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

fisheries off the Scaw and other smaller fisheries in the Baltic produced
unknown quantities. While the Sound fishery was probably less
productive by the late sixteenth century, the total output of the Danish
fisheries had perhaps stabilised. The fisheries had dispersed away from
the Sound, and the decline of one fishery might be compensated by
growth in another.
The Hanseatic merchants had tight control over the medieval Sound
fisheries, but they lost their grip on this important sector of the economy
in the sixteenth century. Their demise was probably triggered by the fact
that they lost the power struggle in the Danish reformation wars. In
addition, other sources of salt were opened up by the growing trade with
France and Spain. Danish provincial merchants both in the Sound and in
Jutland prospered in the mid-sixteenth century by combining the cattle
and fish trades. Indeed it seems that the relative importance of the fish
sector has been grossly underestimated in previous research which has
been almost exclusively preoccupied with the cattle trade.
THE DECLINE OF THE DANISH FISHERIES, 1550-1650
We have no precise information on the size of the Sound fishery proper
after 1540, but the general impression from the sources on Lübeck’s
trade is that the herring was caught in much smaller quantities. This was
only the beginning of a serious decline in the fisheries, both in the short
and the long terms. In the 1590s, average exports from Båhuslen dropped
suddenly to a mere one hundred lasts per year, never to recover. The
herring trade through the Sound immediately returned into the hands of
the Dutch, who had by now reorganised their trade and were able to flood
the Baltic markets with herring through the next century. We know that
one of the fishing hamlets in North Zealand, Gilleleje, experienced a
severe decline in tax revenues from fishing boats. 330 The villagers who
were professional fishermen paid an average of 340 shillings in the
decade 1585-94 (when conceivably they participated in the Båhuslen
fishery); in 1610-19 they paid an average of only 35 shillings, rising
again to 218 shillings in 1620-26 (these dues may reflect a temporary rise
in the Sound fishery); but after that revenues averaged no more than
between 20 and 60 shillings throughout the seventeenth century.
In West Jutland, the available data indicate a long-term decline. The
data come from the revenues of the King’s sand toll which was paid in
330 Frandsen & Jarrum, ‘Sæsonfiskelejer, åresild...’, 105-39.
187