224 REPOKT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



the object of the great fisheries do not seem to have visited our coast. 

 About the middle of the fourteenth century we find very flourishing her- 

 ring-fisheries, and on the 15th of July, 1453, Pope Mcholas V urged the 

 archbishop of Lund, the bishop of Skara, and the abbot of the convent 

 of Hovedo to protect the right of the priests in the diocese of Oslo to 

 receive a titlie of all the herrings that were caught against any interfer- 

 ence of the secular powers.^ But we possess a much more distinct 

 and important proof that rich herring-fisheries occurred during this 

 period, in a deposition" made at the district court of Askim, on Tuesday 

 after St. Botulph's day, that is,the22d of June, 1496, which says, "that 

 Hvinge and other coasts have from olden times belonged to the Swedish 

 empire and to the district of Elft'nesborg, no one can question ; and those 

 who caught herrings there paid a tax at Elftnesborg, as is well known." 

 We thus must conclude that herring-fisheries had been going on there 

 which were still remembered, and that the authorities taxed the people 

 for the privilege of i^articipating in these fisheries. This change of our 

 periodical herring-fishery to a kind of government fishery" is something 

 entirely new and unknown in former legislation. In all probability it 

 may be traced to the foreign tendency and the constant impecuniosity 

 of the union kings, Avho came from German stock. In Denmark, where 

 the union kings mostly resided, the rule had been established that every- 

 thing which did not belong to an individual or to a community belonged 

 to the king. A circumstance which caused the introduction of such a 

 herring-tax, or at any rate facilitated it, may have been the popular 

 notion that the herring-fisheries were a special gift of Providence, for 

 which gratitude should be expressed to the king as to the representative 

 of divine power. This last-mentioned idea is doubtless derived from the 

 pagan idea that the highest priestly power belongs to the king. In ac- 

 cordance with this idea the Norwegian law granted to the king a certain 

 portion of the whales which from time to time were driven against the 

 coast of Norway. Although we have no positive proof that the tax on 

 herring-fisheries was also introduced in Bolmslan, it is highly probable 

 that this was the case sooner in Bohuslan than in Vestergotland, unless 

 the crown claimed this tax at one and the same time in both provinces, 

 which is the most probable supposition. The royal power was at that 

 time much more developed in Norway than in Sweden, and it is scarcely 

 probable that the union kings should have introduced such a tax in Ves- 

 tergotland and not also in Bohuslan. The herring-fisheries of Western 

 and Northern Norway were not treated in the same manner, because 

 they were of a different character, there being no i)eriods when these 

 fisheries stopped entirely, like those of Bohuslan ; although something 

 similar takes place in the winter fisheries, the summer and autumn fish- 

 eries have generally continued without interruption. 



" BoecJc in "Hordisk Tidsskrifl for Fiskeri" I, p. 3-4. 

 '' J. Oedman : ^^Bohusl&ns ieskriftwif)," Stocklioim, 174(5, p. 378-380. 

 * C. G. Styffe, "Framstdlhting af de s. k. Gnmdregalernas upiikomst ooh iUlampning i 

 tSverige," p. 266. 



