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

Norwegian Fisheries 1100-1970
Main Developments
Pål Christensen and Alf Ragnar Nielssen
Historiography
The Norwegian fisheries have been afforded much attention by
historians. This is because the fisheries have long been the cornerstone of
the national economy, providing more exports, by value, than any other
industry. Therefore discussions about the political development of the
Norwegian state have invariably taken the ups and downs in the fishery
into consideration. This is especially true for the earlier periods when the
Hanseatic merchants were in control of the fish trade. 251
From the 1960s the perspective of historians has changed. They have
been more concerned with the fisheries as an industry in itself, and its
roles in the subsistence of the population and the pattern of settlement,
especially in the north. The great importance of the export trade (which
was taken for granted by previous generations of historians), as well as
the role of the market economy in pre-industrial society, have been
seriously questioned. 252 In recent years more attention also has been paid
to the role of fishing in home consumption.
The literature treating the period before 1900 is to a great extent
concentrated on inshore cod fishing which mainly took place on the
northern and western coasts of Norway. The cod fisheries were already
commercialized in the Lofoten area by c1100 A.D. and in Finnmark from
about 1250-1300. After the Hansatic merchants took over the fish export
trade from the Norwegian tradesmen in the period after 1250, and
especially when the rise in fish prices took place after 1350, the
importance of the commercial fisheries increased. But the consequences
of this growth were often over-estimated by older historians, as shown by
K. Lunden. 253 His analyses of the national fish export trade concluded
that its volume was low in the Late Middle Ages, but his results have
251 Schreiner 1935.
252 Lunden 1967.
253 Lunden 1982.
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