Trudy Mackay

smoking, or by a combination of the three, and to pack them into barrels for transport. The cod and its relatives hake and haddock, were a different matter and more easily preserved than herring. The pursuit of cod took fishermen much further away. A huge industry developed, centred on Bergen, where ships exchanged dried fish for grain. Archaeological excavations in the Norwegian Lofoten Islands have pinpointed the moment around the eleventh century when cod became a lucrative trading commodity that supplanted herring in many European meals. The greatest riches in this commerce came to those whose ships managed to reach Newfoundland, writes Fagan. This huge island was discovered and temporarily settled by the Norse in about AD 1000 and rediscovered by John Cabot in 1497. Fagan admits that there is some speculation about the extent of early European fishing expeditions to North America ahead of the arrival of Cabot but “why would hard-nosed merchants keep sending their ships west if there was no profit in it? Cabot shipped out with at least two merchants on board, who may have known sailing directions to the Newfoundland fishing grounds.” It soon became clear that the world’s most productive fishery was the Grand Banks, teeming with cod. It was not long before other English, Basque and French fishermen were on site, and soon other similar banks were discovered further south off the coast of what became ‘New England’. As Fagan writes: “over the next four and a half centuries, the brutally tough Newfoundland cod fisheries would generate more wealth in Europe than all the gold of the Indies.” He concludes that the Mayflower pilgrims with few practical skills were for decades no more significant than the many English fishermen and fur traders. “It was not the sudden inspiration of famous names that brought Europeans to North America — not Columbus or Cabot or the settlers at Plymouth Rock — but the thousandyear journey in the pursuit of fish.”