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

which had been founded on a forbidding promontory at the island of
Langeland in the 1560s to provide cod for the King’s navy and others
willing to pay, went into decline soon after 1600 and the last inhabitant
left it sometime around 1620. Albuen on Lolland (part of the Great Belt
herring fishery) was abandoned around the same time. 331 In the
Limfiord, we do not have comparable sixteenth century evidence to
match the very good sources for the seventeenth century. When we do
get information, it suggests that meagre years early in the century were
followed by extremely good fishing seasons from 1610 to 1620. A slump
then occurred between 1630 and 1650 before a period of some stability,
at average yields, which lasted on for the rest of the century. There seems
to be no doubt that what had been a thriving fishing economy in the early
seventeenth century was rapidly shrinking.
There is probably no single explanation for the overall contraction of
Danish fisheries in the latter half of the sixteenth and early part of the
seventeenth century. Rather we should look for a combination of factors,
for both acute and chronic causes as well as ecological and economic
forces.
The sudden and almost complete cessation of the Norwegian fisheries
by 1590 implies that there was a biological explanation. Possibly the
herring shoals preferred spawning grounds outside the reach of the
inshore fishermen. If, because of a slight change in currents or salt
concentration, spawning suddenly took place in the middle of the
Skagerrak rather than in the sheltered archipelago of Båhuslen, the
Danish and Norwegian fishermen may have found it impossible to catch
the herring. Contrary to the shore-bound Danish fishermen, the Dutch
herring drifters had developed a special technology which enabled them
to conduct the required open-sea operations. The problem for the Danes
and the Norwegians was that they lacked both the capital and the skills to
acquire these vessels which would have enabled them to pursue the fish
at sea.
In the Limfiord, ecological factors played a decisive role. The barrier
between the fiord and the North Sea in the west was breached by a flood
in 1624, and the stock of herring which was accustomed to the bracken
water died when the salt water came in. Only a decade later, the dune
barrier was built up by the natural sand drift along the North Sea coast,
and the herring stock regained strength.
331 Berg et al., Sandhagen.
189