The North Atlantic Fisheries, 1100-1976 - University of Hull

a) The transition in Southern Greenland between the wars from a seal
hunting economy to a fishery economy. The goal was the same as in
Iceland and the Faroe Islands a generation or two earlier: to create a
commercial deep water fishery. But the background was quite different.
The peasant societies in these two countries had gained experience in
commercial fishing over many centuries. Greenland had not. Therefore,
the shift from one economy to another was more profound in Greenland.
In Iceland and the Faroe Islands the fishery developed as a private
enterprise in a liberal economy. In Greenland a state agency had the
monopoly of all trade and had come to have an actual monopoly of all
commercial activities by default. Greenland was thus a planned
economy. Consequently, the state played a decisive role in initiating and
running the new industry. The Greenlanders themselves had neither the
experience nor the means to run a modern business. How did this affect
them? For now, this question can only be answered tentatively.
b) The Faroese fishery at Greenland. This topic has three angles: the
Greenlandic, the Faroese, and the Danish. It entails some study of a clash
of interests between two peoples in a realm with the government as
mediator with interests of its own. Besides the historical interest in
finding out what in fact happened and how, the subject may contribute to
conflict theory by examining on which grounds the parties judge their
own interests rational and reasonable while they find those of their
opponents unacceptable.
c) The building of a mechanised fishing industry in the 1950s and 1960s
meant the construction of a quite different culture characterized by huge
capital investments, mechanisation of the working processes, regular
working hours, a money economy, formalization of occupational
training which was much more theoretical than before. How did the
Greenlanders manage to cope with this? A good question, but not easy to
answer. The whole society was reshaped, so it is difficult to discern a
special fishery angle in the numerous publications about the ‘misfitting’
of the Greenlanders in those years.
Select Bibliography
Vinnie Andersen, ‘Fra Fangst til fiskeri. Erhvervsskiftet og dets
betydning for husstandsstruktur og bosætttelse i Sydprøvens distrikt i
Sydvestgrønland 1900-1940’. History Department, University of
Copenhagen, 1993.
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