The decline of this productive hunting may have come about through the concurrence of many circumstances. Hostile relations with the Karelians and Russians on the east may have had some influence on it; as the latter in increasing numbers took up the same hunting in their smacks, the eastward waters may have become unsafe for the Norwegians, who, though superior in seamanship, were inferior in numbers. But a more important factor was the rapid growth of the fisheries on the home coasts in Finmark after the fourteenth century, which may have claimed all available hands, leaving none over for fishing in more distant waters. Besides which the influence of the Hanseatic League no doubt contributed; then, as later, they learned to prefer the valuable trade in dried fish to fitting out vessels for the more uncertain and dangerous hunting in the Polar Sea, which they knew nothing about. Finally came the royal edict of April 1562, which enforced Bergen’s monopoly in the trade with Finmark, whereby the dead hand was laid upon this part of the country, as formerly upon Greenland. In those days a corresponding displacement of the arctic fisheries must have taken place from Norway to north Russia, as in the last century again a displacement took place in the contrary direction, when the Russian hunting in the Arctic Ocean and Spitzbergen ceased and the Norwegians again became the only hunters in these waters.
Decline of Norwegian navigation
It was a concatenation of unfortunate accidents that produced the gradual decline of the voyages of the Norwegians and of their unrestricted command of all northern waters from the White Sea, and probably also Novaya Zemlya and Spitzbergen, over all the northern islands, Shetland, the Orkneys (to some extent the Hebrides, Man and Ireland), the Faroes, Iceland, and as far as Greenland, and probably also for a time the north-east coast of America. Unfavourable political conditions had a great deal to do with this, not the least of them being the long union with Denmark, with the removal of the seat of government to Copenhagen, which was extremely unfavourable to the interests of Norwegian commerce. To this was added the growing power of the Hanseatic League in Norway, the effect of which was as demoralising to all activity in the country as it was paralysing to our navigation. But not the least destructive were the royal monopolies of trade with the so-called tributary countries of the kingdom; like all State monopolies, they laid their dead hand upon all private enterprise. In this way the Norwegian command of northern waters received its death-blow; while the mercantile fleets of other nations, especially the English, came to the fore, to a large extent by making use of Norwegian seamanship and enterprise; thus the English seaport of Bristol seems to have had many Norwegians among its citizens, who certainly found there better conditions to work under than at home.
The mass of knowledge the Norwegians had acquired about the northern regions, before their time entirely unknown, was to a great extent forgotten again; and at the close of the Middle Ages all that remained was the communication with Iceland and the knowledge of the neighbouring seas, besides the continuance of the connection between the White Sea and Norway; while the voyage to Greenland, to say nothing of America, was forgotten, at any rate by the mass of the people.
The development of humanity often proceeds with a strangely lavish waste of forces. How many needless plans and unsuccessful voyages, how much toil and how many human lives would not a knowledge of the Norwegians’ extensive discoveries have been able to save in succeeding ages? How very different, too, might have been the development of many things, if by the chances of an unlucky destiny the decline of Norwegian navigation had not come just at a time when maritime enterprise received such a powerful impetus among more southern nations, especially the Portuguese, then the Spaniards, later the French, the English and the Dutch. By their great discoveries it was these nations who introduced a new era in the history of navigation, and also in that of polar voyages. But if Norwegian seamanship had still been at its height at that time, then certainly the Scandinavians of Greenland would once more have sought the already discovered countries on the west and south-west, and the Greenland settlements might then have formed an important base for new undertakings, whereby a new period of prosperity for Norwegian navigation and Norwegian enterprise might have been introduced. This was not to be; it was only reserved for the Norwegians to be the people who showed the way to the other nations out from the coasts and over the great oceans.
CHAPTER XIII
THE NORTH IN MAPS AND GEOGRAPHICAL WORKS OF THE MIDDLE AGES