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

300,000 barrels from the Sound and the Danish Baltic by the late
fourteenth century. 306
Catches seem to have been decreasing through the fifteenth century.
Certainly, the King’s revenues from the market (including jurisdictional
and other income) fell from around 3,500 Lübeck marks in the 1370s
(and possibly 5,000 around 1400) to 2,274 Danish marks in 1494. The
fourteenth-century revenues must have been one of the most important
sources of income of the Danish kings, 307 whereas the importance of the
market was very much reduced by the fifteenth century—considering
125 years of inflation and the lower value of the Danish against the
Lübeck mark. In 1494, Lübeck’s imports of herring from Denmark (not
only from the Sound and the Baltic) amounted to no more than 20,364
barrels, and that was even a high point as the years 1492 to 1495
averaged only 14,373 barrels. By then the Sound fisheries were
supplemented by catches in the Limfiord and in the North Sea, as will be
related below.
Lübeck’s import accounts of 1494 may be matched by the unique
accounts of the Danish bailiff at Falsterbo from the same year. These
indicate that 762 vessels were present at Falsterbo and Skanør, catching
around 60,000 barrels of herring. 308 From the German bailiff’s account
in the 1520s 309 we know that the average vessel had a crew of five men,
so there would have been perhaps 3,800 fishermen in 1494. In addition, a
number of other sites were in use. Unfortunately, we have no evidence of
the relative importance of other fishing settlements in the Sound and the
Baltic. Ole Ventegodt, working from Christensen’s estimate of a total
catch of 300,000 barrels a century earlier, calculates that there was a
total of around 17,000 fishermen. 310 In fact, we have no evidence as to
the size of other fishing settlements, and Ventegodt’s retrospective
1380. An equally important staple was at Damme (R. Degryse, ‘De Vlaamse westvart en
de Engelse represailles omstreeks 1378’. Handelingen der Maatschappij voor
Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent 27 (1973) 202-6).
306 Weibull’s and Lechner’s calculations need a critical reexamination. For a short,
generally positive evaluation, see Christensen, ‘Danmark’.
307 Schäfer, Das Buch..., cxlii.
308 Schäfer, Das Buch... 109, 116.
309 Published in Schäfer, Das Buch...
310 Ventegodt, ‘Skånemarkedets sild’, 17.
179