chapter 4
Fish, Fur, and Piracy
C
enturies before Columbus’s voyage to the Caribbean,
Vikings had sailed across the northern ocean toward, or per-
haps even to, the North American mainland. By the thirteenth century more
than 5,000 of their settlers lived in Greenland. Thereafter, as the “little ice
age” began, and the Greenland shores were more frequently and more
deeply blocked by ice floes, the colonies lost contact with Scandinavia; at
about the time Columbus sailed, they had been abandoned.
In turn, the Vikings were followed by fishermen from the little ports
along the Atlantic coast of Portugal, France, England, and Norway. They
were not trying to discover or map the distant reaches of the earth and cer-
tainly not trying to establish colonies. Their limited aims were purely com-
mercial. As long as they were allowed to trawl and hook close to Europe,
they did so; fishing in the North Sea around Britain and Norway was safer
and more economical than going far out into the Atlantic. But the powerful
confederation of cities known as the Hanseatic League created a monopoly
that excluded these fishermen from the North Sea in 1410. Thereafter, they
were forced to seek a catch beyond the reach of the League.
The favored catch of that period was the cod. A large fish, it lent itself
easily to drying or salting and was extremely rich in protein, which, in
Europe, had become desperately scarce. The great famine of 1315–1321
had been followed by a long series of catastrophes that starved the popula-
tion. Weakened, the survivors were less able to produce food. Even when
grain was available, meat often was in short supply. It was also banned by
the Catholic church on Fridays and during the profusion of religious holi-
days. So fishermen had a ready market for their catch.
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