NORWEGIAN LOBSTER-FISHERY AND ITS HISTORY. 229 



inents which I am going to at once describe, and which have almost 

 entirely supplanted the simpler ones, are used by enticing the lobster 

 with bait into a trap, out of which it cannot escape. The simplest 

 of these traps is seldom used with us, although, according to Oeiker, it 

 seems to be in common use near Heligoland. It consists of a very 

 thick iron ring, to which a net is fastened, so as to form a deep bag below 

 The bait is placed at the bottom of the bag, and it is lowered and taken 

 up by means of a long line, which, when the bag is at the bottom, 

 reaches up to the surface. To this line, a piece of wood is fastened, which 

 floats on the water, and shows the location of the trap. If this instru- 

 ment has been lying at the bottom for half an hour in a place where 

 lobsters are known to abound, a sudden jerk is given to the line, so as 

 to cause the lobster to fall in the bag, and it is rapidly pulled up. (The 

 most successful time of the day for catching lobsters is generally in the 

 morning or also between 11.30 a. m. and 3.30 p. m. With this instru- 

 ment, which the English call " plumpers," and the Germans "Fallenkor- 

 ber," lobsters are taken in deep places.) With us the commonest imple- 

 ments for catching lobsters are baskets (" Tejner"), It seems certain 

 that the Dutch first introduced them for catching lobsters ; but they 

 may have been used long before that, e.g., for eels, as the name is Scan- 

 dinavian, and is derived from " tun," i. e., the long and tough roots of the 

 juniper-tree. After 1713, a beginning was made in plaiting them of 

 willow branches. Where these materials could not be readily obtained, 

 they were, as Pontoppidan related in 1753, made of hoops, which were 

 kept apart by chips of wood. All round these, nets are fastened, and at 

 each end there is a long, narrow, trough-shaped entrance, out of which 

 the lobster cannot escape. On the one side, there is a trap-door, which 

 can be closed with a peg, and to another pin sticking in the basket the 

 bait is fastened, while under the basket there are large stones to make 

 it sink rapidly. To one of the uppermost chips of wood, a pair of tongs 

 is fastened, furnished at the end with a piece of wood to indicate the 

 location of the basket. Such are still in common use all along our 

 coast. Still earlier, in 1746, the famous naturalist, Carl Linne, described 

 similar baskets, which he saw in use on the coast of Bohuslen, in his 

 " West-Gbta Kesa," p. 191. These were two yards long, one yard broad, 

 and one yard high, resembling a half-cylinder, with entrances on both 

 sides ; such are still used and could be seen at the Bergen Exposition. 

 At this same exposition, a basket was exhibited, differing somewhat from 

 these in its shape ; it was plaited of branches, and was shaped like a 

 hemisphere, with an entrance at the top. An illustration of this basket 

 is given in the report on the exposition. 



Lobster-fishing is carried on at different seasons on different parts of 

 the coast of Norway. It generally begins in spring, but iu some places, 

 e. g., near Christianssand, it continues all winter. Farther south the 

 spring fisheries begin earlier; thus, on the coast from Sireaa to Jredder in 

 the middle or toward the end of March, as the lobsters then begin to go 



