02/03/2024
Herring - the most important fishery in the Middle Ages and backbone of the Hanseatic economy.
Today we eat very little herring, which is a shame since this oily fish can be absolutely delicious. But it isnโt just its taste that made it the Middle Ages favourite fish. Herring have a number of great advantages. The first one is that they often move in large schools as solitary herring are getting quickly confused and lost. The name Herring might go back to the Old High German word โheriโ meaning โlotsโ or โmanyโ. All you need it finding a place where the school of herring passes regularly and you can catch them on an industrial scale.
And Herring are exceptionally good at reproducing. A female herring lays 30,000 eggs on average that she lets drop to the bottom of the spawning grounds after which the male herring release a cloud of milt over the same area. Who ever said romance is dead. What is particularly helpful is that different herring populations spawn at different times so that there is less seasonality with these fish. And finally the Herring tend to return back to the spawning grounds where they have been conceived going down the same route every year.
In the Middle Ages Baltic herring would spawn somewhere in the Baltic sea, we do not know exactly and then move out into the North Sea from where they would return between July and September. Now if you have been good at geography or can find an atlas, take a look at the connection between the North Sea and the Baltic. Yep, right across that entrance into the Baltic lay two massive islands, Fyn/Fuenen and Zealand. There is a way through but the navigationally challenged Herring tend to go through the straighter gap called the Oeresund which is just 4km wide at its narrowest point. And that is where every summer millions of Herring pass through, making good old Saxo Grammaticus claim that you would get your boat stuck if you tried rowing across.
For more about the Hanseatic trade with Sweden and Denmark, check out the latest episode of the History of the Germans Podcast: Hewing & Herring, available on Apple podcasts, Spotify and all other major listening platforms.
This link takes you straight there: https://pod.fo/e/18a0d6
