BOHUSLAN HERKING-FISHERIES. 223 



ture and art, evinced by translations of the master- works of the litera- 

 tures of Western Europe, and by beautiful buildings, of course contrib- 

 uted their share towards the mental development of the people. And 

 as Bohuslan, on account of its favorable location, its wealth, and popu- 

 lation, had formed an important portion of the monarchy ever since the 

 beginning of the tenth century, where the kings often resided and where 

 the nobility gathered, it cannot, as under changed circumstances was 

 the case at a later period, have been neglected over other portions of 

 Scandinavia. This period was, in many respects, the golden age of Bo- 

 huslan, and it reached a degree of wealth and political power which 

 even the party-warfare of centuries could not destroy entirely. These 

 civil wars resulted in the strengthening of the royal power and the estab- 

 lishment of a well-ordered government, which Sweden, for instance, did 

 not obtain till the reign of Oustaf Yasa (1523-15G0). All this caused the 

 rich herring-fisheries, which are supposed to have begun about 1260, to be 

 carried on with energy, in order to utilize the vast masses of herrings 

 which came to the coast. These herring-fisheries continued without any 

 considerable disturbance by war till far into the thirteenth century, and 

 it is not imijossible that there was good fishing off and on till the year 

 1341. If our supj)Ositions regarding the beginning and end of these 

 fisheries are correct, which, however, cannot be said with absolute cer- 

 tainty, this fishing-period must have extended over eighty years or more, 

 and would, therefore, have been the longest fishing period on record. 

 From this fishing-period we have the first account of foreigners being 

 allowed to participate in the herring-fisheries, a measure by which first 

 the herring-trade and then all the other trade of the country gradually 

 got into the hands of foreigners, by which Bohuslan lost much of its 

 importance, which, to a great extent, depended on its shipping and com- 

 merce. The foreigners who visited these fishing-grounds had certainly 

 to pay a tax for the herrings which they took away, but it is not known 

 that any such tax was demanded from the citizens of the country, either 

 for exi)orting herrings or for the privilege of ijarticipating in the fisheries. 



Under the reign of Magnus Hdkonsson, the son of the above-mentioned 

 king, Hdkon Hdkonsson, in the year 1274, the old provincial laws of Nor- 

 way were revised and collected in a common law, which is the oldest law 

 that was ever in force in Bohuslan. Its regulations regarding the fish- 

 eries are, in the main jjoints, in force in Norway to this very day. As 

 regards the herring-fisheries, the regulations are evidently taken from 

 the older laws of Northern and Western Norway,^ and only relate to the 

 so-called spring-herring fisheries, which are carried on during the winter, 

 but not to those fisheries which are carried on during the milder season 

 of the year, and consequently not to the Bohuslan fisheries. 



At the end of the q,bove-mentioned fishing-period there followed a 

 longer interval during which those kinds of herring which chiefly form 



5 Hakon Hdkonsson's Law XV, 5. Compare L. M. B. Aulj^rt : "De norske BetsMlder og 

 deres Anvendelse." Christiania, 1877, p. 36. 



