VOYAGES IN THE POLAR SEA 



relations with the Karelians and Russians on the east may have 

 had some influence on it; as the latter in increasing numbers 

 took up the same hunting in their smacks, the eastward waters 

 may have become unsafe for the Norwegians, who, though 

 superior in seamanship, were inferior in numbers. But a 

 more important factor was the rapid growth of the fisheries 

 on the home coasts in Finmark after the fourteenth century, 

 which may have claimed all available hands, leaving none 

 over for fishing in more distant waters. Besides which the 

 influence of the Hanseatic League no doubt contributed; 

 then, as later, they learned to prefer the valuable trade in 

 dried fish to fitting out vessels for the more uncertain and 

 dangerous hunting in the Polar Sea, which they knew noth- 

 ing about. Finally came the royal edict of April, 1562, which 

 enforced Bergen's monopoly in the trade with Finmark, 

 whereby the mortmain was laid upon this part of the country, 

 as formerly upon Greenland. In those days a corresponding 

 displacement of the arctic fisheries must have taken place 

 from Norway to north Russia, as in the last century again a 

 displacement took place in the contrary direction, when the 

 Russian hunting in the Arctic Ocean and Spitzbergen ceased 

 and the Norwegians again became the only hunters in these 

 waters. 



It was a concatenation of unfortunate accidents that pro- 

 duced the gradual decline of the voyages of the Norwegians 

 and of their unrestricted command of all northern waters 

 from the White Sea, and probably also Novaya Zemlya and 

 Spitzbergen, all over the northern islands, Shetland, the 

 Orkneys (to some extent the Hebrides, Man, and Ireland), 

 the Faroes, Iceland, and as far as Greenland, and probably 

 also for a time the north-east coast of America. Unfavorable 

 political conditions had a great deal to do with this, not the 

 least of them being the long union with Denmark, with the 

 removal of the seat of government to Copenhagen, which was 

 extremely unfavorable to the interests of Norwegian commerce. 

 To this was added the growing power of the Hanseatic League 



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