale today by building a burial mound of stone over the Hollywood star’s grave.

The six ton star of Free Willy died last month, probably from pneumonia, in remote Taknes Day, where he had lived after swimming to Norway from Iceland in 2002.

“It was very nice. There were a lot of people, about 300 children and some adults,” said Thorbjorg Valdis Kristjansdottir, a marine biologist who was part of the team that sought to return Keiko to the wild.

The 26-year-old orca was buried in a pasture a few yards from where he died. The burial was done at night and kept secret to avoid a media circus.

The children, most from village schools in Halsa on Norway’s west coast, placed stone after stone atop the grave to create a burial mound, or cairn, a tradition that dates back to pre-Christian times in Norway.

The Free Willy film about a bid to return a captive killer whale to the wild film captured people’s imagination, and prompted a £14m (€20.13m) programme to free Keiko for real from a Mexico city aquarium, where he had been found ailing.

He was taken to Iceland, near where he was born, and when he was released in 2002, he swam 870 miles to the waters near the village of Halsa, on Norway’s west coast.