378 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [10] 



tlie Danish sea fisheries yield about 5,000,000 crowns [$1,340,000], of 

 which a very large percentage doubtless belongs to the hernng fish- 

 eries, the above-mentioned sum does not seem so enormous, when com- 

 pared with the present fisheries, as Allen supposes. From the state- 

 nent that 92,000 barrels [151,800 hectoliters] of herring were sal ed in 

 Falsterbo alone, we cannot <lraw any conclusion as to the quantity of 

 Ll; caught 'in the Sound and on the eastern coast^of SUane diiring 

 the great fisheries ; and as we have no data from the Danish side ot the 

 Sound we are also unable to calculate how many are caught at the 

 present time. Without fear of exaggeration, the ^--^tity of herring 

 caught on the Danish side in 1881 may be estimated at at leas 50,000 

 tnnnor 182,500 hectoliters]. If we take into consideration that the salt- 

 iug business was during the Middle Ages concentrated m a few places, 

 on account of the customs duties; that owing to the presence of nu- 

 merous foreigners the number of boats and fishermen was considerably 

 laroer than it is now ; and that, if the circumstances were the same, as 

 lua'ny herring would be caught nowadays during good years, it seems 

 probable that the quantity of herring which came near the coast during 

 the Middle Ages was not so much larger than it is at the present time, 

 even if the data from those times are not exaggerated. Several cir- 

 cumstances seem to favor this view of the relation which the fisheries 

 of our times hold to the so-called "great fisheries" of former centuries. 

 The natural conditions on the coast of Skane were nearly the same 

 then as they are now. Styffe remarks that even in those days the water 

 near the coast was very shallow, so that large vessels (though large 

 merchant vessels like those of the present time were unknown) had to 

 anchor some distance from the coast in the so-called Holeviken, and 

 nothing but boats could come up to Skanor. The location where the 

 flshe'ries were carried on was the same as it is now. Allen says that the 

 fisheries were carried on in the Sound south of the island of Even, oft 

 Malmo and Skanor, on the south coast, and later near Bornholm. The 

 season for the fisheries was the same as it is now, and they were carried 

 on exclusively in autumn. They began on the 10th, 15th, or 24th of 

 August and continued till the end of October, probably extending into 

 that month as much as they do now. According to the old Skanor law, 

 no fisherman had the right to leave the coast before the 9th of October. 

 That the fisheries then as now generally began in good earnest by the 

 1st of September seems probable from the fact that the market was not 

 properly opened till September 8, and lasted till November 1. There 

 is therefore nothing to show that the circumstances were different m 

 these respects from what they are now. 



That the fisheries even in those times were subject to considerable 

 changes appears from the information which we possess. Allen states 

 on the most reliable authority that the Sound herring-fisheries were 

 unusually good during the period from 1482 to 1495, particularly during 

 the years 1492 and 1493, when a number of fish, owing to the lack of 



