112 SCANDINAVIA. 



the " chimccra," a grotesque and voracious animal known to tlie Norwegians as 

 " the sea-king." In these deep fishing grounds Sar the elder recorded in a few 

 years 427 new species, apart from those discovered at depths of from 200 to 270 

 fathoms in the Lofoten waters. But within the last two hundred years the whale 

 has entirely disappeared from the shores of Finmark. 



The inhabitants of the south-west coast of Sweden derive their sustenance 

 largely from the Kattegat and Skager E.ak fisheries, where hundreds of smacks 

 pursue the herring, cod, and whiting. After suddenly disappearing from the 

 Goteborg coast about the beginning of this century, the herring has again returned, 

 at first in small numbers, but in the winters of 1878 and 1879 in vast quantities. 

 On the Norwegian side, also, between the Naze and Cape Stadt, their movements 

 have been very erratic. But most of the inhabitants of this coast have given up 

 fishing, and turned their attention to the cultivation of the land, formerly almost 

 entirely neglected. 



In the northern waters the cod banks on either side of the Lofotens are periodi- 

 cally deserted, and all these vicissitudes have recently enlisted the telegraph in the 

 service of the fishermen along the coast, who now receive immediate information 

 of the appearance of shoals, wherever they happen to arrive. 



The very lives of the coast populations in Finmark may be said to depend on 

 the cod fisheries. "When these are productive mortality diminishes, communities 

 flourish, comfort is everywhere difi'used. When the herrings swarm in the 

 Lapland fiords towards the end of summer, despair overspreads the land, for a long 

 experience has taught the peoj)le that the herring and the cod do not visit the 

 same waters in the same year successively. But when the former are rare the 

 ports are alive with preparations for the coming se'afeon, which is sure to be profit- 

 able. On these occasions the curing of the fish is not confined to the regular 

 fishing populations alone, whether Norwegians, Finns, Lapps, or Russians. To the 

 seaboard are then attracted long caravans of men, women, children, dogs, and rein- 

 deer from the interior. The Lapps of the forest, drawn down to the sea, depart 

 and return with the birds of passage. 



Earliest Inhabitants. 



The written records of Scandinavia date no farther back than some twenty 

 generations. The earliest chronicles, dating from the end of the eleventh century, 

 have almost entirely perished. Of this epoch, and of the earlier period to the 

 beginning of the ninth century, nothing survives except the faint traditions 

 recorded by the sagas. Of the hazy past, penetrating beyond that epoch into the 

 night of time, the only witnesses are the remains left by primitive man on or below 

 the surface of the land. 



In its archccological remains Southern Sweden greatly resembles the Danish 

 islands, and seems to have been occupied by men of kindred race and like customs. 

 But farther north we enter another domain. Northern Sweden and Norway have 

 no kitchen middens of the stone ages, with the exception of one at Stenkjaer, near 

 the Trondhjem-fiord, and even this contains objects belonging exclusively to the 



