THE SALT-WATEE FISHERIES OF BOHUSLAN. 201 



later, till the fisheries did not «?ommence before February. This pecu- 

 liarity, however, was thought to be a consequence of the irregularity 

 with which the herrings visited the same i)laces on the coast. It was 

 not till Axel Boeck began to investigate the matter that this whole ques- 

 tion was treated from a more scientific standpoint. He showed that the 

 coming of the herrings to the coast at different times during the period 

 was subject to certain rules, and that this regularity in the movements 

 of the herrings was observed not only during the Norwegian spring-her- 

 ring fisheries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centimes, but also dur- 

 ing those herring-fisheries which were going on on the coast of Bohuslan 

 during the second half of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. This 

 peculiar phenomenon has therefore become far more important than it 

 was thought to be in former times ; and it may well be said to contain 

 the key to the question of the periodicity of the great Scandinavian her- 

 ring-fisheries. Boeck was not able to assign any cause for these entirely 

 regular changes in the time of the herrings' visits to the coast. This has 

 been attempted, however, l)y G. 0. Sars and myself, and an account of 

 these attempts will be given below. / 



49. At a very early j)eriod of the last great Bohuslan herring-fisheries 

 it had been observed that the herrings came to the coast a little far- 

 ther north every year. This became so noticeable that it was men- 

 tioned in the Parliamentary B'ishery-Commission's report of January 15, 

 1770. These changes took place in the following order: the fisheries 

 commenced on the central (or as it was then called "northern" coast),^^ 

 but soon after turned to the southern coast, and during the years 1760- 

 1765 went as far south as the northernmost part of the HoUand coast, 

 although the coast near Elfsborg and Marstrand was the principal fish- 

 ing-place. Up to the year 1780 the herrings gradually left the southern 

 coast and chiefly "sisited the central coast, going as far north as Strom- 

 stad from 1773 on, and making their ai^pearance near the Hval Islands 

 in the southern part of Norway from 1778. These changes also attracted 

 the attention of foreigners, and Lybeclcer speaks of them as sure signs 

 that the Bohuslan herring-fisheries were approaching their end. 



When the herring-fisheries actually came to a close, and people began 

 to argue about the causes of this misfortune, those who ascribed it to 

 imprudent and destructive fishing saw in these changes a proof of their 

 assertions. They maintained that as soon as the southern coast began 

 to be covered with salting-houses the herrings left this coast and came 

 to the northern coast, and when this too began to be filled with similar 

 establishments, ''the herrings seemed disturbed and scared, and came 

 in smaller schools, approaching both the northern and the southern coast 

 in those places where there was least noise and where least refuse was 

 thrown into the water." (Svensson.) 



«3 Axel BoecTc's assertion that during the last great Bohuslan fisheries fishing first 

 commenced on the southern coast (Ovi Silden og SihkfsK-erienie, p. 106) is therefore not 

 correct. 



