Norfish Danish Sound Herring Fishery 1368–1790

The Øresund was of vital strategic importance as it provided the conduit between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea; the Danish Crown held the territorial advantage that enabled financial gain from taxing passing trade vessels into and out of the Baltic; in fact, the Danish Sound Toll records provide a great deal of detail about the import of herring from the North Atlantic herring fisheries, particularly the Dutch and Norwegians bound mostly for the Hanseatic Baltic ports. They do not, however, contain any information about the actual Danish herring fishery that took place in the Sound. The evidence for this fishery is patchy and while it is possible to assess the scale of the fishery at certain times, there is no sequential data.