AN ARCTIC RESIDENCE 243 



owing to immense numbers of Bearded Seal (erigna- 

 thus harhatus), which pursued the cod and drove 

 them into deep waters. In consequence two-thirds 

 of the boats had left Hammerfest by the end of the 

 first week in June, going to their homes in South 

 Finmark, the Lofodens, and Vesteraalen. Here 

 the men work on their small farms for three weeks, 

 and then many of them return to take part in 

 the netting of saithe (coal fish) in late June and 

 July. These inferior fish are caught in large nets 

 near the surface, and they are split and dried or 

 salted, and sold to the Russians who come here 

 in the summer with cargoes of wood from Archangel. 

 A third fishing season for herring is September, 

 October and November, and this is one of great 

 importance to all northern Norway, from the 

 Lofodens to Vardo. It is curious that in these 

 northern waters the fish will not look at any bait 

 except small herring and arctotis malotis, and these 

 fish must be absolutely fresh. Down south about 

 Aalesund, cod and other fish are caught even with 

 salted herring, but here bait must be renewed after 

 each expedition. This is due to the abundance 

 of natural food in the northern seas. No one in 

 Hammerfest talks of anything but the price of fish, 

 and in this year of world's strife the telegrams 

 posted everywhere were not of battles, but of the 

 market values of fish in the south. The fishermen, 

 of whom some 20,000 pass through Hammerfest 

 in the spring, are an exceedingly well-behaved, 

 amiable set of men. There is no drunkenness, 

 and the whole place might be a perpetual Sunday 

 in Scotland. 



Hammerfest is called a town, but it is really 



