The Danish fisheries c.1450-1800. Medieval and early modern ...

we do not have a price series of Danish fish that is immediately relevant to our problem. We
know that after a peak around 1450, fish prices fell through the sixteenth century relative to
agricultural prices. Arnved Nedkvitne has published three series of data relating the
purchasing power of dried cod to grain on the Dutch, English and Norwegian markets, which
throw light on the decline. 24 Whereas one kilogramme of dried fish would have bought
fourteen kg of wheat on the London market around 1400, at the end of the sixteenth century it
bought only six kg. Similar evidence from Holland shows that dried cod lost almost half its
purchasing power relative to rye during the sixteenth century, and on the Bergen market the
purchasing power was more than halved between 1400 and 1500 and halved again in the next
hundred years. A similar development concerning herring may be calculated from the German
evidence presented by Bauernfeind; between 1450 and 1550 herring lost half of its value
relative to rye at the Nuremburg market, and continued declining in the seventeenth century,
except for some very good years around 1617-22. 25 Evidence from the neighbouring North
European countries concerning both cod and herring thus shows a significant drop in the price
of fish relative to agricultural products from the late medieval to the early modern ages. In the
Netherlands, the relative price fall was counterbalanced by expanding deep-sea catches by
larger and more productive ships. In Denmark, fishermen were apparently unable to afford
larger ships and were pushed out of the fishing sector by poor prices.
The adverse trend of fish prices relative to agricultural prices continued through the
eighteenth century. The price series from the Copenhagen fish market below shows that
herring became cheaper as compared to the price of bread, thus worsening the purchasing
power of fishermen relative to peasants. The spring herring came from the Limfiord, while the
autumn herring most probably came from the Sound and North Zealand fisheries. The only
24 Arnved Nedkvitne, “Mens Bønderne seilte og Jægterne for.” Nordnorsk og vestnorsk
kystøkonomi 1500-1730 (Oslo, 1988).