cod heads, stockfish, and dried spurdog: unexpected ... · cod heads, stockfish, and dried spurdog:...

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International Journal of HistoricalArchaeology ISSN 1092-7697 Int J Histor ArchaeolDOI 10.1007/s10761-017-0405-6

Cod Heads, Stockfish, and Dried Spurdog:Unexpected Commodities in Nya Lödöse(1473–1624), Sweden

Maltin Emma & Jonsson Leif

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Cod Heads, Stockfish, and Dried Spurdog: UnexpectedCommodities in Nya Lödöse (1473–1624), Sweden

Maltin Emma1 & Jonsson Leif2

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017

Abstract During medieval and early modern times, fish products were intensivelytraded over long distances. Fish was an important part of the diet, and there was a widerange of fresh as well as preserved fish for the consumers to choose among. In thisarticle the fish bone assemblage from the town Nya Lödöse (1473–1624), Sweden, isused to explore what kind of fish were available for the inhabitants to buy. Marine fishwas generally preferred over freshwater species, and while the deep sea fishing mostprobably was highly professionalized, fishing in lakes and rivers must have been rare.Most importantly, the article reviews the evidence for different kinds of fish commod-ities identified in the assemblage from Nya Lödöse. Except from stockfish and herring,dried heads from large cod and ling, as well as dried pike, flatfish, and spurdog werealso identified.

Keywords Fish trade . Dried fish . Spurdog . Cod heads . Hake

Fish Remains in the Nya Lödöse Project

Food supply is a fundamental prerequisite for the creation and maintenance of urbanlife. Citizens of early towns often had access to arable plots in or near the city areas, andalso pasture for livestock, but that could not fulfill all the needs of the inhabitants. Thesupply of animal products was crucial and increased in importance as cities grew largerand their inhabitants became more specialized in crafts and trade. The importation offood was a key factor for urbanization. Fresh products were obtained from theneighboring^ hinterland^ but could not fill demand as populations grew. Food had tobe obtained from more distant sources. Such commodities had to be preserved in

Int J Histor ArchaeolDOI 10.1007/s10761-017-0405-6

* Maltin [email protected]

1 Bohusläns Museum, Uddevalla, Sweden2 LJ Osteology, Gothenburg, Sweden

Author's personal copy

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various ways to maintain their quality as food during transport and storage. Fish fulfillsthat purpose perfectly. Large quantities could easily be caught, and the dried or saltedproduct could be stored for a long time without deteriorating.

Recent excavations in the town Nya Lödöse (1473–1624), Gothenburg, Sweden,have yielded an extensive assemblage of fishbone that is outstanding in the context ofSwedish archaeology. Fish is always underrepresented in zooarchaeologicalassemblages compared to mammals, but the consistent use of wet-seiving inthe project presents us with the opportunity to investigate the role of fish in alate medieval/early modern Swedish town. In this article we hope to contributeto the understanding of the large-scale fish trade, but also to the role of fish inNya Lödöse. Furthermore, we will explore the presence of traded fish productsbeyond the well-studied stockfish.

Material

The excavations in Nya Lödöse are still ongoing, and this study will be limited to thefish bones collected during the first two years of the project. In total approximately730 kg animal bones were collected during excavations from 2013 to 2014. The site issituated on sandy soil, and is also affected by last century extensive drainage in the area.Bones show signs of leaching, but in general the preservation conditions are quite good. Thefish bones are largely well preserved, but there is not a single find of otoliths. Otoliths aresmall stones formed inside the ear of the fish, and they are not bone but calcium carbonate(Wheeler and Jones 1989: 114). Bones and otoliths preserve differently in various environ-ments, and in this case conditions were more favorable for bones.

The bone assemblage is dominated by cattle, pig and sheep, as to be expected froman urban context during this period of time (All species are referred to by their Englishnames. A full list appears in Table 1.) Trade with oxen was an integral part of theeconomy in Sweden, and is often discussed in zooarchaeological analysis of urbanassemblages (cf. Vretemark 2001). Game, which is usually infrequent in early modernurban assemblages, is rare except for roe deer that occurs quite commonly in specificcontexts. It appears that roe deer occurs more frequently in cities on the Swedish westcoast, e.g., Ny Varberg (Jonsson 1992: 99). There are also occassional findings of hareand fox, and very rare findings of elk, lynx, red deer, red squirrel, common seal, white-tailed eagle, capercaillie, black grouse, dipper and green woodpecker.

Method

An approach for integrating the retrieval of zooarchaeological material and itssubsequent analysis has been developed within the Nya Lödöse project.Zooarchaeologists are always present on site, supervising the collection of bonesand sieving samples, as well as recording stratigraphic conditions of depositedbones. A large portion of contexts were sampled for wet sieving with a 1–2 mmmesh. The sampling focused on primary deposits, contexts considered to reflectconsumption and waste management on the different town plots. This includedrubbish deposits between houses, in pits and on backyards, as well as bonesdropped on floors. All bones were washed and dried on a daily basis and sortedin taxonomic groups. Our primary observations were taken back to the field team

Int J Histor Archaeol


and used in context descriptions, and influenced the way continued investigationsof the deposits were performed.

The bone fragments were later identified and recorded in the GIS-database sharedwith the archaeologists, Intrasis. We have seen great advantages in using the samedatabase, since this enables a flow of information between specialists and archaeolo-gists working on site and writing the report throughout the entire process of the project.Using a GIS database also allow us to investigate how specific species or anatomicalelements are spatially distributed.

The reference collection at the Gothenburg Museum of Natural History hasbeen used to identify the bone fragments; we also have a skeletal referencecollection on site. Bones have been identified to element and species, age andsex have been assessed and a selection of measurements have been taken.Unfortunately, the project budget did not extend to measuring all fish bones butsamples of fish bones will be measured and studied more closely at a later stage(see Maltin 2017). Isotope analysis on the fish bones are planned for, but have notyet been executed.

We consider it important to work in an exploratory and question-driven way.Questions on different levels require different samples to be addressed. The samplesrelevant to answering general questions about the economy of the entire town aredifferent from those needed to answer questions about households. The analysis spansfrom the local to the general based on careful selection of samples, avoiding unneces-sary Bstatistical noise.^ Meaningful sampling requires awareness of taphonomicprocesses.

Taphonomy

The fish bone collection shows distinct differences in the quantities of species andelements between town plots. It is also evident that the occurrence of fish bones variesbetween different kinds of archaeological features. Naturally, this is due to the shiftingtaphonomic history of every feature, but it is still worth remarking. Fish bones arenumerous in kitchen waste, in floors close to hearths and sometimes underneathwooden floors (collected by rats). In other features they are rare or absent, e.g., soilused for construction or layers representing demolition or fire. While it is always ofgreatest importance to work contextually in archaeology, considering all thepotential factors affecting the assemblage, interpreting archaeological findings offish bones illustrates the need ever so clearly for an awareness of how tapho-nomic processes function.

The differences we detect are only partly due to disparities in consumption. Somelayers or features contain waste associated with the preparation and cooking of fish.Floors connected to hearths in some cases contain fish scales and small bones lostduring cooking, and heaps of refuse between houses contain fish-cleaning remains suchas parts of the skull, fins, and gills. Bones from some species were consumed byhumans and animals, and are only found in latrines. What was left after cooking andeating eventually ended up in the waste or as fodder for pigs and hens. As isdemonstrated in experiments, a major part of the bones consumed by humans or othermammals will be destroyed, and never enter the archaeological record (Jones 1984,1986). It is also evident that waste management in Nya Lödöse was quite effective, and



most of the waste was probably brought outside of the town (see also Schager et al. thisvolume).

Adding to above mentioned taphonomic factors, bones from different fish speciesand from different parts of the body preserves differently. Furthermore, bones fromsome species are more easily identified than bones form other species. The sameapplies to bones from different parts of the body. All in all, it is almost impossible toestimate the real relative importance of different species. This leaves us with thedifficult task of differentiating variations caused by consumer’s choice, trade, wastemanagement and a number of other taphonomic factors.

Preserved Fish: Commodities Possible to Trace in the ArchaeologicalRecord

Fish bones are small and fragile compared to bones from larger mammals, and arealways underrepresented in archaeological excavations. The role of fish in the diet isconsequently often underestimated, even though we know from written sources thatfish was a vital part of the food supply, in particular that of urban residents. Customsaccounts from Nya Lödöse, dating to the second half of the sixteenth century supportthis picture. Fish, both fresh and preserved in different ways, constituted a substantialpart of goods entering the town. The accounts show extensive import of e.g. herring,flatfish, codfishes, mackerel and garfish (Strömbom 1924: 266ff). It is also obvious thatmany of the fish products mentioned in the accounts would leave no traces in thearchaeological record. A significant portion of the fish entered the town in a salted ordried condition, many of them surely filleted without any bones remaining. There arealso examples of special parts of the fish being brought to the town. Swim bladder fromcod is an example that would leave no traces (Strömbom 1924: 266ff).

The importance of fish in trade and diet during historic times is getting more andmore acknowledged. Extensive research in the subject has for example showed thataround 1000 CE there was a marked increase in marine fishing, especially of cod andherring. This was first detected in English archaeological fish bone assemblages, and thephenomenon is called the Fish Event Horizon. This change was first demonstrated withcompilations of data on relative abundance of fish species from a large amount of sites(Barrett et al. 2004, 2009), and the study was later extended to include analysis of theregion of catch with the aid of stable isotope analysis (13C and 15N) (Barrett et al. 2008,2011). This specific project is important, since it clearly demonstrates how the first largescale marine fishing during the tenth and eleventh centuries was local, and thus mustreflect an increased demand for marine fish, rather than changes in distant supply. Overtime this changes, and by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries more than half of thecod from London originates from long distance trade. In the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies, the import increases even more (Barrett et al. 2011). A general result of thefish trade project was that it showed how human populations in northern Europe becameinterconnected and dependent in their daily life and how largescale fishing and fish tradewas both a result and the means for the development of urbanization.

The increased demand for marine fish in England and in continental Europe isprobably explained both by Christian fasting practices and by growing urban popula-tions and their need of inexpensive and easily preserved protein. This demand was



satisfied with long-distance trade of preserved fish and became the start of a globalizedfishery (Barrett et al. 2004, 2009, 2011). Already by the high Middle Ages, the fishproduction was standardized, and the fish was divided and classified into differentstrictly graded and named categories. Thus, fish was a uniformly graded commodity. Itwas no longer a variable local product, but an economic abstraction to be bought andsold (Gade 1951, as quoted in Perdikaris and McGovern 2009: 64). The commodifi-cation and long distance-trade of preserved fish products resulted in the consumersbeing alienated to the origin of the food, much like we are to the content in presentday’s freezers in the supermarket. The fish arrived processed and packaged with little orno resemblance to the living fish. The product was often named after how it wasproduced (stockfish) or its origin (Bergen fish), rather than the species. The preserva-tion also made these food stuffs available at the market large parts of the year, no longercontrolled by seasonal availability (Hoffman, 2001: 153ff).

BCommoditization can be seen zooarchaeologically in a number of ways. Themost obvious approach is to look for evidence of processing of animals thatshows a high level of consistency as well as engagement in trade networks.Animal based commodities in the modern world are parts of an animal brokendown into a consistently recognized form that lies within a scalable value systemthat is fungible across region and global markets.^ (Hambrecht 2012: 477).

Following Hambrecht, fish products qualifying for being called commodities shouldthus show consistent butchering patterns, probably be quite uniform in size and theproducts must have been traded. The research of fish commodities has been focused ontwo categories of fish, namely stockfish and herring.

The Lofoten area in Norway was a center for the large-scale fishing for cod andother big codfishes, which formed the basis for a far-reaching network of tradewith stockfish. Written records from the sixteenth century describe such anabundance of fish in the waters close to Lofoten, that a fishing hook dropped inthe water would not reach the bottom before getting either swallowed or caught ona fish (Claussøn Friis 1881 [1599]: 382). The large amount of fish caught wasprepared into stockfish. Stockfish is decapitated cod dried in the round, withoutthe use of salt and optimally in the size range 60–110 cm long. The finishedproduct has a long shelf life, and can be stored for more than two years withoutgoing bad. The cold and dry climate in northern Norway is perfect for the dryingprocess (Perdikaris 1999: 390). But stockfish was also produced in for exampleIceland (see Wubs-Mrozewicz 2009).

Most likely, stockfish produced in some of these production areas, and especiallyNorway, was imported and sold in Nya Lödöse. But there also existed a thriving fishingindustry closer to home; the herring fisheries along the northern parts of the west coast.The so called herring periods and herring fisheries are recurring topics in researchcovering trade and urbanization of Skagerrak and Kattegat (Lönnroth 1963; Svedbergand Jonsson 2006). Herring periods refers to several occasions when herring wasparticularly plentiful close to the coast and in the archipelago along the coast. Thisgave rise to flourishing fisheries and trade, as well as attracting foreign fishermen andtraders (see e.g., Ackefors 1970; Höglund 1972). Fishing villages were believed to havedeveloped from town citizens and farmers who started fishing (Dahlén



1941; Steenstrup 1905). Olof Hasslöf (1949) rejected this position and stressed theimportance of the fishing of cod, ling and other big fish in deeper waters and thatfishermen would rather have avoided settling in towns. On the other hand fishingvillages would not have developed the way they did without being a part of the systemof commodity production for the markets of the towns.

Fishermen from around the North Sea came to the present Swedish west coasts totake part in herring fisheries as well as fishing for other species (Claussøn Friis 1881[1599]). During excavation of Btomtnings^ (temporary living sites) on the island Söö inGothenburg southern archipelago, Stibeus (1997) found two English coins (1248–50and 1250–72) from the reign of Henry III. These are good indices of the presence ofEnglish fishermen (and merchants?) on the coast in medieval times. It shows that notonly local fishermen were active on the coast.

Fish trade has been studied in a multitude of ways in zooarchaeology. Indications offish trade include the transport of marine fish to inland sites; the presence of speciesliving in the North Sea found at southern sites; distinct butchery marks or skeletalelement distribution, which may well indicate presence of fish preserved for transport;and the relative abundance of fish species over time and space. It is also possible to runstable isotope analysis (as mentioned above) or study growth rates in different fishpopulations (Barrett et al. 2009:34). The processing and trade in herring has beendemonstrated by mapping of anatomical distribution. Gutting herring before salting it inbarrels removed some of the bones, leaving a distinct anatomical distribution in thoseassemblages consisting of traded and salted herring (Bødker Enghoff 1996; Lauwerierand Laarman 2008; Seeman 1986).

While stockfish and salted herring has been extensively studied, othercategories of traded fish products are less well known. In the following text wewill first have a look at what kind of fish people in Nya Lödöse had for dinner, butalso how and where they caught the fish. Thereafter we will identify severalcategories of traded fish products.

Eating and Catching Fish in Nya Lödöse

Nya Lödöse’s location close to the coast made a variety of marine fishing resourcesavailable to the inhabitants. Despite proximity to rivers and several lakes close by, thefish bone assemblage was largely dominated by marine species, and especiallycodfishes (including hake). The number of identified species was big, and includedboth small fishes caught close to the coast as well as larger fish brought in from deeperwater or traded. While the marine fish was plentiful in the archeological record, therewas almost no sign of hunting of marine birds or mammals. There was a single find ofcommon seal and whale was totally absent. Marine birds were also very few, oneguillemot or razorbill and one black-throated loon were identified, the latter probably awintering species on the coast.

Fish like whiting, as well as small individuals of haddock, cod, pollack, and saithewere probably fished with simple hand lines or with long lines in the nearby archipel-ago. Also flatfish like plaice and turbot were mostly taken close to the coast. TheSwedish crown claimed authority over the rights to fish in the sea outside the mouth ofGöta Älv. In 1496, the court at Sävedal issued a statement that those who fished at



Vinga Island and other skerries had to pay customs fee and rent for fishing huts to thegovernor at Älvsborgs castle (Sjöberg 1866: 25; Styffe 1864: 38). This means that theinhabitants in Nya Lödöse had access to close by coastal fishing, but also that thisfishing was regulated by custom duties. Judging from the fish bones retrieved in NyaLödöse, coastal fishing must have been important in the area (Fig. 1).

Fishing was also affected by seasonal variations. Two of the identified species onlyappear close to the coast during certain times of the year. Mackerel is a migratory fishthat comes to the archipelago in late spring and returns to the North Sea in autumn, andgarfish is normally an offshore fish but it comes close to shores during spawning inspring. The customs accounts for 1574 record that nearly 50,000 garfish were imported,indicating that they were specially fished for the market (Strömbom 1924: 266ff).

The remains of large cod, ling, and hake, as well as halibut, spurdog, and skate arestrong evidence for deep sea fishing. The nearest sites where these fishes could becaught on a regular basis were along the slopes of the BNorwegian Trench^ inSkagerrak. The BSkagen Reef^ north of the Jutland Peninsula (Fig. 2) is mentionedin sixteenth–seventeenth century documents (Claussøn Friis 1881 [1599]) and fisher-men from fishing villages along the Skagerrak and Kattegat coasts sailed there in smallopen ships with a crew of 5–10 men. The fish were taken by simple hook and line orlonglines at depths of 100 m or more. During the sixteenth century and later, the shipswere anchored at the site of fishing and smaller boats were used for setting and landingthe longlines (Rencke 1923: 141ff). Fishing far out from the coast required suitableboats and fishing gear, not to mention the know-how. It was also necessary with agroup of experienced people to crew the boat. Overall this indicates a professionalizedcommercial fishing (Fig. 3).

A rare find is an angular bone from tusk. Tusk is caught in deep water, 150–450 m(Kullander et al. 2012:222), and might be a bycatch when fishing for cod, ling andhake. During the twentieth century the fish was considered Bfood for the poor^ in partsof Sweden. But Adriaen Coenen (1514–87), the son of a Dutch fisherman and a fishtrader himself, noted that tusk was considered Btoo good for the ‘rich and wealthy,’^and it was therefore kept by the skippers themselves (Bennema and Rijnsdorp 2015:385, 392). We can only guess how the inhabitants of Nya Lödöse valued tusk, but itwas certainly not a common source of food.

Despite thorough wet-sieving herring was not a common find in Nya Lödöse. Wehave already discussed the importance of herring as a main staple food during thisperiod of time, and we can also be quite confident in saying the inhabitants of NyaLödöse must have been eating large quantities of herring. Herring was almostexclusively found in human waste. Several experiments performed by Jones (1984)and Nicholson (1993), amongst others, show that the digestive system of humans (andother mammals) destroy the absolute majority of the bones. The experiments alsodemonstrated that the crushed vertebrae often found in archaeological contexts prob-ably are the result of humans and other mammals chewing the bones. Crushedvertebrae were also found in Nya Lödöse. The lack of herring bones is thereforeprobably due to people eating the whole fish, not picking out bones (Fig. 4).

Remains of skates were quite common finds in Nya Lödöse. These fishes aredifferent from most other fish, since their skeleton are formed by cartilage. This hasimplications for zooarchaeology since there are no bones for us to find. Only a fewparts of the body might preserve well enough to be found by archaeologists, namely the



teeth and dermal denticles (since they are formed by enamel), and calcified vertebralcentra. All of these parts were found in Nya Lödöse, and the presence of remains fromall parts of the body indicate that skates were brought to the town fresh, before beingskinned. Customs accounts reveal that also dried skate was imported (Strömbom 1924:266ff). There are accounts from the early 1900s that the coastline a few km south oftoday’s Gothenburg was called BCountry of rays,^ indicating the historical importanceof the species in this area (Sandklef 1954: 579). It has been proposed that thornback ray

Fig. 1 Woodcut from Olaus Magnus (1555) showing trade with fish. Note the decapitated dried stockfishhanging from the ceiling in the upper left part of the picture

Fig. 2 Map showing the location of Nya Lödöse



was an exclusive dish in medieval Sweden (Sten 1995:68), but this was most likely notthe case on the west coast. Rather it was common food, the meat eaten both fresh anddried. Marine molluscs was on the contrary not eaten in the town, and there is only onefind of common crab.

Wet sieving of bottom sediments from the southern part of the moat showed notraces of fish scales or shed pharyngeal teeth from cyprinids. It is thus unlikely that fishwere living in the moat, but there are several lakes and rivers close by, and thepossibilities of exploiting freshwater fish must be considered favorable. Despitethis, fishing for domestic consumption seems to have been rare. The majority ofthe bones identified as freshwater fish belong to the carp family. Many of thespecies included in the family are hard to separate based on the bones, andvertebrae are particularly difficult to identify to species. Consequently, only asmall amount of the bones was possible to identify to species. Of the species presentroach was by far the most common, followed by ide, rudd and silver bream. Rudd andsilver bream were only represented by a total of three fragments. All of the abovementioned cyprinid fish species can be caught at a short distance from Nya Lödöse, andcan be considered local.

Fig. 3 Map showing Nya Lödöse and nearby fishing grounds



Second most common fish is perch, represented by bones as well as scales. Pike isanother frequent find, as well as eel and whitefish. A rare find is one vertebrafrom ruffe. Ruffe is a small slimy fish, with no relevance for modern Swedishdiet or fishing. As a contrast, in the Netherlands during the sixteenth andseventeenth century ruffe was popular among poor people, who prepared it asan hors d’oeuvre (Ypma 1962:31, cited in van Dam 2009: 327). One vertebrafrom zander was also identified. Zander is often considered one of the mostvalued freshwater fish (Andersson 1969: 528).

According to the former archbishop Olaus Magnus (1490–1557) and writer ofHistoria de gentibus septentrionalibus (1555), salmon was abundant in Göta Älvduring the sixteenth century (Magnus 1555 XX:3). Olaus Magnus also stated thatsalmon was a popular food, a fish that Bthrough its good taste can replace all otherfood,^ a fish Bgreater than all other fish species^ (Magnus 1555 XX:26). Fromhistorical records we know that salmon fishing was regulated by fishing rights,connected to ownership of land, rivers and fisheries. In Denmark salmon fishingseems to have been a privilege for the crown, but there is no indication thatthis was the case in Sweden (Kulturhistoriskt Lexikon för Nordisk Medeltid).Given the abundance of salmon in the area, in combination with the apparentpopularity of the fish, the absence of bones from salmon is puzzling.

Bad preservation of bones rich in fat as an explanation for the lack of bones fromsalmon is often seen in zooarchaeological reports and publications. The argument isthat as fat decomposed into fatty acids, this promoted the disintegration of bones offatty fishes. This argument probably originates from the renowned Swedishzooarchaeologist Johannes Lepiksaar. However, this is most likely not a reasonableexplanation. Bones from other fatty fish, eg., herring, flatfish, eel, mackerel, andwrasses, are often well preserved and in the few cases we do identify salmon or trout,the bones tend to be equally well preserved. But there are also indications that ratsfavored eating the fatty bones, showed by the presence of gnawed fragments ofsalmonid vertebrae beneath floors. The absence of salmon in Nya Lödöse and the othertowns must be explained by other causes. Salmon might have been a luxury food, onlyaccessible by the elite, or maybe the fish was simply prepared in a manner that left nobones on the scrapheaps in the towns. There was an extensive trade with salmon going

Fig. 4 Tooth from a skate. Photo: Markus Andersson



on in the northern and eastern part of Sweden during the sixteenth century (Friberg1983). But in the town Uppsala, the pattern with the missing bones from salmon repeatsitself in the archaeological assemblage from the city block Kransen (end of thirteenthcentury to first part of seventeenth century). Furthermore one of the few vertebraefound showed signs of filleting (Jonsson 1986: 136). All in all, this points to astandardized and consistent processing of salmon that left no bones in the fish whenit reached the customer. Salmon was probably sold and eaten fileted and smoked orsalted. If salmon had been sold fresh we would undoubtedly find the bones. Preservedsalmon must have been a traded commodity, but it was a product that left no traces inthe archaeological material.

Stockfish and Dried Fish Heads

We have already discussed how the long-distance trade in preserved fish productsduring medieval and early modern times led to an increasing commodification of theseproducts, as well as the consumers becoming more and more alienated from the naturalorigin of the food. This commodification is also evident in the fish remains from NyaLödöse.

The most common fish in Nya Lödöse were big cod fishes; cod, ling and hake. It ispossible that some of the fish was caught in deep waters outside the nearby coast. But itis more likely that most of the fish was traded stockfish. The processing of the fish forpreservation often meant decapitation as well as gutting, before drying or salting thefish (Hasslöf 1949: 348ff). The bones in the pectoral girdle of the fish, and especiallythe cleithra (a relatively big and resistant bone that is often preserved in archaeologicalassemblages) are usually left in the fish, as this makes the body hold together andfacilitate the process of drying (Perdikaris and McGovern 2009: 73). Occurrence ofdried cod in the archaeological bone assemblage is thus often demonstrated with anabundance of bones from the vertebral column and the pectoral fin in comparison tocranial bones (cf. Heinrich 1986). Production sites will instead have a high number ofbones from the skull, and in some cases the front portion of the vertebral column(Perdikaris 1999; Perdikaris and McGovern 2009).

An example of this can be drawn from the Mary Rose, the English warship whichsank outside Portsmouth 1545. At the time when the ship sank, it was loaded withprovisions for the crew, including large quantities of stockfish. With only a fewexceptions, the fish bones retrieved were all identified as cod. All of the fish had beendecapitated, and all that was left was the vertebral column (missing some of the firstprecaudal vertebrae), fin rays, and cleithra. Additionally, many of the cleithra werechopped (Hamilton-Dyer 1995). Later analysis of ancient DNA and carbon andnitrogen stable isotopes of the bones from Mary Rose proved that the cod was mostprobably imported from the north North Sea, Iceland, and Newfoundland (Hutchinsonet al. 2015).

In medieval Uppsala in eastern Sweden bones of cod were found in two size groups– the smaller from the neighboring Baltic Sea represented by cranial bones and thebigger by vertebrae. The latter group was interpreted as decapitated and dried fish(stockfish) from the Lofoten area in northern Norway. That conclusion was based onthe size of these fishes (over 100 cm), the slow growth and the high age at maturity



(Jonsson 1986) excluding most other cod populations in the northeastern Atlantic area.Cod of similar size and the same skeletal representation have been found at othermedieval sites like the Eketorp fortress (Hallström 1979), Schleswig (Heinrich 1983,1987) and Söderköping (Jonsson, n.d.). The isotope analysis corroborated the earlierinterpretation of smaller cods in Uppsala as having Baltic origin and the bigger ascoming from northern Norway (Orton et al. 2011).

To investigate the anatomical distribution in the collection from Nya Lödöse anapproach similar to that used by Orton et al. (2014) was employed. Bones from cod,ling and hake were grouped in three categories: cranial bones (includingposttemporals), vertebrae, and zonoskeleton (bones from the pectoral fin, includingsupracleithra). The result (Fig. 5) shows that cod and ling are represented by fragmentsfrom all parts of the body, while hake is very clearly overrepresented by vertebrae. Thiswould in most cases be interpreted as the presence of dried, imported hake and locallycaught fresh cod and ling.

It is important, however, to remember that there existed different methods ofprocessing the fish, and the occurrence of cranial bones do not necessarily mean thefish was not dried. Contemporary written records from Holland clearly states that notall dried fish where decapitated (Bennema and Rijnsdorp 2015: 396). Cranial bonesidentified as cod and ling in the bone assemblage from Nya Lödöse are frequentlybroken, and often found as small fragments (Figs. 6 and 7). These bones represent largefish. One possible explanation for this is that the broken cranial bones derive from driedfish that had not been decapitated, and that the delicate dried bones broke in the processof cooking. Before the stockfish was ready for consumption, it had to be softened bysoaking it in lye (like present day lutefish) and beating it. There was even a profession forsoaking the dried fish, and selling it. This was a business often run by women calledfiskblöterskor (Hasslöf 1949: 351f; Kulturhistoriskt Lexikon för NordiskMedeltid 4:301). In Dutch faunal assemblages, the presence of crushed codvertebrae has been used as an indicator for beaten stock fish (see e.g., Kerklaan,2012). We have no evidence for crushed vertebrae from big codfishes in NyaLödöse (Fig. 8).

Fig. 5 Head bones from cod



The combination of crushed cranial bones and intact vertebrae from cod and ling issomewhat contradictory. It might indicate different cooking methods for different partsof the fish. The presence of such a high amount of cranial bones from big fish isunusual in urban assemblages. This suggests that heads from cod and ling might havebeen products to be traded in their own right. In more recent times dried heads from bigcod are also known to have been traded in Bohuslän. Furthermore, cod heads stuffed

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Ling Pike Cod

Anatomical distribu�on (NISP)

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Hake Fla�ish

Fig. 6 Anatomical distribution of ling (n = 618), pike (n = 181), cod (n = 1343), hake (n = 2170), and flatfish(n = 796). Bones collected during the excavations from 2013 to 2014. NISP = Number of identified specimens

Fig. 7 Broken cranial bones and vertebrae from large cod. Photo: Markus Andersson



with a mix of liver and flour and cooked were previously regarded as a delicacy(Olsson 1970:90ff). A Norwegian written document contemporary with Nya Lödösedescribes how the heads from large cod and ling were treated during fishing in the areaaround Lofoten. The head was twisted and removed from the fish already in the boat.The fishermen were not allowed to dispose of the heads in the water, so the heads werebrought to land. They were then dried and used as fodder for cattle. Before being fed tothe cattle, they were beaten (Claussøn Friis 1881 [1599]: 382). Thus, it seems like headsfrom big codfishes were indeed dried (and beaten), but the Norwegians do not seem tohave been eager to eat them. As will be discussed with spurdog below, this does notnecessarily mean that they could not be sold to someone else. The presence of driedheads from cod and ling in the assemblage from Nya Lödöse will be further explored ina forthcoming article (Maltin 2017).

A Southern Production of Stockfish: Hake

Hake is the most frequent fish species in Nya Lödöse. Typically it is represented byvertebrae in high numbers concentrated in specific archaeological features, like refusepits and rubbish heaps. As can be seen in Fig. 5, cranial bones are more or less absent. Itis possible that the lack of cranial bones from hake in the bone assemblage from NyaLödöse is proof of processing of the fish. There can also be a taphonomic explanation,cranial bones from hake generally are very fragile, and the more robust vertebrae aremore likely to survive. But in the close by town Gamla Lödöse, where hake has beenproved to increase in the diet at the beginning of the thirteenth century; both vertebraeand cranial bones were abundant (Vretemark 2000). Poor preservation alone cannotexplain the absence of cranial bones.

Fig. 8 Broken cranial bones and vertebrae from large ling. Photo: Markus Andersson



Similar to herring, hake has periodically occurred on the Swedish coast: in 1775 a prieston the island of Öckerö, in the west coast archipelago, noticed large quantities of hakearriving during the summer. He also stated that the tales told that this fish had not beencaught in a hundred years (Bergstrand 1937). Maria Vretemark (2000), when discussingthe occurrence of large quantities of hake in Gamla Lödöse, connects high occurrence ofhake to herring periods. She argues that hake, largely feeding on herring, might be anindirect reflection of herring periods. But this is most probably not the explanation.Herring was caught inside the archipelago, hake further out at sea at deeper water.Furthermore the only large recorded import of hake in the customs accounts from NyaLödöse predates the big sixteenth-century herring period. A possible alternative is that thehake was imported from greater distances away (Svedberg and Jonsson 2006: 54).

Hake was commercially fished for and preserved, particularly in southwesternEurope (e.g., Hoffman, 2001). Production sites, with a high proportion of skullbones,precaudal vertebrae and scales, have been identified in England (Locker 2000: 183).Hake do occur in Skagerrak, Kattegat and along the Norwegian coast (Kullander et al.2012), and it is possible that the hake found in Nya Lödöse was caught in these waters.But the consistent butchering of the fish, with almost no cranial bones present, indicatethat the fish was indeed not eaten fresh. Dried hake was evidently imported in greatquantities, and it may very well be fish caught and processed in England. Thedifference with Gamla Lödöse is explained by either the transition from consumptionof fresh, locally caught hake to imported dried hake, or that the inhabitants in GamlaLödöse imported dried hake from another production area where the head was left inthe dried fish.

Unexpected Delicacies: Dried Pike, Flatfish, and Spurdog

Not only cod were preserved and traded, there are many examples of other fish beingdried and sold to distant customers. Dried pike was an important commodity in parts ofSweden during historic times (see for example Friberg 1983: 358; Hartola 2016), andbones showing typical traces of this processing are found in excavations in towns ineastern parts of Sweden, dating to the middle ages and the sixteenth century. Typically,the fish was not decapitated, but the backbones were removed. The processing of thefish also left characteristic butchering marks on the mandible (dentale). Thus, highfrequencies of cranial bones and bones from the pectoral fin, and absence of vertebraeindicate the presence of dried pike (Jonsson 1986). In Nya Lödöse there is an evendistribution of bones from the cranium and the vertebral column (see Fig. 5). Nomandibles with the distinctive butchery marks have been recorded. This taken togetherindicates that the pike consumed in the town was sold and eaten fresh, and probablycaught quite close to the town. A peculiar detail is that a few of the vertebrae aredeformed (Fig. 9). Contemporary written records reveal that dried pike was beatenbefore eaten, similar to stockfish (Magnus 1555, XX:24). This could be the cause of thedeformation of the vertebrae, and would thus indicate presence of a limited amount ofdried pike.

Flatfish was in the old days dried and traded in for example Denmark (Bröndegaard1985: 281ff) and the Netherlands (Bennema and Rijnsdorp 2015), but there is no suchtradition in western Sweden. Despite of this, large amounts of dried, decapitated flatfish



was found on one of the town plots in Nya Lödöse, and it is reasonable to think this fishwas imported. The Nya Lödöse custom accounts state that both dried flatfish andunspecified flatfish was imported to the town in quite ample quantities, especially theunspecified sort (Strömbom 1924). Dried flatfish, and its possible connection to aforeign kitchen, is further explored in a forthcoming article (Maltin 2017).

There is also reason to believe spurdog was traded. Similar to skates, this is also afish with a skeleton formed by cartilage. Looking at the anatomical distribution ofspurdog, vertebral centra are abundant, while teeth are non-existent and dorsal finspines only represented by a few fragments. The fin spines are often well preserved andquite large compared to the vertebrae; these are found in archaeological contexts fromtime to time (cf. Noe-Nygaard 1971). The anatomical representation thus can hardly beexplained by bad preservation conditions or careless collection of bones on site. Acontemporary written record from Norway sheds some light on the matter. PederClaussøn Friis (1881 [1599]: 101), a clergyman and historian, wrote an extensivedescription of all the animals and fishes present in Norway. He also wrote aboutspurdog, stating that Norwegians kept away from eating spurdog, believing the sharkshad a taste for human flesh. There was probably a belief that spurdog consumeddrowned seamen. But Claussøn Friis also noted that many people sold spurdog to thepeople in Nya Lödöse. This might explain why we have such an abundance ofvertebrae, but no teeth and very few fin spines. The shark had probably beendecapitated, filleted and dried in Norway, and then shipped to Nya Lödöse.

Conclusion and Further Research

Fish was evidently important for the town Nya Lödöse. The inhabitants’relationship with fish and fishing ranged from the small everyday life act ofangling for perch on the river to purchasing and preparing fish caught andpreserved in industrial scale in countries far away. The analysis of the fish bonescollected in the town Nya Lödöse shows that the inhabitants preferred marine fishover freshwater fish. We have seen traces of the fish caught close to the coast, as

Fig. 9 Vertebrae from pike (Esox lucius). The vertebra to the upper left is deformed. Photo: MarkusAndersson



well as fish caught in deeper water and fish products imported from greaterdistances. The marine fishery was most likely highly professionalized, whilefishing for domestic consumption in rivers and lakes seems to have been inappre-ciable. We can also distinguish several different fish products; stockfish, driedflatfish, dried spurdog, and dried heads from cod and ling.

It is obvious that fish was a key commodity, and that potential information derivedfrom fish remains is more often than not tremendously underestimated in archaeolog-ical research. Nya Lödöse was an actor in the development of trading networks insouthern Scandinavia with extensions as far north as Lofoten and northern Norway, andto the west the English coast, and fish was a vital part of this. The bone assemblageyielded by the careful wet-sieving, performed by zooarchaeologists in the Nya Lödöseproject, gives a clear hint of how much information is lost when fish bones are notretrieved. Despite several experiments that demonstrate the importance of wet-sieving,this is still not standard procedure in urban excavations in Sweden today.

A sample of the fish bones will undergo isotope analysis, and we intend toinvestigate the imported stockfish further. Running isotope analysis on the cranialbones from cod and ling might help us to conclude if fish heads were traded. If so,this would be a traded product previously not discussed in research on fish trade.Human remains excavated from the cemetery at Nya Lödöse present anotherpossibility for future research. Isotope analysis would make it possible to estimatethe relative importance of fish in the diet. Fish bones are moreover a valuablesource of information for fisheries history and background data for biologistsinvestigating the exploitation of modern fish stocks, as well as for the development offuture fisheries policies.

Appendix

Table 1 List of species men-tioned in the article, English andLatin names

English name Scientific name

Black grouse Tetrao tetrix

Black-throated loon Gavia arctica

Capercaillie Tetrao urogallus

Cattle Bos taurus

Cod Gadus morhua

Common crab Cancer pagurus

Common seal Phoca vitulina

Cyprinids Cyprinidae

Dipper Cinclus cinclus

Eel Anguilla anguilla

Elk Alces alces

Flatfish Pleuronectiformes

Fox Vulpes vulpes

Gadids/codfishes Gadidae

Garfish Belone belone



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Table 1 (continued)English name Scientific name

Green woodpecker Picus viridis

Guillemot Uria aalge

Haddock Melanogrammus aeglefinus

Hake Merluccius merluccius

Halibut Hippoglossus hippoglossus

Hare Lepus timidus

Herring Clupea harengus

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Ling Molva molva

Lynx Lynx lynx

Mackerel Scomber scombrus

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Plaice Pleuronectes platessa

Pig Sus domesticus

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Pollack Pollachius pollachius

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Turbot Scophthalmus maximus

Tusk Borsme brosme

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White-tailed eagle Haliaeetus albicilla

Whiting Merlangius merlangus

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