572 SUPERSTITIONS. 



was ill connection with tlie fisheries; that "herrings 

 Avere then so very abundant that thousands of ships came 

 annually from Denmark, Germany, Friesland, Holland, 

 England, and France, to purchase the fish, of which 

 sufficient were always found for them to carry away to 

 their own or other countries." And this would not seem 

 to be a very exaggerated account, as from the small town 

 of Marstrand alone no less than six hundred thousand 

 tunnor, or some two million four hundred thou.sand 

 bushels, were yearly exported. 



The disappearance of the fish, from the coast in 1587, 

 which reduced many people to penury and misery, was, 

 according to the belief of the age, foreboded by the capture 

 of a herring, the queen of the family as it was supposed, 

 of such enormous size, that two men could with difficulty 

 carry it suspended on a pole ! But idle as is the story, it 

 is only on a par with that related by Peder Clausen, viz., 

 that when in ancient times a like sudden disappearance of 

 the lierrings had occurred, the people sagely attributed 

 their absence to trolldom, or witchcraft, believing that the 

 sorcerer, to effect his object, had thrown into the sea a 

 so-called " copper horse," one of the implements of his 

 nefarious trade. 



From 1587, the concluding year of the glut, to 1660, 

 a space of seventy-three years, the herrings only appeared 

 in small numbers on the Bohus coast ; but in 1660 there 

 was another " Land-stotning," though not comparable to 

 that of 1556. But as during the recent dearth of fish most 

 of the people connected with the fisheries had departed 

 to their distant homes, and the curing-houses had fallen 

 into decay, few besides the inhabitants of the province 

 were enabled to avail themselves of the opportunity, 

 and these men, having now the fish all to themselves, 

 so to say, soon became comparatively wealthy. The 

 war in Norway in 1675 (Bohus-Liin then forming a 



