V.—THE BOHUS-LAN SEA FISHERIES AND THEIR FUTURE. 
By AXEL VILHELM LJUNGMAN. 
[From ‘4 ftonbladet,” Nos. 6 and 43, January 9 and February 21, 1882. ]* 
Bohus-lin doubtless occupies the front rank among all the Swedish 
provinces, both as regards the development and extent which the fish- 
ing industries have reached there, and the great fame which one of 
its fisheries—the great periodical herring fishery—has justly obtained. 
But as, of late years, the Bohus-lin sea fisheries have decreased, whilst 
on the other hand a new great-herring period seems about to begin 
after an interval of nearly seventy years, it will not seem strange if we 
invite the attention of the public to some facts regarding the Bohus- 
lin sea fisheries and their future, and to those measures which we con- 
sider necessary for their proper development. In order, however, to 
understand the latest and most important phase in this development, 
and in order to make some calculations regarding the periodical her- 
ring fisheries, and the peculiar course and economical importance of 
these fisheries, it will be necessary to give a brief historical review of the 
more important facts relative to the herring periods. As there are no 
accurate data regarding our periodical herring fisheries till the latter 
half of the sixteenth century, it will be necessary to complete the review 
of the herring periods by means of the knowledge which we possess re- 
garding the herring fisheries on the west coast of Norway during the 
middle ages. It is well known to what an extent, especially in olden 
times, the herring fisheries contributed to the material well-being of 
the nation, and how ruinous was their cessation. In reviewing all that 
we know certainly relative to the great herring fisheries on the coasts 
of Bohus-lin and Western Norway, we shall soon find that the herring 
fisheries never flourished on both these coasts at one and the same 
time, but that they had begun, or at least were about to begin, on the 
one coast when they had ceased or were about to cease on the other. 
The oldest notice we find of the Bohus-lin herring fisheries is a pro- 
hibition by Olof the Saint, in 1017, of the exportation of herring from 
Viken to Vestergétland, contained in the “Chronicles of the kings.” 
The herring must, therefore, have come near the coast of Bohus-lin at 
that time; and as the same chronicles tell us that there was much suf- 
*«° Bohus ldns hafsfiske och dess framtid.”—Translated from the Swedish, by HERMAN 
JACOBSON, 
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