XIII.— THE NORWEGIAN LOBSTER-FISHERY AND ITS HISTORY.* 



By Axel Boeck. 



As is well known, of all fisheries those on the coasts of Norway are the 

 largest, and a great portion of the population of our extended coast is 

 dependent on them for their living. But while all the other great fish- 

 eries on the coast of Norway have been carried on from time immemo- 

 rial, their origin being so much enveloped in obscurity that our ances- 

 tors supposed that the gods themselves had taught men fishing, the 

 lobster-fishery, which in our days is of such great importance, has origi- 

 nated in a later historical time, and has since developed, till it is now 

 more extensive than all the other known lobster-fisheries, and supplies 

 not only Norway, but also the neighboring countries. Although we 

 will see, as 1 shall show later, that the lobster has been known in Nor- 

 way even iu olden times, it had during the Middle Ages scarcely ever been 

 used as an article of food in the northern countries. Lobster-fisheries 

 are not spoken of in the Sagas or in the Old Laws ; and even now, although 

 the lobster has been caught on our coast for several centuries, it is but 

 rarely, if ever, eaten by our fishermen, and only the higher classes seem 

 to like its flavor. 



The scientific name of the loster is Homarus gammarus Linn., from 

 the Latin name gammarus, which again comes from the Greek word 

 xa;j.iJ.apoc;. The Italians call it Gambare di mare, and the Spaniards Craba- 

 jo, both of which names evidently come from the Latin. The lllyrians 

 call it Caranthola. It does not seem certain whether the Norwegian and 

 German name Hummer and the French name Homar can be derived from 

 gammarus, as our name is very old, and may have its root in the Old 

 Norse verb homa, which means to go backward. The English name 

 lobster is only a modification of the name longusta, applied to a closely- 

 related genus, which is specially found in the Mediterranean ; and the 

 Dutch name ZeeJcruft simply means a sea-crawfish. In our Sagas, espe- 

 cially iu their poetical portions, it is often mentioned. Iu Snorre's Ed- 

 da, in the song Skaldskaparsmal, (chapter 75 of the Copenhagen edi- 

 tion,) it is mentioned among fish and other marine animals. In Olaf den 

 Helliges Saga, it is mentioned in a song of Bjorn Heldoleka3inpe, where 

 the sea is poetically described as " the paths of the lobster." Iu a sim- 

 ilar poetical sense, the word is used in Olaf Trygveseus Saga, chapter 

 88, by the Skjald Thord Kolbeinsson, where he says that "the wave- 



* Om det norske Hunimerfiske og dets Hsitorie. Af Axel Boeck : in " Tidsskrift for 

 Fiskeri," 3die Aargangs, Kjobenbavu, pp. 28-43, 1868 ; pp. 145-189, 1869. 



