Meeting and spreading of cultures along the coast

The fishing village of Svolvær ca. 1890. Photo: The Lofoten Museum.
The fishing village of Svolvær ca. 1890. Photo: The Lofoten Museum.
The Christian missions involved particularly many women from coastal Norway. Photo: Karen Dorothea. Mission Archives/School of Mission and Theology.
The Christian missions involved particularly many women from coastal Norway. Photo: Karen Dorothea. Mission Archives/School of Mission and Theology.

The people of the coast have always had great geographic mobility, and their meeting places have been both numerous and important. The arenas for cultural exchange have been many. The fishermen-farmers in the west and north had to be on the move for up to several months a year. They sailed or rowed to the Lofoten fisheries from all over Northern Norway, and often from further afield. Likewise herring fishermen travelled from Lista to Nordfjord, while still others made the long journey from the innermost fjord waters to the best fishing grounds in the fjord outlets and around the islands.

The seasonal fishing for a short time transformed small fishing villages into noisy small towns with up to several thousand "inhabitants". Here were lots of men and boys rowing the fishing as well as women and girls working as cooks or processing the catch. The situation led to the exchange of useful information about new types of equipment or boats, but also had the effect of spreading new ideas in culture, politics, and religion. The more than a thousand square-rigged cargo vessels and sloops – later replaced by motor boats – that were involved in carrying trade over various distances bound the entire coast together.

The coastal towns were the constant meeting places for fishermen and farmers who sought them out with their fresh and processed catches. It was in addition an important place to come in contact with the rest of the world. Foreign merchants and sailors left their mark on the urban landscape in both large and small towns along the coast, from German ships laid up for the winter at Kleven in the south to Russian White Sea traders in Hammerfest in the north. At the same time Norwegian seamen were also making a mark in the harbours of distant seas.

In the towns of Southern Norway (Sørlandet) as well as in Stavanger, Skudeneshavn, Haugesund, and Bergen during a large part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, seamen on overseas voyages made up the largest employee category, as did whalers after 1920 in the larger towns of Vestfold county in south-eastern Norway. At its height as many as 60,000 Norwegians, from towns and rural districts, spent years of their lives in cargo shipping between the ports of far-away lands in America, the Far East, and Africa. They caught a glimpse of the wider world, experienced other cultures, and brought home foreign cultural artefacts and ideas.

Norway has never had a colonial empire. Yet how many other countries have had such a widespread network of seamen’s churches in important ports in three-four continents? It is equally remarkable that humble people in town and country, after a modest beginning in the 1840s, came to contribute so many resources, both money and volunteer service, to supporting the work of missionaries in such farflung places as South Africa, Madagascar, China, Korea, Tibet, India, and Israel – to name but a few of the most important. The regions that recruited fishermen and seamen in Southern and Western Norway were at the same time the districts where layman’s Christianity, missionary activity, and teetotalism – "countercultures" – had the most support.

This can possibly be explained by the wider international contacts resulting from seafaring and foreign trade. But probably of greater significance was that the risk to life and health in open boats and sailing ships was much greater than in onshore workplaces. The possibility of shipwreck, and the long time that letters took, created uncertainty and fear among the families at home. This could have been conducive to greater receptiveness for religious revivalism. At the same time the strongly egalitarian coastal society could have made it natural to join movements that protested against the established church, such as the low-church layman’s movement.

There is a clear line of developmnet from this movement to the great Liberal coalition, which through the constitutional reform of 1884 captured the most important bulwark of the crown-appointed civil service – the Cabinet. Some researchers have tried to draw a line between the layman’s movement and the entrepreneurial spirit in the coastal economies, especially in the southwest during the years of the spring herring fisheries and the sailing ships. The active role played by Haugeans (a pietistic church reform movement) in the new industry during the decades after 1814 is well known.

However, it is an open question whether it was the herring fisheries as a new and growing arena for daring entrepreneurs with roots in agricultural society that encouraged the new religious attitudes, or whether the cause and effect went in the opposite direction: namely, that layman’s Christianity, which emphasized self-discipline, humility, thrift, and hard work, stimulated the initiatives. It has been claimed that the more stable and passive cod fisheries do not fit this pattern so well, although these areas of the coast have also had strong religious movements.

Laestadianism became well established in some parts of Northern Norway, and it had much in common with the Haugeans and the layman’s movements in Western Norway. Alcohol, sloth, pride, and ungodliness were equally condemned by both. But while the Haugeans have in part taken the credit for the economic upswing and capitalistic mindset, the Laestadians are usually blamed for making a virtue of not only thrift but also poverty. One must be careful not to push these contrasts too far, but it is at any rate a puzzle that the urbanizing effects of the spring herring fisheries in the years 1814–70 were so much stronger in Western Norway than the corresponding effect of the cod fisheries in Northern Norway.

Similarly puzzling is that a considerable part of the cod-based products of Northern Norway were exported via Bergen, Kristiansund, and Ålesund right up to the 1950s. Caption 1: The fishing village of Svolvær ca. 1890. An important meeting place for fishermen. Besides the fishermen’s boats we see small cargo boats, sloops, and ketches, the latter with fish buyers from the south. Svolvær was the seat of the Lofot fisheries inspectorate and was, together with Kabelvåg and Henningsvær, an important harbour for the winter cod fisheries. The village developed into an economic centre for whole of Lofoten and was granted staple rights in 1918, at which time it had 2,400 residents compared with only 345 in 1875.

Picture 1: The fishing village of Svolvær ca. 1890. An important meeting place for fishermen. Besides the fishermen’s boats we see small cargo boats, sloops, and ketches, the latter with fish buyers from the south. Svolvær was the seat of the Lofot fisheries inspectorate and was, together with Kabelvåg and Henningsvær, an important harbour for the winter cod fisheries. The village developed into an economic centre for whole of Lofoten and was granted staple rights in 1918, at which time it had 2,400 residents compared with only 345 in 1875. Photo: The Lofoten Museum.

Picture 2: The Christian missions involved particularly many women from coastal Norway. This picture from 1929 shows Sofie Josefine Rønnevik (1894–1963) from Tysvær, who was a missionary on Madagaskar 1926–46. Photo: Karen Dorothea. Mission Archives/School of Mission and Theology.

 
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