[7] THE GREAT HERRING FISHERIES. 347 



else ill view but to make nioripj. As a general lule, they do not have 

 much capital to invest; they therefore want cheap apparatus, and, 

 although in many cases good seamen, they are not particularly inclined 

 to go farther out to sea than is absolutely necessary to attain the object 

 in view. This applies particularly when the fisheries are to be carried 

 on during the dark and stormy season of the year. All this, of course, 

 exercises a considerable influence on the fishing trade, which cannot be 

 changed all of a sudden. If, for instance, in Bohuslan an attempt was 

 to be made to introduce another method of carrying on the fisheries 

 than the one determined by the above-mentioned circumstances, this 

 would take so long a time that the fishery period would come to a close 

 before the change had become generally introduced. 



Several decades are but a short period in the matter of producing 

 highly developed forms of trade, and of educating the population to 

 engage in an occupation which requires long practice and experience. 

 It must also be taken for granted if, as is the case at the present time 

 in Bohuslan, the fishing population does not move between the various 

 great fisheries, following the herring in their migrations along the coast, 

 that there is no way of remedying the evil. At the time when Bohus- 

 lan, as well as Norway, belonged to Denmark, matters were very differ- 

 ent in this respect, and when the fishing period commenced both ex- 

 perienced Danes and Norwegians visited the coast of Bohuslan. In a 

 short time, therefore, we had a fishing population which carried on the 

 fisheries with apparatus which it was accustomed to handle, as nets 

 could also be employed. This cannot be done now, but we must build 

 on whatever foundation we possess. It also became evident in the 

 seventeenth century that when the same kind of nets were used as 

 during the Norwegian time in the sixteenth century, this proved a great 

 hindrance in the way of the development of the fisheries, as it was im- 

 possible with such a method to obtain at once great results. It is evi- 

 dent that permanent fisheries cause the fishing population to engage in 

 the same as in their proper occupation, and that thereby they obtain a 

 degree of skill and experience which makes the fisheries more productive 

 and makes them a source of income to a much larger number of persons. 

 But, on the other hand, it is evident that the secular periodical fisheries 

 must confine themselves to such methods as will insure good results with 

 a less numerous and less skilled fishing population. Such methods cause 

 much less trouble at the end of a fishing period, while the number of 

 people left without a regular source of income at the end of a period is 

 much smaller. 



It is well known that the great herring-fisheries have played a 

 more important part in former times than they do now. All of us have 

 doubtless heard of the great Skania and Dutch fisheries. It is an old 

 adage in Holland that Amsterdam is built on herring bones, and that 

 it owes to the herring-fisheries its origin and development. The Em- 

 peror Charles V is said to have declared that the herring-fisheries 



