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

pattern of European economic development gradually marginalized the
Faroes, along with the other Nordic areas in the North Atlantic Ocean. 47
It is significant that from around 1300 to 1600 the fishery was
commercially important in the Faroes. The trade with Bergen was from
the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century dominated by the Hanseatic
merchants, whose merchant vessels also came to the Faroes to trade and
to buy dried fish, but it was not until 1361 that they actually received a
license to do so. 48 Still, the Hanseatic merchants supplied the whole of
Northern Europe with dried fish. 49
A historical legend about a heavy storm in the second half of the
seventeenth century, in which 50 boats disappeared, relates: “In those
days the Faroe Islanders used small Norwegian boats called ‘tristar’.
But after this disaster, in which those 50 boats went down, a law was
passed which ordered the fishermen not to go too far out in such small
boats.” 50
The fact that very small boats were used in the second half of the
seventeenth century is perhaps indicative of a creative way of thinking. If
we may deduce from what we know about boat keeping later on, the
ownership of boats smaller than a ‘4-mannafar’, which is a boat for four
rowers, was not part of the boat keeping duty which will be described in
more detail later. The smallest boats were privately owned, and with
them one could fish as one liked.
Woollen hoses (socks) appear for the first time in the tithes for 1634.
After that they appear more regularly, 51 and when the headquarters of
the trade with the Faroes was moved to Copenhagen in 1619, socks
became the most important export commodity. Dried fish had therefore
had its day as an export product. The Faroese society had by and by
47 This problem is fully treated in Bjarne Stoklund, ‘From Centre to Periphery. Main
Lines of North Atlantic Cultural Development from Medieval to Modern Times’. See
also Stoklund 199l.
48 Mortensen 1955:8.
49 Lafto 1959:368, Fossen 1979:139 and Helle 1982:305.
50 The legend is printed in Jakob Jakobsen: Færøske Folkesagn og Æventyr, 44.
Guttormur í Múla (Jakobsen 1972:128). In Faroese the text is as following: “Tá níttu
Føringar smáar norskar bátar, ið kadlaðust trister (tríbekkir), til útróðrar. Men ettir
hesa ólukku, tá ið teir hálvthundrað bátarnir gingu burtur, var lóg gjørd, sum setti forboð
firi at fara til havs í so smáum bátun.”
51 Zachariassen 1961:79 ff.
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