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

In this early phase of commercial fishing the traditional settlement
pattern was not affected much, as farming was still the most important
economic activity. But commercial fishing clearly added to the income
of the households. This organization, a low-capitalized coastal fishery
carried on by non-specialists as a supplement to farming, was
characteristic of the fishery of Lofoten into our own century.
In the twelfth, thirteenth and partly the fourteenth centuries, the
stockfish was sold at the market in the medieval town of Vágar.
Tradesmen from the southern towns and representatives of the King,
bishops, nobility etc. came to the large summer market in Vágar to do
business, collect the fish tithe and other taxes. The stockfish was
transported by sea to Trondheim and Bergen for export. Even if figures
documenting the size of the commercial fisheries in this early period are
lacking, several qualitative sources indicate that both the home market
and the export market for fish products soon became of great importance.
England no doubt was the most important recipient of stockfish in this
period. Arnved Nedkvitne has calculated the export from Bergen to the
ports in eastern England to have been about 2000 tons in the first decade
of the fourteenth century. 263 The figures have since been criticized by
Lunden who thinks they were considerably lower (see below).
The Hanseatic Trade and the Rise of the Fisheries, 1300-1600
In the second half of the fourteenth century the trade system of the High
Middle Ages seems to have deteriorated—possibly because of a
dramatic reduction in the number of native merchants in the period after
the Black Death. The market in Vágar ceased to exist as the remaining
Norwegian merchants failed to maintain the connection between the
fishery districts and the export towns of Trondheim and Bergen. The
fishermen themselves had to arrange the transport of their stockfish to
market. This resulted in the rather unique transport system called
‘jektefart’. 264 The ‘jekt’ was a small trading vessel owned by a captain,
but manned and sailed by the farmers of a local community. In early June
a large fleet of these ships went from the north to Bergen with stockfish
and fish oil, to exchange it for barrels of grain and flour. The voyage
could be repeated at the end of the summer. This transport system,
263 Nedkvitne 1976.
264 Descriptions of the system of ‘jektefart’ in Coldevin 1938: 37-43, 78-80 and Kiil 199.
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