HMAP Dataset 11: Limfjord Fisheries

An array of archival and printed sources have been utilised to estimate the scale of the Limfjord herring fishery over the 1667-2000 period. While systematic registration of Denmark’s fish catches only began in the late nineteenth century, different kinds of proxy-data can be used to indicate the fluctuations that occurred in the fisheries. The custom records from the Limfjord town of Aalborg are available for most years between 1667 and 1835. From these sources, supplemented and tested by other records, an excellent set of proxy-data for the herring catch can be constructed for the Limfjord herring fishery down to the 1830s, when official enquiries into the collapse of catches generated further evidence of the scale of activity down to the late 1880s when the compilation of catch data in its modern form commenced.