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

calculation must be rejected. If any guess should be made as to the size of
the fisheries, we may as well assume that Lübeck’s imports relative to
other Baltic ports in 1494 were proportionate to those a hundred years
before. We might then calculate that minimum Danish exports would
have been only around 100,000 barrels a year, and the minimum total
herring fisher population around 6,000 men; the Sound fisheries would
have constituted only a part of these totals.
In the 1520s and 1530s, the Danish fisheries seem to have recovered
briefly. Weibull accepts the claim by the Lübeck bailiff that the
astounding number of 7,515 boats or 37,500 fishermen participated in
one year’s fishery in the 1520s. Another Lübeck bailiff claimed in 1537
that the output of the Falsterbo fisheries amounted to 96,000 barrels
while that of the Danish fisheries as a whole—from the Limfiord to
Bornholm—amounted to no less than 360,000 barrels. However, he had
an axe to grind as Lübeck was on the losing side of the Danish
Reformation struggles and he may have boosted catch figures in order to
picture Lübeck’s share of the trade as trifling. 311 Lacking specific
accounts we should not make too much of these claims; on the other hand
a fourfold increase in the fisheries is not inconsistent with the generally
fluctuating pattern of the herring fisheries. Interestingly, by this time the
Danish nobility invested heavily in the fisheries and began trading
independently. 312 Not only did they provide capital but also manpower
as their peasants participated in the fisheries. The Sound fisheries were
widespread, involving the entire South Zealand countryside in addition
to a number of East Danish towns. 313
The West Coast and Limfiord Herring Fisheries, 1300-1520
In a well-researched, popular book on medieval food, Erik Kjærsgaard
pointed to the richness of supplies of saltwater fish from other sources
than the Sound, but no-one has carried his research further to evaluate the
relative importance of the various fisheries. 314 However, there can be no
doubt that the fisheries from the west coast of Jutland and in the Limfiord
became increasingly important during the fifteenth century.
311 Schäfer, Das Buch... 126-7.
312 Erik Arup, Danmarks Historie II (Copenhagen, 1932) 417.
313 Stoklund, ‘Bonde og fisker’, 101-22.
314 Kjærsgaard, Mad og øl, 57-68.
180