Stockfish and the Lofoten Islands.

From: Mark Odegard
Message: 4060
Date: 2000-09-27

Stockfish is fish which has been beheaded and gutted and left to air dry in near-freezing temperatures. It's essentially freeze-dried fish. It will keep for up to two years without refrigeration. The usual fish is cod, most classically cod caught off the Lofoten Islands. There was a resounding North to South trade in stockfish during the Middle Ages, as a staple as well as a meat-substitute for Lent.
 
An article in the current issue of Natural History reminded me of this. I had completely forgotten the necessity for the freezing temperatures necessary to process the fish and I wondered how it kept. In the Lofoten Islands, stockfish caught and processed in January.
 
A quick web search turned up this superb site:
http://www.lofoten-info.no/nfmuseum/depth.htm
 
The various articles here are fascinating, and in their way, on topic to this group. The article about the '3,000' year old cave-paintings are certainly interesting. The Lofoten fisheries have been exploited for a very long time indeed. I've mentioned  before an article I've read where Corded Ware sites are recorded up the coast of Norway, past the Arctic Circle, practically to the North Cape, and that this detail is rarely mentioned in the usual literature.
 
One question I have which remains unanswered is just how far back the processing of stockfish goes. I also wonder if it was practiced with fresh water fish, specifically, with the fish found in the multitude of Swedish lakes. Certainly, one can fish in freezing temperatures, even when the body of water is frozen over (you cut a hole in the ice). I also have questions about just how long smoked fish can be kept; apparently, this requires salt, or at least, concentrated brine.
 
There are all sorts of implications here for the origin of Germanic.
 
Mark.