During the season fishermen from all northern Norway flock to the stations. Sometimes as many as five or six thousand fishing boats, with a total crew of thirty-two thousand men, are gathered together. The catch averages thirty-five millions; and the fish are usually sold by the hundred, generally prepared either as "klip fish"--salted and dried--or as the evil-smelling _torfisk_ (stock fish), which haunted our wanderings through Holland, which imports large quantities. In old fishing laws of the islands it is insisted that no torfisk should be hung up after April 12, or taken down before June 12. I presume that after this treatment they will last and be odorous for ever. In the off-seasons small cargoes of this fish are carried by many of the passenger steamers, to the profit, perhaps, of the captain, but to the intense displeasure of the passengers. Indeed, all down the coast of Norway we noticed that the air was impregnated with the smell of stock fish; our towels and napkins, and indeed everything we had washed, had the same repulsive odour.
Though the financial side of it is very satisfactory, this industry costs the country much in lives of men. The great enemy of the fisher-folk are the violent tempests which spring up suddenly in the Vestfjord. Often the boat is overturned, and the occupants cling as best they may to the various iron rings and chains. Often they drive their knives deep into the wood of the boat and hang on thus as long as they are able. Though there are lifeboats permanently attached to the stations, the greater number of fishermen lose their lives in pursuit of their calling; and after the tempest dies down, and the wrecks are washed ashore, often the clues to the number and identity of the poor drowned owners are the knives still planted in their boats. Nowhere are widows and orphans so many as on these coasts of Norway. During the fishing season the sale of intoxicating liquor is prohibited by the Government.
The herring come next in importance to the cod. They are variable in quantity, and in some years are almost altogether absent. The fishermen insist that there are "herring periods," with years good and bad. Such periods are said to last for about thirty years. During recent times such a period seems to have set in. The herring season is very short. Suddenly, as if by magic, the sea swarms with fish, which after a time disappear as rapidly as they came. To a certain extent they may be relied on twice a year--for the spring fishing off the south coast between Stavanger and Bergen, and early in winter off the northern coast between the Romsdal and Tromso. This is called the "large herring fishery," from the greater size of the fish in these parts. Besides this, fishing goes on in a measure at all times of the year. The herring are caught either by going out to sea in search of shoals; or by lying in wait for them in the small bays and fjords, preventing their escape by arrangements of nets, and baling them out at leisure. In the open sea they are also caught with nets, and are more to be relied on as to quantity.