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

For other foreigners the situation was very different. English fishing
and fish trade was expanding, and from the beginning of the fifteenth
century English ships fishing and trading in the north is well
documented. This is in the same period that the English fisheries around
Iceland developed, and their presence in North Norway must be seen in
connection with this general expansion. There were many complaints
about the illegal trade of the English, especially from merchants in
Bergen, and some of the documents even have reports of the plundering
of settlements in the north. In the middle of the century English activity
seems to have been reduced, partly as a result of a treaty between
Christian I of Denmark-Norway, and Edward IV of England.
According to a local source in 1591, the memory of a former extensive
English trade in Lofoten was still vivid at that time. 273
In the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century foreign
fishing and trade was more or less regular in the eastern parts of
Finnmark (Varanger) and at the Kola peninsula. This eastern area was
not under the monopoly of Bergen, and ships from Holland, England and
from the towns of Malmø, Helsingør, Haderslev and Flensborg
frequented the area. The merchants of Bergen protested vigorously
against this traffic, and in the 1630s and 1640s it terminated. The foreign
trade has been evaluated by E. Niemi as a positive contribution to the
population in eastern Finnmark in this period. 274
The Fishing Villages
The phenomenon of specialized and permanently settled fishing villages
occurred around 1300, or a little earlier. They were especially frequent in
Finnmark in the very north, but fishing villages grew up in many places
along the coasts of North-, Mid- and West-Norway. Nevertheless, recent
settlement studies have shown that the movement of people from
farming to fishing districts in the Late Middle Ages has been quite
exaggerated. South of the grain cultivating border (in Hálogaland) farm
settlement continued to dominate as before. It was still more covenient
for the great majority to combine farming and fishing. On the other hand
the participation of farmers in the commercial fisheries no doubt
increased, but then by prolonging the fishing seasons and perhaps
increasing the effort.
273 Lindbekk 1977: 182.
274 Niemi 1983: 151-54.
152