full of herring, and then, after a time, is once more empty. I t ■
is especially twice a year that the herring thus comes in-shore,
once in the winter, and once in the summer and autumn. The
first is a spawning migration, during which the herring deposits
its eggs upon the bottom among the thousands of islands and
sounds round the coast, and it occurs, like that of the cod, all
along the coast, but in many places only to a small extent. Where
the pouring-in is great, large fisheries have sprung up, which have
long been renowned. We have especially two such, the so-called
spring-herring fishery, and the so-called winter, or large-herring
fishery.
The spring-herring fishery (along the west coast in the Stavanger
county and the Bergenhus counties) has always been con-
centrated about certain fixed points, especially the towns of Stavanger
and Haugesund, and the fishing-stations lying off them.
The large-herring fishery (in the Tromso county, Nordland and
the Romsdal) occurs earlier in the winter, especially in November
and December. The large herring is not fit for spawning until
the new year, and is subsequently supposed to spawn in smaller
shoals far out at sea. - In its best years, this fishing has. given
employment to 20,000 men, and yielded as much as 18 million
gallons.
All the other herring fisheries take place in the summer or
autumn, and are generally called «summer herring» or «fat herring
fisheries»'. The herring is then supposed to approach the coast in
search of food among then abundant masses of drifting organisms
■ — the plankton — that with the autumn develope in the in-shore
waters. Such fisheries are found, some in the more northerly
counties (Nordland and Troms.o), some in the Romsdal county,
and some B- though only occasionally H- in south-eastern Norway,
round the mouth of the Kristiania Fjord (east-country fishing).
To show how the fishing is distributed along the coast, it may be
mentioned that in 1897, the proceeds were as follows:
Sondre Bergenhus kr. 138,205 Nordre Trondhjem kr. 119,025
Nordre - » . » 77,838 Nordland. . . . » 2,013,711
Romsdal . . . . . » 102,787 Tromso . . . . » 667,460
Sondre Trondhjem »' 63,010 Finmarken . . . » 9,600
To show how variable the fishing can be in one place, it may
be stated that the profits in the Romsdal county in 1886 were
kr. 191,834, in 1888 kr. 872,146, and in 1891 kr. 2755.