Fishing 343 



1. Fishing remains an industry of very great import- 

 ance, without which the coast population from Stavanger 

 to the far north could not be supported. The fisheries 

 are chiefly of two kinds of fish, cod and herring. Both 

 sorts can rarely be carried on in the same district : 

 where the cod are numerous the herrings soon begin 

 to disappear. Then the cod, their nourishment failing, 

 take their departure, and the herrings come back. This 

 alternation has been very curiously illustrated near the 

 island of Karmo, by Stavanger. In the far north the 

 chief food of the cod is the lodde or capelan {malotus 

 ardicus), an arctic fish of the salmon species. The 

 codfish (torsk) fished in Norway are of two sorts, the 

 fjord-torsk and the hav-torsk, sea-cod or sicrci. The 

 taking of the fjord-cod goes on throughout the fjords, 

 the taking of the sea-cod is limited to certain places 

 and to certain seasons, the scenes and times for the 

 spawning of the fish. The chief locality for this sea- 

 cod fishery are the Lofoten Islands, and the main- 

 land opposite. There are to be seen the great fleets of 

 fishing boats of antique build, which are so like Viking 

 fleets of the Saga-age. 



There are two methods of preparing the cod for ex- 

 portation, and according to the way it is prepared it is 

 called Idi^yfisk (splitfish) or stokjisk (stickfish). The 

 making into stokfisk is much the oldest method of 

 preparation. The name comes from the fish being 

 (after cleaning) hung upon sticks and dried in the 

 wind. The 'splitfish' method, which was intr-oduced 

 into Norway from this country, is simply that of split- 

 ting and salting, as is practised with herrings and 

 haddocks among ourselves. At the time that the fish 



