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

towns like Copenhagen, Malmø and Helsingør where they would still find a local market for
their products. 29
- Consumption
Many factors may explain the relative price decline. After the Protestant reformation,
‘catholic practices’ such as the eating of fish at stipulated times were given up. When fasting
regulations were abolished, the wealthy turned to a meat diet even on traditional ‘fish days’.
North West European consumption habits gave greater priority to meat and poultry; declining
fish consumption was evident in Britain and the Scandinavian countries by the seventeenth
century. This is a general factor which helps to explain the development of North Atlantic
fisheries. Of course, demand remained for the provision of cheap protein for the labouring
poor, especially the expanding numbers of seafarers who needed nutritious and well-
preserved food for long voyages, but the demand for well-preserved, high-quality fish
contracted. 30
Unfortunately, practically no work has been done on Danish food consumption
patterns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the change in diet probably did not follow
immediately upon the Reformation but rather occurred during the first half of the seventeenth
century. 31 Fish consumption in rural areas probably changed more slowly than in the towns
and among the nobility. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the yearly ration of herring
for a Zealand agricultural worker was reckoned as one quarter of a barrel; 32 this ration need
not have changed much since the Middle Ages.
29 Stoklund 1959, 119.
30 Heckscher; Cutting; Grøn.
31 Lilli Friis, ‘Æde og drikke’, 419-23. There is a rich source material in estate food lists.
32 Heckscher 1949, xxv (note referring to p. 285).