Abstract
This chapter examines the commercial infrastructure of the Norwegian fisheries, discussing the production and transport of dried cod from northern Norway to Bergen, and the role of the Church in the stockfish trade. A large proportion of tithes and land rent in northern Norway was paid in fish: ecclesiastical institutions were major landowners and thus also major traders. In the late Middle Ages, the local trading hub, Bergen, was dominated by German traders, who exported fish to the northern German cities and to England. While producers thus had access to a stable market and goods that were hard to come by locally, they also risked being caught in a system of credit from which it could be hard to escape.
Keywords: Stockfish, Hanseatic trade, Pietro Querini, Archbishop of Nidaros, Bergen
This chapter will deal with aspects of the commercial infrastructure of the Norwegian fisheries in the late middle ages. I will look at the fishing communities, the transport of fish to Bergen, the role of the Church in the trade, and the role of the city of Bergen. The point of departure will be an intriguing source from the 1430s: the travel accounts of a shipwrecked Italian captain and one of his crewmembers, who spent the winter and spring of 1432 on the island of Røst in the Lofoten Archipelago.
Pietro Querini was a merchant sailing with a ship that left Crete in the autumn of 1431 with a cargo of wine, spices, and cloth, destined for Flanders. The ship ran into trouble in the Strait of Gibraltar, and had to spend several weeks in Cadiz to do repairs. Misfortune continued to haunt the ship – after leaving Cadiz, the rudder broke, leaving the ship floating aimlessly around the Canary Islands for weeks until they were finally able to get to Lisbon for further repairs. This was only the beginning of the crew's misfortunes. Sailing from Lisbon towards Flanders, the ship struck bad weather, and sailed off course towards Cornwall and further, probably west of Ireland or through the Irish sea. Again, the rudder broke, and the ship was at the mercy of the storm.