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

this could be done without changing the small scale structure of the fleet
and the structure of ownership; at least such changes were not necessary
to take the new technology into use in the first phase. A combustion
engine could easily be placed in the existing fishing boats at prices that
many of the fishermen themselves could afford with some financial
support from other fishermen in their neighbourhood, local banks, or
official funds.
One important result of the motorizing process was a kind of
specializing in the existing diversified fish-farming economy. Fishermen
who had invested their own money and borrowed the rest to buy the new
technology had to use their boats more effectively during the year in
order to secure their income. This meant that they could not work as
much at their farms as before. The farming activities in the combined
farming-fishing districts continued to be undertaken by the women even
more so than in earlier periods. In the long run this specializing process
created a division of the fishing-farming economy. Some became
specialized fishermen, some became specialized farmers and a great
number left both occupations and moved to the urban areas. The pace
and more detailed characteristics of this process have not yet been fully
examined and are still being debated, 296 but it is obvious that it went on
for many years and varied in different parts of the country. Although this
fundamental change started right after 1900 it did not end until well after
World War II.
While the introduction of the combustion engine in Norwegian
fishing industry went on rapidly and was inhibited by very few
controversies, this was not the case with two other major changes in
fishing technology in the decades after 1900. In the herring fisheries
increasing use of the purse seine equipment in narrow waters on the coast
was heavily opposed by many fishermen who still used ordinary nets or
the older seines anchored on shore. They argued that the purse seine
caught too much of the herring stock, that it scared the herring and that
their own fishing operations were disturbed and damaged. But the
Norwegian fishing authorities were not keen on regulation at this
moment. In the herring sector, they wanted the technological
developement to be as free as possible without state intervention.
296 Brox 1984, Drivenes 1982, Fulsås 1987.
162