Fish and Ships

Westerdahl 26.09.
2008 18:15 Uhr Seite 191
SOZIALGESCHICHTE DER SCHIFFFAHRT
왘 CHRISTER WESTERDAHL
Fish and Ships
Towards a Theory of Maritime Culture
The original title of this paper was: Maritime culture and coastal culture in the past. The start-
ing point was maritime ar chaeology. However, it is, I believe, not preposterous rather to call it
what it has in fact become , a discussion about cultural theory . My paper is at the same time
intended to serve as an attempt at a definition. A theory is close to a definition. But what is
theory? And what is culture? J ust mots d’honneur ? Couldn’ t culture just be replaced with
“identity” or “way of life?” What is maritime? Is there anything exclusively maritime? Could
we possibly finish up with anything other than a pragmatic ad hoc comment? Well, the answer
to all of these questions must be an emphatic no .
Besides, the use of concepts like culture , identity, even ways of life seems to imply that indi-
viduals can only be identified as carriers of one culture at a time. This is not true. Individuals as
well as groups can not only be acquainted with several cultures, they may in fact be part of them
in a very real sense . I believe it is obvious that, even if we deal with what we suppose is a
single culture, it is in itself at least two , taken as a combination of two or more wa ys of subsis-
tence. I think this is a good start for a theory .
What, then is the point of defining maritime culture or coastal culture? What are the advan-
tages of having a “theory?” Is it not rather complicated? Do we need it? I do think so myself .
The reason is the deeply felt loss of the cultural values associated with the maritime world of
the past. We cannot under stand them without a profound study of their roots . Why be so
modest? Those of us who study maritime culture have always been told by the mainstream that
our field is marginal. That is only superficially true . The aim of the definitions is to resurrect
the relationship of man with the sea as one of the bases for explaining cultural history in
general. This is how essential the sea has been,whether humans have lived in direct contact with
it or only had it as a permanent reference point.
The human perspective, after all, always consists of both sea and land.They function contem-
poraneously and so define each other in the human consciousness . The problem is , therefore,
how to define the specifically maritime in relation to what is specifically land-oriented or, if you
like, terrestrial. This is not at all self-evident. But those who ha ve an interest in matter s mari-
time tend instinctively to treat subjects which ma y reveal essential things only in relation to a
strictly maritime life. Unfortunately this may mean that their scope is excessively narrow.
I have myself tried to make a survey of what has been produced by international symposia
over a long period, so as to get a grasp on this instinct. However, it is apparently not to be found
among the specialized series, like the ISBSA, International Symposia on Boat and Ship Archae-
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Fig. 1 The making of a kokole lele, probably the largest logboat still made in the world, and used for off-shore
fishing, is a characteristic feature on the coast of Ghana. (Photo: Morten Sylvester)
ology, which I have attended since 1982. It is true that they are very interesting and very ad-
vanced in their highly international but still very narrow field. But a boat reveals very little of
the actual life cycle of individual human beings , even if it sheds light on other aspects of mari-
time culture . The same impression of particularism rapidly emerges when one reads The
International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, which has supposedly been the flagship of mari-
time archaeology since 1972.
But in 1982, the same year that I attended my fir st ISBSA, I founded another series of con-
ferences on maritime history, much more regional in their geographical scope , called Bottnisk
Kontakt, ‘Bothnian Contact,’ devoted in an interdisciplinary wa y to the flow of maritime cul-
tures, human beings and their objects in a given, rather limited, area of northern Europe.1 In a
somewhat haphazard, groping manner, sometimes even below the academic mark, I think that
in their content taken as a whole they represent what ma y be called maritime cultural history.
The fundamental difference is, I think, not only that they are interdisciplinary but that they are
concerned to a great extent with human beings as a totality and cannot, in the nature of things,
deal with the wider economy, the great events, the great ships, nor for example the mainstream
in shipbuilding, in the way that conferences with a more specialized focus , like the ISBSA, are
able to do . Maritime life up here has been of the everyda y subsistence kind, and has never
depended on marine resources alone. The archaeology and history of the vessels are still funda-
mental, of course, but this does not take over completely. The instinctive aim is to put even the
vessels in their context, to get some kind of holistic totality .2 If this “principle” were to be
applied to any other coast, even at the centre of European culture , we would find the same
everyday occupations and the same type of land-sea combinations . I believe this is the essence
of defining any kind of culture. This is a small-scale version of the Braudelian Annales approach.
An important element in it is using unconventional sources, since this kind of history, or archae-
ology, realizes that sources of the conventional kind are very scar ce. The application of results
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Fig. 2 The maritime world is still a male encla ve, especially at the local level, although it is presumably
changing more rapidly than before. Fishermen meeting on the water, Ångermanland, Sweden. (Photo: Christer
Westerdahl)
from a large array of disciplines, even from beyond the scope of the humanities, might perhaps
be even more productive. Unfortunately, no such syntheses have yet been made. But the poten-
tial of the material exists.
The problem of defining maritime culture is , as always, that any product of the land-sea re-
lationship would presumably be different from other s, to a greater or lesser degree . Variations
on the common theme would be almost infinite . The aim would accordingly be to find precise-
ly whether there is a common theme , and if so what it consists of . Although I ha ve given an
indication above of what it might be , I do not in any wa y consider this supposition, or rather
suspicion, sufficient. The perspective is supposed to give a generalized view , the essence, so to
speak. A particular problem is that the theory , or part of it, should be applicable to prehistoric
times or to other periods or areas which cannot be covered by conventional historical sources. It
is not possible just to get out into the field and ask people …
Let us not forget even for a moment, when we talk about culture, that the carriers of culture are
always human beings. What kind of people am I referring to here? I do not think, in fact, that
the answer is self-evident. As an example I will conduct a short enquiry into historical coastal
culture in the area where I ha ve been engaged lately, the county of Vest-Agder at the southern
tip of Norway. On this coast we can identify several central human spheres that are relevant:
1) In a local sense , fishing, small-scale agriculture and small-scale shipping were the pre-
dominant features of everyday life. We find several variations of maritime adaptation,consider-
ably more varieties which are “sociologically” definable than among sailors proper. But the life
cycle of an individual male often included shipping. The social divides were not based on the
comparatively egalitarian agrarian units but derived from truly maritime roots: “Parts of the
coastal society would therefore be stratified more on the basis of the difference between a skip-
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Fig. 3 The kind of maritime

culture that forms the basis of
this study is an everyday,
simple life, although it is not
uncomplicated. A deserted
fisherman/farmer’s cottage at
Vithall, Lake Vänern,Sweden.
(Photo: Christer Westerdahl)
per and a seaman than on that between a big farmer and a small farmer .”3 This is an essential
aspect, but it will serve only as a reminder.
2) There was also the specific cultural space of the loading wharfs and port cities with their
inns, ship’s chandler s, longshoremen, transporters of goods , ship broker s, repair shipyards .
Among types of harbour we find resting and emergency ha vens, small loading-places and last-
ly winter harbours, where groups of fishermen,pilots, or sailors on half-pay act as caretakers for
the ships lying at anchor and moored to the rocks for months .
3) What about the space represented by shipyards for new vessels under construction? How
are these to be defined in terms of cultural identity? And how are the people to be defined who
deliver the timber, the tar, the iron, the sail-cloth and all the components of the rigging?
4) Then there were a sizeable number of pilots, the buoy and sea mark attendants, the salvage
people, the lighthouse keepers, their assistants, and as a clear mark of the presence of the state
the customs officers and the supervisor s of the other groups engaged in pilotage or the main-
tenance of lighthouses . It must be pointed out that very often the life cycle of a small-scale
farmer/fisherman included a period as a sailor in his youth and as a pilot or assistant pilot in his
later years. They may also have gone to sea to emigrate for a while, usually to the U.S., in order
to save some capital to invest in their homesteads. This may have meant a period abroad of more
than ten years.
5) Another maritime sphere of occupation was that of the na vy, usually with a recruitment
cycle including some time in the mer chant marine either before or after the period of enlist-
ment. Many people in this category come from the “small” world of the fishermen/farmer s.
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Fig. 4 Maritime life could in fact depend on an iron ring , in a double sense. Without it, of course, a ship might
be lost. But what is more surprising is that man y people, especially widows (and there were man y of them)
depended on the fee they charged for the use of it. In contemporary 18th and 19th-century estate in ventories
certain rings – and even shares in them, down to one-seventh – were of great v alue, in fact far beyond the
price of a good boat! The rings are still a char acteristic feature of the main routes and harbours along the roc ky
coasts of Norway and Sweden; they were probably introduced by Hanseatic merchants at the time of the intro-
duction of large ships (carracks) with several masts in the early part of the 16th century . (Photo: Christer
Westerdahl)
This sphere, although to some degree isolated from other s, could for example be a central ele-
ment in the establishment of mental values in the “exterior” forms of culture.
6) Then there were all those who depend on shipping, who survive on building, owning, buy-
ing and selling ships , on trading the wood, iron, foodstuffs, corn, fancy goods, etc. And all the
others who lived by transporting goods and supplying these people with what they needed.
What was the strength of their (possible) maritime element? A documented attitude among the
aristocrats of classical antiquity was utter contempt for sailors or merchants (at that time almost
identical) as a fickle, dissolute, multinational and thus dangerous element. This attitude, which
was especially prevalent among those aristocrats who actually profited from their trade 4, does
not lack parallels in modern times.
7) The last, but not least, variety is sailors’ culture. It has already been indicated that this was
the product of a very stratified society, and accentuates it to the extreme. It showed an elaborate
hierarchy. The classes of sailor s with watertight compartments separating them are , for in-
stance, skippers, mates, and the ordinary seamen with their inevitable bottom strata, the real
proletarians, the unqualified, often very young , sailors (where I would probably ha ve been if
I had ever gone to sea). Sometimes the classes in a small vessel are represented by only one in-
dividual at each level, reminding us of the fact that the scale of values passes from the big ships
to the small ones.
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Fig. 5 The first mention of iron mooring rings along the sea route to Ber gen in Norway was made by Olaus
Magnus in his Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (1555), 2:13. On his Carta marina, 1539, they are
marked at Stad and in the inner route to Ber gen.
To most international sailor s, irrespective of rank, who sa w the coastline of this mélange of
maritime culture, it remained a line or a distant rocky feature for several da ys and nights. If a
landfall was made from northwest Europe , it most likely included the Naze, the point of Lin-
desnes, where ships from the North Sea parted company to go either north to Bergen or
Archangelsk or to the Kattegat and the Baltic, of which the latter was by far the more common
destination. But storms from the west or the south-west were endemic during passages , not
only in late autumn, and the currents usually ran the other wa y and if visibility was poor they
brought you, unwittingly, dangerously close to land.
So quite a number of surviving sailors were blown into the many resting and emergency har-
bours of this coast, where they ma y have had a fortnight of repair s, mostly spent in the inns ,
which were always of two kinds or had two sections , one for the captain and his mate (serving
wine), another for the common sailor s (serving brandy). There may have been a few da ys of
unloading or reloading at another site on the same coast, but otherwise the voyage went on.
However, the short stops ma y have left a few foreign influences in the local maritime culture .
Some event remembered in oral tradition, foreign words and phrases and some place-names are
cases in point. Others are less obvious, but perhaps significant.
The Hansa sailors were presumably the first major group to fit this pattern, since they estab-
lished the trading traffic in earnest in the 15th century . Among those heading for a harbour in
the region were Dutch and Scottish small-scale skipper s satisfying their need for timber . They
must have become familiar with their routes in these skerries, since at least six journeys in one
year by the same skipper to the same supplier (unusually , a farming family) have been record-
ed. Another import to Europe were Norwegian sailor s who sailed on Dutch and other vessels
and brought back foreign influences, especially to present-day Vest-Agder.
From the 16th century the Agder coast in general was the main Norwegian part of the skude-
handel, the small-scale trading across Skagerrak/Kattegat. Almost all the small vessels used in
this traffic were built here, with a clear adaptation to the sandy, shallow shores of Jutland. This
is why they were called sandskuder. The smaller varieties were indeed designed to be hauled
ashore, out of the reach of storms . The intense exchange of complementary goods brought
197
Fig. 6 The sloop Ruth was one of the last ships used in skudehandelen between south Norway and north Jut-
land, Denmark. She was built at Svinør in Vest-Agder, Norway, in 1854.The ship is now owned b y the National
Museum of Denmark and is kept at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. (Photo: Werner Karrasch,The Viking
Ship Museum, Roskilde)
together J utlanders and Egds (that is , people from Agder) in many wa ys over the cour se of
several hundred years. Some of them emigrated to the opposite coast.
These are all aspects of maritime culture, which vary in their emphasis on cultural contact and
the intensity of the maritime element. Particularly during the last great period of sail in the
19th century, this coast was remarkably active even on an international scale , in shipbuilding
and ship-owning. Among the maritime encla ves, Arendal and Grimstad in Aust-Agder were
supreme, although quite small as townships. For some years, Arendal, with its 500 sailing ships,
was probably the greatest sailing ship-owning community in the world. Most of the ships were
manned entirely by local people . It seems that this pattern of recruitment meant that the
sailors’ sense of identity was more rooted in their local Agder origin than in any international
sailors’ culture. In certain contexts it may have been a Norwegian or even a Nordic identity. On
the other hand no common Kattegat or Baltic maritime culture seems to exist 5, although this
may be debatable . In any case , all cultural traits ma y be bits and pieces of other cultures and
other traits. Perhaps a great mélange is the ultimate outcome.
Maritime culture, whatever it is, will leave traces. But it will also show its former importance
when it is gone . It can lea ve a psychological void when it disappear s. Shipping in its heyda y
implied openness, bravery and adaptability. Stagnation and finally a total decline in the active
traditions triggered a shift in attitudes on this coast. Already by the end of the 19th century the
people of “the coastal area now (became) more inward-looking and conservative than before .”6
At one time the male section of the population had adapted to and learnt much from the tem-
porary socio-cultural space aboard international shipping. During the ocean voyages there
emerged a very characteristic, distinctive and truly international seamen’s culture, analyzed as
a sociological system by Knut Weibust in his Deep Sea Sailors.7 Sailors might remain on their
ships for year s. Many others, perhaps most, only made shorter voyages , for instance between
the North Sea and the Baltic, where ethnic and geographical origin meant more and the period
198
Fig. 7 The dangerous rounding of capes, especially those with strong and unpredictable currents , often leads to
the development of rest and emergency out-harbours with settlements. At the famous rocks of point Lindesnes
in south Norway there were two such maritime cultur al centres, one on each side, west and east. This is the
inlet, seen from the land, of the western harbour, called Sellør and known from the Viking Age onwards. Lin-
desnes is the promontory in the bac kground.The other harbour, to the east, is Svinør (mentioned in the caption
to the preceding fig.). (Photo: Christer Westerdahl)
of isolation at sea was much shorter.8 If we so wish, we can thus distinguish at least four socio-
logically identifiable classes. There is also the possibility of a further sub-classification into ori-
gin and identity, of which the first is tangible but the second is founded on individual cognition
and context. This makes such a categorization or classification meaningless .
Fig. 8 Small-scale salt extraction must have been possible at many places along the Atlantic seaboard, without
any actual salines. Olaus Magnus ( Historia, 13:43) mentions the procedures used in Norwa y and illustrates the
pouring of sea water into v essels, possibly for evaporation, along with the boiling of water in lar ge vats.
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However, in making a survey of the lack of theoretical foundations of maritime ar chaeology,

Joe Flatman maintains that this sailors’ culture and its manifestations should be at the core.9 He
simply ignores the shore-bound coastal culture . The heart of the matter is what has hitherto
captured most of the attention of archaeologists in this field, namely wrecks of the great ocean-
going ships. It would be meaningless, too, to deny that sailors’ culture has influenced and been
influenced by local coastal culture . But is it actually a part of this coastal culture? That is very
doubtful indeed. As Brynjulv Gjerdåker puts it, culture is alwa ys “a field of tension between
individual and collective, between what is universally human and what is group-specific.” Apart
from this, the concept of culture is in itself “hyper-complex, it contains components which, seen
in isolation, are contradictory or mutually incompatible, but at the same time it has a consisten-
cy and an inner coherence.”10
As an empirical background, I myself can draw on my knowledge of conditions on the Norr-
land coast of Sweden. I surveyed this region in 1975-1982. The conference project mentioned
above, Bottnisk Kontakt, has shown me new aspects, largely from the Finnish side of the Baltic.
During the ten year s of my resear ch and lecturing at the Univer sity of Copenhagen and the
research centre of the National Museum of Denmark in Roskilde , the scope of my work began
to include Denmark. With my present few year s of research in Norway I am trying to extend
my Nordic orbit. This may depend on chance, but it is not by chance that the Nordic countries
as a whole are singularly suitable as a basis for reflexions on coastal culture and maritime cul-
ture. However you define these terms , they offer exceptionally strong and well-documented
applications for them.
On the need for definitions

I have been reflecting on these themes for some time . The reason is partly that coastal culture ,
kystkultur, kustkultur, has nowadays become a politically correct and much-used concept,with-
out any other foundation, e.g. in a definition. This makes it particularly important to examine
closely what it stands for . In my case , I have considered both concepts , maritime culture and
coastal culture, with reference to a number of empirical issues in related questions of cultural
history. Recently I presented an answer to the question of whether the Swedish Lake Vänern
could be considered to be or to ha ve been a repository of maritime culture .11 Unfortunately,
I usually veer off into more or less well-motivated digressions . This is a difficult issue.
What does coastal culture mean? This is unclear. The culture in question ought, by definition,
to be practised by people who live on the coast. But what culture is it? Presumably this ques-
tion could be answered very simply by asking: why do they live there? It is their occupations –
which to a large extent define their culture – that should capture our attention, and not where
they live physically , even though there will surely be a certain correlation between the two .
Living in an ecological niche leads to an adaptation precisely to that niche . But would it not be
better to use a term that directly told us what they were doing? Basically this is the same prob-
lem as in the old bone of contention, whether to replace marine or underwater archaeology
with maritime archaeology as a worthy name for a humanistic pur suit.12 The latter term is
much broader than the first, which concentrates on the location of the finds under water, rather
than recognizing the reasons for ha ving a definition linking this subject to the humanities and
to cultural history. It would be enough to point to its logical and close relationship with what
has long been called maritime history and maritime ethnology. Consider, by contrast, marine
biology – not maritime biology. Unfortunately the unsuitable term has become too widely
accepted to be replaced entirely. Its only advantage is that it is two or three letter s shorter than
the other.
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Fig. 9 A salient feature of man y maritime communities is their religiosity and its social expression in v arious
features in the adornment of the church. Votive ships were donated by both sailors and fishermen, in this case
from the town of Gävle, in the chapel at the fishing harbour of Ulvöhamn in Ångermanland, Sweden. In this
instance a real contemporary ship may be referred to in the name on the stern, which reads (Anno) Gustaf från
Gefle 1776 or 1770, but the model is hardly a recreation of it. (Photo: Christer Westerdahl)
I think that coastal culture has the same relationship to maritime culture. The former term is
too vague and does not satisfy our requirement for a word suited to an academic field of study .
But it is not tactically opportune to insist that politicians replace it and – as a possible con-
sequence – their focus. For such reasons I cannot not argue for any real changes . But I want to
keep the two words, in order to be able to define them more precisely .
To me, marine archaeology is the same as underwater ar chaeology. It is a part of the wider
subject of maritime archaeology. The latter is the study of maritime culture using archaeological
means and methods . Coastal culture gives the local, ever-changing, picture of any particular
coast, but maritime culture is what is common to all, perhaps even diachronically.
Nothing is more sterile , not to sa y meaningless, than bickering about definitions instead of
really doing something positive. If Karl Popper did not say it, was it possibly the F rench ency-
clopédistes who likened the love of your own homestead to a horse’s love of its own stable? This
quotation (if it is one) appear s to be in the style of both. But the interesting thing is not its
origin, nor the wording, but the essence. Johan Kloster argues “that the central question is not
what coastal culture is, but what we choose to make it, by means of conservation, research and
mediation to the public.”13 For this reason I will not repeat what I said before. The terms denote
different things and they may be necessary, all of them, but for varying reasons.
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Poul Holm mentions in the introduction to his comprehensive dissertation Kystfolk, ‘Coastal
people’14, his expectation of finding a common coastal culture along the Kattegat/Skagerrak
coast, but concludes that “the concept is very wide and in reality presupposes a result that only
an analysis can give . A broad concept like ‘coastal culture’ is simply too elastic to be used in
research.” It may be that Holm means that the concept is too elastic just in this context. But
I think that the validity of his judgment could be extended.He continues: “This is why the main
emphasis of the book is on the study of recorded contacts in connection with broad interna-
tional movements and also by considering unilateral political intervention” (by the states in-
volved). This research strategy could perhaps be an effective means of deconstructing both con-
cepts, coastal culture and maritime culture.
In this text I have chosen a different approach. In a specifically history-oriented study it would
certainly be necessary to interpret every stage in each separate coastal culture in its own con-
text. This is a particularist and a pluralist interpretation of culture: every culture taken sepa-
rately, and they are many of them! “Cultures (in the plural) are a system of relationships which
become identified by what separates them.”15
Whether or not we speak of maritime or coastal culture in the singular , they would both be
widely applicable concepts. They risk becoming “too elastic.” Poul Holm has shown that what
others ma y consider to be largely a common culture in fact consists of many very different
adaptations to conditions in the maritime settlements of the Kattegat/Skagerrak region. Would
it then be more appropriate to use the concepts in the plural, maritime cultures or coastal cul-
tures? Is there really any common feature at all, apart from the intimate connection with the
sea in people’s daily occupations?
It is seldom emphasized that general conditions of culture in the past can be the permanent
result of maritime activities. One striking fact in northern Europe is the unity of Nordic culture
over the course of a thousand years. Its linguistic and practical consequences cover an enormous
area, ranging intermittently from Greenland to the eastern Baltic.In a north-south direction the
Fig. 10 Bird hunting with nets , from Olaus Magnus ( Historia, 19:46), who places this scene in the White Sea
on his Carta marina of 1539.The widespread use of nets in the Eur asian area has been analyzed b y Nils Storå
in a unique work (1968). Large quantities of eider duck bones in the Viking Age town of Birka in Lake Mälaren
are clear evidence of the use of hunting nets from the late Iron Age onwards. A considerable addition to mari-
time cultural assets, this method was used up to the F irst World War in the large archipelago of south Finland.
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Fig. 11 Among the outer

wind-swept skerries of Stock-
holm archipelago only the
booths and cottages of long-
range fishermen – and possibly
an occasional wooden boat –
can still be seen. Gillöga.
traditional span is that from the former boundary river Eider in the south (now in Germany)
to the Old Norse name Ægistafr for the somewhat imprecise border point at the Kola peninsula.
It is a remarkable fact that, seen from a European perspective, the Nordic languages are but dia-
lects of the same language . How has this unity been maintained? It is inconceivable that this
should be ascribed only to power and coer cion. And for speakers of other adjacent languages it
has apparently served as something of a lingua franca.
On the other hand, the tangible heritage in terms of the material culture of historical times
in maritime western Europe is spurious. For fairly recent times it is possible to refer to the work
of Sigurd Erixon.16 The same impression is unfortunately given by the vast archaeological pan-
orama presented by Barry Cunliffe.17
Probably another factor has to be taken into account, although its significance is hard to gauge,
the extent of common values. Divergent views do exist. In the maritime field they are perhaps
best illustrated by the diametrically opposed la ws on fishing rights between Denmark/Norway
and Sweden/Finland. Generally speaking, in the west fishing is free, in the east it belongs to the
owner of the land. The simplest way of explaining this would perhaps be to refer to the enor-
mous land uplift in the east, where the newly exposed land has to ha ve an owner, and owner-
203
ship will logically enough fall to the individual who already owns the dry land further inland.
The waters of the potential new land will follow the same trend with regard to legislation. The
effects of the uplift of the land are striking , particularly on the shallow coasts of western Fin-
land. The cultural geographer Michael Jones aptly calls this region “the daughter of the sea.”18
But the common historical culture of the Nordic orbit must inevitably be ascribed to a system
of maritime connections (whatever its content, and whether power is involved or not) that has
existed continuously since at least the Bronze Age. This is a strong case for the existence of a
basically maritime culture.
However, this demonstration does not exclude an even wider per spective. As to common
maritime culture I would refer to the following criteria for a much larger group than the Nor-
dic peoples. I cannot at the present stage demonstrate it to the same degree as in the Nordic
orbit. But I will argue that at least the western seaboard of Europe and the Mediterranean are
included.
My (very) tentative criteria are:
– the particular habitus of the maritime sphere ,
– its outward identity,
– its international character,
- its archetypes,
– its cultural landscape,
- not least its cognitive landscape
– including its ritual negotiation of the antagonistic relationship between sea and land, its
cosmology,
– its particular economic and social world.
All these appear as debatable, insubstantial and imprecise categories. On the other hand cos-
mology and archetypes are presumably more easily discovered and delimited.
Let us consider some scattered observations on remains in the mind and remnants on the shore.
I think that both are characterized by apreoccupation with directions, and combinations of time,
direction and distance . They may seem to be just a product of professional involvement with
navigation, but I believe they ha ve generally been passed on in the upbringing of children.
These archetypes stand out as discrete but at the same time concrete symbols and ritual pat-
terns, revealed in behaviour at sea, the building of labyrinths/stone mazes, compass cards, the
transit lines of oral tradition. Apart from these , one can discern a preoccupation with the
natural landscapes, including the sea itself and its obvious combination with and extension to
the underwater landscape, and also (perhaps this is self-evident, but I will mention it neverthe-
less) the wealth of linguistic and mental concepts relating to boats , winds and the weather in
general. There is an exceptionally highly-trained kind of per ception involving all the senses.
Among archetypes, certain types of migratory tales connected with, for instance, shipyards
come to mind. The maritime cultural landscape is more concrete and tangible 19, but at the pre-
sent stage I am more interested in exploring its cognitive aspect and with it the ritual land-
scape.20 Obviously, most of this is relational and depends on the combination of elements .
Several of the constituent parts need to be experienced individually and therefore tend to be
hard to define.
The two main parts, the archetypes and the experience of the landscape are, at any rate, some-
thing that I would consider common to any maritime culture . These criteria can then be tested
as the social heritage of practitioners of maritime culture wherever they may be found. If indeed
they are part of one common culture and accordingly the singular culture can be used, rather
than the plural.“With this as a background it is more natural to speak of a border-crossing mari-
time culture than of coastal culture.”21
204
As mentioned in addition to this more coastally oriented maritime culture we encounter the
international sailors’ culture, which has been studied by authors like Weibust (1958, 1969/1976)
and Flatman (2003), the latter in connection with ar chaeology.
The term maritime ma y produce semantic problems . In reality these problems are alwa ys a
question of content. The Latin word mare undoubtedly refers to the sea, and so do the adjec-
tives derived from it, maritimus and marinus. But this is a just a formal wa y of looking at it.
The cultural significance should be emphasized above all other considerations . This is why I
have argued that the conditions by a large lake like Vänern may very well be so similar to those
by the sea that we are entitled to consider them maritime . To demonstrate this correspondence
was one of the aims of my study of this lake .22 Of course such “maritime” lakes must be of a
certain minimum size . But their physical size is secondary to population, economic potential,
everything that is conducive to active shipping , and last but not least biological production, the
output of fish. Another prerequisite for a well-founded opinion would be observations of the
longue durée, in Fernand Braudel’s sense.23 Such an analysis would prove that the development
of traits of maritime culture is not just a temporary phenomenon.
In a broader cultural sense we could perhaps speak of maritime civilizations , such as that of
the Greeks and of Hellenism or that of Southeast Asia.
The gender perspective

How are we to formulate the gender perspective, the relationship between the roles of men and
women in an everyday maritime culture? A sailor’s life is without doubt alwa ys dominated by
Fig. 12 One of the author’s most

valuable informants, Helga Hillberg
on the island of Limön near Gävle,
Gästrikland, Sweden.There were not
many women among these thou-
sands of informants but, as I point
out in this text, they were among
the most reliable. (Photo: Christer
Westerdahl, 1977)
205
males. It can be judged a male preserve . The sea woman, the woman who lives and works on
ships, appears only to do so in traditional female roles , as a cook or a cleaner . Anything else is
an exception to the general rule. At sea, women are thus absent and appear to the sailor as land-
lubbers and distant objects of desire. In the ritual landscape they are often taboo. Their ordinary
role in everyday professional shipping or fishing is that of the waiting wives.As such, they often
play an important role in the different brands of religious feeling and practice , upholding its
normative values on land and handing them on to the children. 24
But in the past the typical kind of everyda y culture was filled with doubtfully defined or
variable occupations. In the fisherman/peasant variety in which I am particularly interested,the
women are as active as the men. In North Norway this variation is characterized as a “peasant
culture with strong maritime adaptations.”25 Fishing farmers or farming fishermen? It ma y be
difficult to place the stress on either one of these occupations; they belong to different seasons,
and moreover they are often supplemented by other part-time pur suits, such as boat-building,
hunting, etc.
Certainly the role of the woman is mostly agrarian or tied to the land in other ways. She may
use the boat to collect eggs or down.She does not only wait for her husband or for her sons. But
she may be even more hea vily involved. In my survey area she was an important and indeed
essential maritime partner in pair -fishing or in fishing with stationary bow-nets close to the
shore. In exceptional cases she could be a huntress , an inn-keeper or even a boat-builder . It is
clear that her role could vary considerably , but it is also obvious that her experiences and her
knowledge of coastal culture are as accurate and reliable as those of the man,in many cases more
so. This was definitely my experience from a large number of interviews .
The versatile working woman is actually the decisive factor for the survival of an everyday
maritime life mode . The gender per spective provides one of many signs of a variable cultural
pattern, rather than a permanently fixed relationship. The variability is a product of adaptation
to changes in that culture’ s agrarian elements and in local society as a whole . But the woman
was not in a dominant position in this patriar chal world and could not make her own choices:
“In this scenario the women were the pivot, their area of action was expanded or restricted
according to the degree to which the man was absent. ”26
Fig. 13 Thousands of nesting boxes were set up b y coastal people as a source of eggs. These made a valuable
contribution to the household economy and were sometimes even offered for sale. It hardly ever happened that
too many eggs were taken, according to the account given by Andersson 1945 with reference to the Åland
islands. Olaus Magnus, Historia (1555), 19:8.
206
But there are variations aplenty . The extreme dichotomy of male and female roles was par-
ticularly apparent in the maritime enclave of the Danish island of Læsø in the Kattegat.27 In this
case one can really speak of two different worlds .
Maritime culture: The role of the boat

My alternative to the more restricted concept of coastal culture, which tends to reflect local and
more variable conditions , is thus maritime culture, applied in the sense of a wider and more
generalized definition. Maritime culture is , like coastal culture , bound to a human ecological
zone, the dependence on and exploitation of a large body of water . Life faces the sea. In coastal
culture it seems to me by definition to be possible to live with one’s back to that sea. It may just
mean that you ha ve your home and employment there , without entering into any direct rela-
tionship with the sea.
The Dutch social anthropologist A.H.J. Prins is one of the few who ha ve made a genuine
attempt to define maritime culture:“Since this book deals with maritime culture, it is legitimate
to ask how we know whether a culture (operationally defined as ‘patterned set of recurrent
events’) is, or is to be considered maritime. A first answer to this is to refer to significant point-
ers: nautical similes in the colloquial language , preferably also amongst those whose calling is
not that of a sailor – if such people can be found. If it is technically difficult to systematically
treat spoken language with this in mind, one can turn to the work of the poet in Lamu culture ,
poetry being more highly developed than prose as a store of systematized thinking brought into
form.”28
Another criterion would be that other groups consider a certain area or a certain group as
more maritime than other s. Prins continues: “Other pointers are: the occurrence of maritime
proverbs and their frequent (or frequency of) use; children playing with toy-boats; men build-
ing ship’s models in their leisure hour s; the integration of sea and ship into the make-up of
functionally non-maritime institutions (votive offerings , initiation, mortuary ritual etc.); the
(degree of) elaboration of myths concerning the sea; the occurrence of maritime patron-saints (like
our St. Nicholas); the spending of leisure hour s near the waterfront, crowds gathering at
launchings, arrivals and departures of ships; the attitude toward fish, and so on, and so forth. As
some of these (and similar) pointer s lend themselves to quantification, we can even speak (at
least with regard to some properties) of the degree to which a culture is maritime ... ”29
To me some of these criteria are rather doubtful. They seem too general. In Scandinavia there
are – and were – very few people , if any, who do not use maritime similes and very few small
boys who do not build bark boats and very few older boys who do not build model boats (plas-
tic), etc. These elements are part of the general culture and have functioned in this way for cen-
turies without any direct connection to a living maritime culture. In this respect, then, not only
the Nordic countries but most of Western Europe and North America would constitute one sin-
gle (living) maritime culture. I can certainly imagine that they have a background in an ancient
maritime culture, once dominant as the creator of values in society. But it is different today. And
even if these criteria may indicate a living or a past maritime culture, they would be difficult or
impossible to use for the study of historical or prehistoric remains without recourse to any writ-
ten sources or to oral tradition. To be able to generalize the concept, I always consider such con-
sequences of proposed definitions.
Still, the pointers suggested by Prins deserve attention and should be remembered: not only
his view that cultural specificity could be graded (as above , “the degree to which …”, etc), but
especially his remark about “the integration of sea and ship into the make-up of functionally
207
Fig. 14 Booths and net stands at Pajuperä fishing camp on the lar ge island of Hailuoto (Sw, Karlö) near Oulu
(Uleåborg) on the Finnish side of the inner Bothnian Ba y. Sea booths of this kind were once a common sight
along both sides of the Bothnian. They were “satellites” to the farms and thus mostly belonged to them. The
coast here was very shallow and sandy, so during the summer the fishing boats mostly rode out the surf at
anchor. (Photo: Christer Westerdahl)
non-maritime institutions”, which is extremely relevant to the discussion about the significance
of the ship since the late Neolithic and the Bronze Age (in fact, apparently even earlier) in mor-
tuary rituals and symbolism in the European North. However, his phrase “functionally non-
maritime” makes me somewhat uneasy. I smell a rat here . Functionalism is definitely not the
most relevant basis for studying cognitive structures . But I concede that I ma y be haunted by
imaginary terrors.
The first really important criterion is rather that “people who practise a maritime culture”
(well, what is the proper nomen agentis?) are a ware of doing it, or feel separate in some wa y
from others, and that those who do not practise it recognize that the other s do. This is all fine,
apart from the fact that none of them would really use the concept“maritime culture”. But, still,
one cannot apply this criterion to prehistoric societies .
What is characteristic of an everyday maritime culture in the present, and also rather typical
of most coastal culture as I know it, is that it exploits a number of niches both in society and
nature by the sea. It is basically, as mentioned before, a form of adaptation or rather a combina-
tion of such adaptations. A common feature is the personal maritime handling of a boat and the
experience of whatever ma y be encountered in or with a boat on a coastal stretch: flooding or
normal tides, ice, being frozen in, winter harbour s, bad or exceedingly good catches , storms,
leaks, salvage at sea or along the shores , either rescuing people or salvaging vessels and their
equipment, on the beach, on a rocky coast or out at sea, and finally the break-up of the wreck
and the secondary use of the ship’s parts in new ships or houses. It is a living relationship with
nature. It is vital to be able to determine your position by means of transit lines and the direc-
tion of the seabirds’ flight, to know the pits in the seabed and the signs that warn of a change
208
Fig. 15 Sewing a boat, from Olaus Magnus’s Historia (1555), 4:10. On his Carta marina (1539) the scene has
been located in the Finnish inland.
in the weather, and to be familiar with the shallows where perch breed, if you want to fish suc-
cessfully and avoid the dangers inherent in approaching them.
The boat is the essential tool,as an extension of the human body;it has been created by mari-
time man, and it assumes a significance to maritime man which has few, if any, counterparts in
terrestrial culture. It is interesting, however, to note the close relationship of agrarian people to
the horse, admittedly not created by them, but bred and domesticated. Similarly, the roles of
ships and horses do combine in certain rock art motifs, e.g. the horses’ heads on the stems.30 The
Nordic similes and poetic metaphor s, the kennings, make this combination abundantly clear .
However I think that this is not the only interesting parallel, and I have proposed other, cosmo-
logical, reasons for this combination. In any case , the cognitive ar chetypes of the maritime
Fig. 16 Dramatic sea accidents were and are v ery much a part of maritime life . Ambitious local people could
turn them to advantage by salvaging vessels, selling or recycling the hull or selling the car go.The method of
salvage illustrated here is basically the same as the one still in use . Olaus Magnus, Historia (1555), 12:16.
209
sphere most often and quite naturally concern boats , the handling of them and the building of
them.31
The handling of boats and ships is a central theme of all maritime culture . We have still to
realize fully that to a very great extent the total dependence on the boat as the means of trans-
port for all heavy and bulky goods was reduced only by the introduction of railwa ys, and later
by roads. This could mean as late as around AD 1900 in most of the Nordic countries , and not
only on the coasts . The turning-point ma y have come even later in certain districts with ex-
tremely difficult topography, including the province of Agder in South Norway. Transport his-
tory up to this time is thus the history of the use of water, in summer and winter alike. But the
history of the boat and of maritime culture is not only transport history , it is just as much the
history of movement in general in maritime space . And in both these respects there is an
equivalent dependence on the boat in inland regions along river s and by the side of lakes .
It might be possible to find border s, in a geographical sense , between different variations of
the cultural pattern.Thus, if we are to understand plurality and variety it could be of some bene-
fit to speak of maritime cultural areas rather than of individual maritime cultures. In any par-
ticular case the various factors of deviation would be found in economic and social structure, lin-
guistic variation, boat types, technology, implements, folklore, mental representations, etc. Only
the fact that such special traits are obvious is an indication of a flourishing and specifically mari-
time culture in the area.
I have maintained that maritime cultural areas could have (and ma y be expected to ha ve)
other borders than those which were drawn with regard to terrestrial aspects, for instance terri-
torial and administrative borderlines. On the other hand Ulf Lundström has proposed for Norr-
land in Sweden that the inland boat types rather reflect local identity in the same wa y as dia-
Fig. 17 The sites of wrecks were (for practical reasons) well known to coastal people, especially to fishermen.
Maritime archaeologists can use this knowledge toda y to their own advantage and for the benefit of science .
(Photo: Department of Maritime Civilizations, University of Haifa, Israel)
210
lects do.32 If maritime culture on the coast is the dominant factor in creating identity in an area,
the borders of its differing varieties will perhaps be the borders for several cultural traits inland.
And borders based on culture could on the other hand perhaps be at the root of administrative
and political delimitation.
Culture and life mode

What about the concept of culture? The problems surrounding this concept are indeed stagger-
ing. There are possibly as many definitions as there are scholar s of the humanities . This is in
fact how it should be , because it demonstrates with admirable clarity that the most important
concepts stimulate the liveliest forms of discussion.In one classic paper 164 different definitions
are mentioned.33 The concept in question is in any case an umbrella concept, perhaps used only
as a loose term for precisely that kind of narrow scope on which the researcher is forced to con-
centrate. It would, anyway, be dishonest not to declare what it means here, even if in a very wide
perspective. In principle it would be defensible to use whatever abstraction or theory we like ,
provided that we support it with other concepts and sufficiently unambiguous explanations .
This would also mean that we can use a definition which is fruitful and easily manageable . In
this case I find it particularly valuable if it can be used when elements of the past have to be dis-
cerned in the maritime cultural landscape.
The boundaries of culture do not ha ve to coincide with any delimitations of ethnicity or
(national) identity or other related wa ys of defining one’ s own individuality or that of one’ s
group on the basis of a common origin.There is something suspect about that.A strong and per-
sistent need for borders and classification should be seen rather as a sign of psychological inse-
curity than as a self-evident obligation. As wise men have expressed it even in the past, history
does not know of any origin of any people . Such origins have only been created by historians
and other writers, trying to prove the truth of their own ideas of glory or , most likely, those of
their masters. This approach to a definition of culture has been profoundly discredited.
Archaeological and other “cultures” of a hypothetical order ha ve also been used to vindicate
the superiority of a group in relation to others. As we have indicated, it must be emphasized that
there are no “pure” and “exclusive” cultures in this or any other sense. On the contrary, what-
ever you call culture is alwa ys a mixture, a mélange, of other “cultures.” A creolization, if you
like. But it is a unique combination of these cultural elements. Being such a mixture, every cul-
ture must be considered “unique.” That may appear paradoxical, but we just have to face it.
Probably this means that every definition will be more or less a definition ad hoc, i.e. it will
be made for the context, and cannot be repeated for all eternity . A point has to be made , quite
simply. My inclination would be to stress the cognitive aspects. Any phenomenon worthy of the
name of a culture should display a particular cognition, different from others. From this follow
internal cohesion and a sense of being somewhat different from other s – though not necessari-
ly better than others.
Thus, I believe it is in this context that we should speak of maritime culture . Like any other
culture it is eminently a mixture, a creolization, of others. It is based on the subsistence gained
from the seas and the water , and consists of all the thought patterns , cosmologies, customs,
objects, phenomena and patterns of action connected with a life by the sea. It is, in other words,
adapted to ecology and pur suits in this context. This is by no means all that you can sa y about
it. It may be that everyda y maritime culture is more a life mode than a bunch of superficial
characteristics. The life mode concept was formulated by my former colleague at the University
of Copenhagen, the ethnologist Thomas Højrup.34
What we would call “subsidiary” occupations or means of livelihood are the rule in this life
211
Fig. 18 Wreckage
was always put to
some use. Ship’s
knees in the interior
of a traditional cot-
tage on the island of
Læsø, Denmark.The
shallow sandy coasts
of Læsø were noto-
riously dangerous for
shipping. (Photo:
Christer Westerdahl)
mode. They seem to have been a persistent pattern. The survey by William Fitzhugh of circum-
polar prehistory demonstrated that there are extremely few archaeological “cultures” – indeed,
perhaps only one , the Aleutian variety – that appear to be entirely dependent on maritime
resources, according to the criteria used. 35 But how the people of these cultures thought of
themselves we ha ve no idea. They may, for all we know , have imagined themselves to be the
maritime group par préférence in contrast to surrounding landlubbers. But their cognition could
never be adduced as any kind of support. For prehistory we can only rely on material remains .
Fig. 19 Large-scale whaling was once an important long-r ange maritime industry. But the stranding of a sin-
gle whale on the Atlantic coast might be of significant benefit to a local community . Such events were also not
unknown in the Baltic. Olaus Magnus, Historia (1555), 21:11, 21:15.
212
There may not even be a permanently “primary” trade, maritime or not, in such a life mode.
Among all the “subsidiary” pursuits, or niches, in history we find fishing of various types, hunt-
ing birds and mammals both at sea and inland, the gathering of berries , nuts, down and eggs,
boat-building, ferrying, shipping at several levels from skipper to ordinary seaman, pilotage,
upkeep of sea marks and lighthouses . A small garden-plot next to the house and some sheep ,
perhaps a cow , might be the only agrarian element. Fairly often, however, this element is
stronger. Among border cases, in more than one meaning, we find wreck-plundering, piracy and
smuggling. Material traces of these later pursuits may be more common than we think, e.g. the
peculiar localization of certain harbours in the Ægean from the Early Iron Age onwards.
Maritime culture in the sense of a life mode is tough. If any of the subsidiary pur suits is
impossible or threatened, the main emphasis will perhaps be shifted to another niche. But there
are also, at least in later times , truly professional maritime trades , such as that of the interna-
tional sailor. This is the social system described byWeibust.36 On the other hand this sailor may,
however qualified as a seaman, continue to possess a part of this small world of many coastal
trades, to which he may return in his old age.
The archaeology of the maritime cultural landscape

A short definition of the maritime cultural landscape would be the whole network of sailing
routes, with ports, havens and harbours along the coast, and its related constructions and other
remains of human activity, underwater as well as terrestrial.
Fig. 20 Chapels were erected in numerous harbours all along the archipelagoes and coasts of the North, some
built as early as the Late Middle Ages. Hundreds are still standing.This foundation on Drakön island, outside
Hudiksvall, Hälsingland, Sweden, probably dates from the late 15th century. Its tiny churchyard was used to
bury drowned sailors right up into the 19th century .The chapels were and still are a source of local pride, to
some extent even outshining the local parish church. Normally they formed part of a harbour milieu, marking a
maritime cultural centre of some standing. (Photo: Christer Westerdahl)
213
A broader per spective also includes shipping , shipbuilding and fishing and their respective
hinterlands, with nodal points of coastal towns and land roads , fords, ferries and inland water-
ways. Material remains are already focused on by ar chaeology, but cognitive aspects, including
the mental map with its toponymous landscape (place names) are also necessary to an under-
standing of the Landscape in Man. One could express it this wa y: physical landscape + cogni-
tive landscape = cultural landscape.
This is a concept with a meaningful relationship to coastal culture . This landscape is rich in
relics, as varied as the occupations pursued. The material remains consist of settlements, wrecks
of ships, pole barriers, slipways and smithies of shipyards , traces of stationary fish weir s, land-
ing places, harbour roads and loading places. We find cultural layers, with pottery, animal bones,
anchors, chapels and other cultic sites, sea marks such as cairns and beacons, rock carvings from
historical times, stone mazes, compass cards, either laid out with stones or carved into the rock.
In recent historical times (16th-19th centuries) the elements of the maritime cultural land-
scape could be summarized as follows 37:
1) Principal destinations for shipping . This means all possible varieties of central places and
areas.
2) Sea routes. The only material traces, other than canals, would be pole and stone barriers to
obstruct or slow down shipping , which are clearly a proof of actual use .
3) Beacon sites (with a secondary use as sea marks).
4) Sea marks proper (this category ranges from natural features to actual constructions).
5) Lighthouses (often at a site of a primary sea mark).
6) Pilot sites (pilots are the single most knowledgeable group on shipping lanes and the
dangers surrounding them).
7) Harbours and havens, loading sites, including urban conglomerations and fortifications.
8) Ballast places (if separate from the harbour site proper).
9) Fishing harbours (seasonal or permanent).
10) Shipyards, boat-building sites (including their resource landscape, both in a material and a
human or social sense). 38
11) Place names of maritime significance . An immense number , especially if one reflects on
their “maritime significance.” This will mean the entire scope of maritime culture, not only
shipping and fishing.
12) Foundering sites (historical sources).
13) Wreck sites (archaeological sources).
There is also the further chronological stratification to be taken account of . For the study of
the Middle Ages, in this case of Northern Europe, a slightly different picture of the relevant ele-
ments would emerge:
1) Parish churches and chapels . Their maritime significance means that they are situated
within a reasonably close distance from the shore .
2) Market sites in the countryside with the same relationship to the shore as other central
places, e.g. churches and chapels.
3) Fortifications, e.g. pilings, fortresses (see below on place names).
4) Markings, such as sea marks, which can be dated (lichenometry, surface abrasion processes).
5) Reconstruction of medieval sea & water routes , even inland. This includes sea marks .
Tracing these routes will often be a complicated business , even given knowledge of ship-
wrecks, land sinking, land-upheaval, erosion, sedimentation.
6) Beacon sites, which can be dated. By beacons I mean warning systems.39
7) Medieval harbours, surveyed by wa y of historical sour ces, with a strong dependency on
road systems, power and landowning. They include the towns 40, fishing harbours, ballast
sites and shipyards.
214
8) Place names and also names of medieval ship types. In the North four main name elements
can be dated to the Middle Ages: Snäck-, Buss-, Knarr- and Kugg- (‘cog’), alongside other
word elements describing various topographical features of the coast or the beach, inlets,
creeks, coves, etc. Some are of a distinctly military origin. 41
9) Other obviously or seemingly medieval place name types , e.g. indicating pilings or other
intentional obstacles in the water 42, and names of maritime saints (in northern Europe a
sure sign of Catholic times, circa AD 1000-1500).43
10) Other medieval finds of a distinctly maritime character , e.g. shipwrecks, depots or closed
finds, isolated finds without context, which may give valuable information on cultural con-
tacts across the sea.
Fig. 21 Seal hunters of the inner Bothnian, as illustrated by Olaus Magnus, Carta marina (1539) and Historia
(1555), 20:4.The hunters are shown using only spears , or rather harpoons. In this period firearms were intro-
duced, which would ultimately lead to an upsur ge of large-scale hunting expeditions on the ice of the Bothnian
during the following centuries.
If we go further back into prehistory , important observations ha ve been made on the local
material of the Danish island of Fyn (Funen). 44 But a systematic study presumably remains to
be done.
These elements and many others are being rediscovered all the time and offer great potential
for analysis, as yet only applied site by site but seldom all together as phenomena. 45 Moreover,
these supposedly maritime elements ha ve never up to now been considered in relation to the
agrarian remains near the coast, which would be truly consistent with a holistic research strat-
egy.
The social interaction lea ves non-material traces that are directly related to the material
remains. This must particularly include place names as part of a much wider oral tradition.
These traces are every bit as important, perhaps more important, in indicating mental corridors
for Mobile Man. After all, this is eminently a landscape of incessant human movement, from
land to sea, from sea to land and back again. Most traces reflect the choice of routes to central
places of various kinds, what I have called a tradition of usage. An interesting observation would
be that the frequency of cognitive expressions , such as place names, folklore and the very sub-
jects of tales surrounding certain central sites , such as important harbour s, could possibly be
used to grade these according to their significance. For example the process of diffusion and the
combination of oral or ritual elements at such a place ma y be recorded in myths , customs and
even what has become literature at a later stage .46
215
Fig. 22 Hut foundations (Swed. tomtning) at Bjuröklubb,Västerbotten, Sweden. In this very area similar foun-
dations have been excavated and dated to the Age of Migr ation 400-550 (AD 400-550), a period when we
still know of no actual settlement remains inland on this side of the Bothnian Ba y. (Photo: Christer Westerdahl)
Aspects or facets of the maritime cultur al landscape

Among the aspects illustrated by these elements I ha ve particularly pointed out the following.
The division is intended both to contrast the maritime and the terrestrial aspects and to com-
bine them:
a) Topographical landscape. The eternal but not unchangeable pre-requisite . It determines the
human approach to the coast in a literal sense , and is an important factor , sometimes the
most important factor in the localization of harbour s (e.g. Ilves 2004).
b) Economic/subsistence landscape (esp. for fishing). I may be wrong, but I think there is a lack
of a general overview of this aspect, in particular when it comes to its small-scale , everyday
face.47 In later times the concept is applicable to the industrial landscape .
c) Transport/communicative landscape, including the land roads and their relationship to the
sea routes.48
d) Power/resistance (internal), territorial (external) landscapes (aggression/warfare & de-
fence).49
e) Outer resource landscape (e.g. for shipyards).50
f) Inner resource landscape (esp. for the upkeep of shipping). This is a landscape of agricultural
surplus; definitely an aspect which the researcher must be able to treat from the various per-
spectives of power, wealth, land and sea. I do not think that this combination has yet been
achieved.
g) Cognitive landscape (toponymic, “the mental map”). 51
h) Ritual/cultic landscape.52
216
Fig. 23 Site of a ruined sailor’s inn, first half of the 19th century, at Hökön island, Lake Vänern, Sweden.
i) Social (demographic) landscape. One example could be the recruitment for a ship or a ship-
yard.53
j) Urban harbour landscape. I have never been presented a thorough treatment of this aspect,
but a good account is given in Maritime Topography and the Medieval Town.54
k) Leisure landscape (pseudo-maritime?). The most recent stage.55
The ritual landscape and its cosmolog y

In the past there was a ritual landscape at sea based on a coherent system of faith, a cosmology.
This has interested me particularly in recent year s. I have tried to reconstruct it from many
variations in fairly recent times. Among these variations are, for example, the tendency to nar-
row down the subjects involved to recent prejudice , often of Christian origin, and the trend to
apply maritime taboos even on land and to non-maritime conditions .
The basis is, according to this reconstruction,a strict dichotomy of opposition between sea and
land. The land forms its own particular world, and the sea its absolute contrast. In every animal
and in almost every human category, in sex or occupation alike, either sea or land characteristics
are found. The first rule consists of the following principles:
The basis of the rules is the opposition/contrast between sea and land. This contrast leads to
great dangers when one is at sea. What is taboo at sea is what is visible or what can be taken or
named in a certain wa y on land, or from the land. It should not be visible , be taken, used or
named in the same way on board a vessel or at sea (possibly, however, the rule ceases to be valid
if you leave the boat and go ashore on an island out at sea). Instead the tabooed element should
be replaced by something else, preferably its opposite pole (whatever that is thought to be), e.g.
a noa name. The spectrum of taboos is surprisingly wide . For example a colour could be taboo
at sea.
217
Fig. 24 Winter net fishing under the ice as illustr ated by Olaus Magnus in his Historia (1555), 20:21. Normally
there was a lull in fishing activities in the Baltic during the winter period. However, sealing might be carried
on, along with shipbuilding on land. But particularly when food resources gathered before the winter were
almost spent, catches from ice fishing were an important and sometimes indispensable addition.
This rule can be demonstrated by the noa names so prolifically found among the place names
of the maritime cultural landscape. Of course they can be found on land as well, but much more
sparsely. They replace the land names which are taboo at sea. 56 J.R. Hunter57 observed the pat-
tern on Fair Isle that “the island enjoyed two sets of place names, one set land-based and one set
sea-based. The two are quite discrete , superstition guaranteeing their separation, those place
names used from the sea never being used from the land. ” This is in fact a “mental” or “cogni-
tive” illustration of the same mechanism that Robert McGhee found in ar chaeological material
in the maritime Arctic, implements made of the sea-derived ivory , associated with the sea
woman, never being used inland and other s made from reindeer or moose antler s, associated
with males, never at sea.58 There is also a gender taxonomy strictly separating women or female
animals, or even concepts with names that are grammatically feminine , from the sea. I myself
once tentatively presented a related set of possible oppositions in connection with prehistoric
maritime life.59
Any naming is different from land. Thus you need other names at sea for women, the parson
or priest, and land-living mammals, especially clawed animals such as cats, wolves, etc. But the
cognitive dialectic also involves some of the important fish species , your knife, and the place
names of the land marks round about.In Shetland such words were labelled lucky-words or haf-
words (sea words). This contrast almost created another language, a sea dialect.
However, you can break this rule at sea and create the strongest magic possible. Thus the con-
trasts can be productive. The Master of the Sea is a being from land, either a female or a male .
A seal, a whale and a ship are good on land, an elk and a horse are good at sea. They are what I
call liminal agents. Magic uses pictures, words and names as well as the real things for the trans-
fer from one element to the other . Women or people from certain inland groups , such as the
Finns or the Saamis, were supposed to be wizards and sor cerers at sea, for good or for evil. You
could combine gender and ethnicity . The strongest magician at sea, its liminal agent number
one, would thus be a Finnish woman.
The additional rule of ritual could thus be formulated as follows: With a clearly stated inten-
tion you (well, perhaps not anyone) could consciously break the taboo and create particularly
218
Fig. 25 The great nodes of

long-range maritime life were
the port cities. Innumerable
relics of the past still stud the
quays and piers of cities like
those of Malta. An 18th-
century iron gun used as a
bollard. (Photo: Christer
Westerdahl)
strong magic. This means that you transfer tabooed or forbidden persons, animals, things, pic-
tures of or names or words for these from land to sea or vice versa. These transferred elements
I call liminal agents. The transfer is an active act, i.e. a ritual or cultic act, which must be con-
sidered extremely dangerous to the person who performs the act or rite .
The dualistic rule extends to your own life cycle , but in an apparently perver se dialectic: A
person who works and lives at sea should neither use nor eat things that are produced in or live
in the sea.
This rule is quite impractical, so it went out of use before the others. Nonetheless, traces may
be found in stories about the abhorrence of some skipper s for fish.
Similar ritual rules could be clearly observed in the maritime fisher folklore in Scandina via
and in the Arctic and Subar ctic in general. Approximately the same representations are found
in Texas and the Mala y peninsula, and as early as the 18th century among Indian tribes in
Guayana, South America. They are thus international rules.60 On the other hand, the interpre-
tation of archaeological features or early literary traces ma y possess even greater potential.
219
The structure of the human landscape

Centres of maritime culture
These centres appear as concentrations in survey material of ar chaeological remains and other
proofs of many-sided maritime activities/economies . This term particularly applies to installa-
tions on smaller islands , peninsulas and suitable promontories at the coast. They appear to be
inhabited seasonally rather than to be permanent settlements. There is, however, no self-evident
connection with the maritime encla ves (below), which indicate much more large-scale (perma-
nent) settlement units, often semi-agrarian in character. The centres are those of the network of
sea routes.
I once defined the bases of maritime cultural centres in a rather functionalist wa y, which
appears somewhat old-fashioned today. But I think that what I said is still valid, subject to some
– generally minor – reservations . The most important reservation is of cour se that almost all
such centres seem to be combinations of different bases 61:
Fig. 26 A recurrent feature

of the rocky north were rock
carvings (aristocratic coats of
arms, dates, ship and port
names, compass cards, etc.)
at important natural havens
and small harbours. Hun-
dreds of sites have been
documented, some associated
more with fishing and seal
hunting than with shipping.
The richest and thus justly
the most famous is Kalhamn
or Gäddtarmen (Finn. Hauen-
soli; monograph by Boström
1968) in South Finland.The
oldest dated inscriptions that
we still have today are from
the late 16th century, but
Olaus Magnus indicates a
large number which already
existed in 1555, in his Histo-
ria (2:25).The earliest dated
heraldic carving in east Swe-
den is dated AD 1463 (Hall-
ström 1954). (Photo: Christer
Westerdahl)
220
a) Topographical basis (referring to the tradition of usage , to the natural landscape and the
landscape of subsistence/economic landscape): straits, estuaries/river mouths , sheltered
lagoon harbours, lee havens, approaches to larger closed waters inland.
b) Communicative basis (referring to the transport landscape): entrances to river s and other
waterways, crossroads at sea, road ends on land, starting points for crossings to islands, tran-
sition areas and to other coastal features .
c) Functional/cultural basis (referring to the transport and economical landscape): loading
places for local industries/local natural resour ces (ore , timber, etc.), emergency harbour s,
meeting places, trading sites, out-harbours for towns, anchoring sites, fishing/hunting har-
bours.
d) Administrative basis (referring to the power landscape): levy fleet and naval harbours, har-
bours for the collection of customs , pilot stations, stage harbours for intermittent transpor-
tation, chapel harbours. This basis follows a certain hierar chical pattern.
Most centres may remain at a certain stage and never go further, be abandoned completely or,
in fact, with the support of a sizeable permanent settlement, develop into an urban pattern.
Maritime enclaves/niches
This is a concept that falls within coastal culture . The term applies to areas with permanent
settlements where a large majority of the inhabitants are engaged in maritime activities and
where maritime cultural experience and tradition has been accumulated from generation to
generation. Their character is clearly indicated by comparisons with other neighbouring areas
which display a quite different socioeconomic structure . Very probably their full development
presupposes urban interests, i.e. they come into existence in the north mainly during the High
Middle Ages. Thus the time when these encla ves enjoyed exclusive significance seems limited.
During later periods their ship-owner s and captains are often absorbed by great port cities .
There is no self-evident connection to centres of maritime culture (above). Often the enclaves
are found in barren lands with a weak supporting capacity from an agrarian point of view . In a
traditional transport zone one or several encla ves appear more or less to monopolize maritime
activities.
Fig. 27 The use of the plumbline is mentioned b y Olaus Magnus in the Historia (1555), 2:12 in connection
with the excessive depth of the Norwegian fjords , and is also illustrated in that area on his Carta marina (1539).
221
Fig. 28 The folklore of the sea features a colourful fauna of monsters and snakes. At the end of the Middle
Ages Olaus Magnus provides a good example of this , as here in his Historia (1555), 21:43. His Carta marina
(1539) fills the North Atlantic with such creatures , but none are illustrated in the Baltic.The richest interna-
tional material is still probably that pro vided by Bassett (1885) and Sébillot (1886, 1901).
This tendency appear s particularly common around inland waterwa ys. In many cases these
niches ha ve been secondarily “created” from very modest beginnings in places where local
people had some maritime experience: this was done by the deliberate intervention of the au-
thorities, by means of internal canal building and sometimes the granting of privileges . How-
ever, I tend to see their rise rather as the product of a slow build-up of internal socioeconomic
conditions – based on the interpla y of regional development factor s. In coastal zones their role
is often taken by harbour cities , with which they have a certain structural affinity, although in
a “dispersed” sense. Since I am primarily dealing with an area without formal urban centres , I
am perfectly content to refer the reader to Wolfgang Rudolph 62 on the harbour cities . But of
course I ha ve to admit that in many coastal towns one of the fundamental pillar s of the local
economy was fishing. Even in my own field work area the urban dependence on fishermen has
been demonstrated by the ethnologist John Granlund with reference to 17th-century Norrland
towns.63 The phenomenon is well known from other parts of Europe besides Scandina via, for
instance England and P oland. On this basis maritime experience – including the art of na viga-
tion – was built up, in a manner reminiscent of the concentrated maritime encla ves.
Needless to sa y, the archipelago worlds of the north ha ve constituted maritime encla ves in
themselves, often with further concentrations at certain central points. A concept of “archipela-
go archaeology” (Swed. skärgårdsarkeologi) has been discussed in relation to the most extensi-
ve ar chipelago, that between the islands of Åland and the south-western Finnish mainland.
Tapani Tuovinen also gives a brief history of the elements of ideology and national conscious-
ness involved over the course of recent centuries.64
Some maritime enclaves in later times were pointed out by Aled Eames together with their
conjonctures: “Here I should like to dra w attention to the interesting parallels between the
development of the maritime history of North West Wales in the nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries and that of the Åland Islands, as recounted in Georg Kåhre’s classic The Last Tall
Ships (1978). Both communities witnessed a dramatic transformation from a simple agricul-
tural-fishing economy to one where ship-building flourished enormously up to 1880, both of
them saw this come to a virtual standstill (apart, in the case of Gwynedd, from Porthmadog and
222
Amlwch) and the seafaring population,fostered by the golden years of local ship-building, turn-
ing to deep-water sailing in large vessels built in other parts of the world. ”65
Traditional zones of transport geography

During the field work for the Norrland survey it was established that certain coastal areas were
characterized by peculiarities in boat-building and maritime terms or place names . These traits
could sometimes be connected to the former existence of small, once self-contained settlement
“islands” surrounded by extensive forests that made access difficult. The maintenance of their
“independent maritimity” is a product of local communications and local contacts . They can
accordingly be looked upon as traditional transport zones in miniature .66 I call them maritime
cultural areas.
Transport zones mostly appear as close-knit socio-cultural maritime space . The theory of
transport zones falls into two component parts , which can be considered separately:
1) In a long perspective, la longue durée of Fernand Braudel, it appears that heavy transport, on
land as well as on water, is primarily concentrated in certain zones or corridor s extended in
a recognizable direction. 67 The concept of zones or corridor s does not signify the same as
individual (sea) routes or (land) road systems. The zones consist rather of several routes and
road systems and should be described as corridor s of movement and contact. The borders of
these zones or corridors are overstepped only in exceptional cases. The traditional zones are
distinguished by differing transport techniques , adapted to climate , particularly to the sea-
sonal changes between summer and winter, and other natural conditions, the degree of built-
up road systems on land, but also other technical, social, economic and cultural variables.
2) The means of transport, i.e. the construction of ships and other vessels/vehicles and their
techniques of propulsion,are generally adapted to the natural geography of the zone in ques-
tion, the precise nature of roads, coasts, routes, and harbours (e.g. steepness, shallow banks),
and the directions of prevailing currents and winds within the zone . In addition, they are
adapted to intended cargoes or cargo loading commissions. Ship types are influenced heavily
by hull form, cargo hold and rigging. However, this is by no means to be seen as compara-
ble to a natural la w: similar natural prerequisites do not necessarily lead to the same result
or the same adaptation, in this case the same boat type. In this respect cultural and hence also
ethnic factors may be of seminal importance.
At the transition to another zone there are often natural obstacles of various kinds (river
mouth banks, other sediments on sea routes, mountain ranges, rapids or cataracts) with corres-
ponding portages , hauling or carrying sites , dangerous points , promontories and shallows/
banks. These obstacles necessitate the reloading of cargo and a change of means of transport at
a well-defined site ( transit/ion point, transit/ion pivot), to a complementary form of water or
land transport, so that transportation, whether by water or land, can continue in the new zone.
The pivots involve more than two zones and include the English Channel, with the area of
Bruges in Belgium, the Danish islands with the Sound and the Belts , and the P eloponnese of
Greece.
Basically they consist of seven different types or categories:
1) Trans-isthmian land transport zones.68
2) Zones based on river valleys or other continuous water cour ses.
3) “Ferry” corridors or routes of regular transportation across extensive water s. Some of the
most characteristic corridors go by way of archipelagos between mainlands.
4) Coastal transport zones, involving a kind of na vigation which hugs the coasts (Ital. costeg-
giare).
223
5) Haff, bank-enclosed or estuary zones with closed traffic for reloading between river- and sea-
going vessels.
6) Zones of the open sea. Some of the first classic examples took advantage of predominant sea-
sonal wind directions, e.g. the monsoon and the khamsin.
7) Lake zones. A special case, where shipping is enclosed within the confines of the lake , with
concomitant adaptations to harbour topography, cargo, wind, etc.69
The older traditional transport zones are later overlaid with new dynamic zones determined by
changing economic processes, but nonetheless survive in small-scale shipping for a long time .
This change affects shipbuilding in the relevant zones to a considerable degree . Mixtures of
shipbuilding traditions appear to be normal. If two zones become one , the amalgamation pro-
duces a new ship type adapted to conditions in the extended zone but with traits taken from
both preceding zones.
A classic instance would be the Gallo-Roman river vessels of the Rhine which gradually
extend their operations to the English Channel from the fir st centuries AD. They then spread
to the Low Countries , and from there they make the transition, in the form of the large-scale
proto-cog, from the Waddenzee on the North Sea coast to the southern part of the Baltic,around
AD 1200. We may regard as the end product of this process the standardized vessels of the Bre-
men type, which have traits from the North Sea and from the Baltic, but also still retain some
ancestral details revealing their origin on the river shores of the Rhine . There are also more
local, smaller zones with relatively distinctive boats , even boat types, on the coast as well as in
larger river systems. On the coast they would conform to my maritime cultural areas (above).
These reflections on transport zones support the analytical connection between patterns in sea and
land transport. They also offer an alternative to the prevalent model of explanation of variation
in boat building. That model presupposes that fundamentally repetitive traditions of boat con-
struction provide the overall explanation, and that innovations from differing centres of diffu-
sion are the main cause of change. However, I do not totally deny the value of such approaches.
The interpretation I am proposing offer s an alternative view of the ship types . According to
this view, the ship type is not just another ar chaeological “implement.” The function of such a
complicated combination of technological compounds cannot be reduced to simple ar chaeolog-
ical “types.” It should rather be defined by analyzing the process of changing vessel function
from river to sea, from closed transport zones to the open sea. The ship “type” concept thus
appears inextricably bound up with the development of the transport zones .
In this interpretation the active and rational adaptation is seen as the primary factor, but cul-
tural and in a certain sense “irrational” – or “dynamic” – factors are still involved. Thus adap-
tation could be intentional or unintentional – or even illusory . The differences in for example
river boats need not appear as independent types , rather as variations of details.70
Technical details are only indications. I am anxious not to make these transport zones an issue
of technical matters. They are to be under stood above all as lines of socio-cultural space . Their
consequences are often cognitive and non-material. A possible outcome of the zonal pattern is
that of linguistic similarities – similarities between words, dialects, perhaps even languages. The
spread of the Nordic languages encompasses several zones. The recent trading languages of the
linguae francae, such as pidgin English and Creole , are perhaps more relevant here , that is to
say, they are more transitory phenomena. Miniature examples are the Raumo town dialect of
west Finland, the “russe-norsk” pidgin of the Pomors (Russians in N. Norway) and the somewhat
more doubtful tradition of what was described as a “pidgin Germanic” used in Harkmark in
Agder, South Norway. Another outcome is the spread of customs and folklore which embody
elaborate combinations of motifs. It is my belief that the transport zones, their enclaves or niches
and their centres of maritime culture are indications of a vital and vigorous maritime culture .
224
Fig. 29 The remains of

the maritime cultural
landscape can take
many forms.This tan-
ning container made
of concrete was built
during the last period
of net-tanning, prob-
ably in the late 1940s
before plastic nets
came into use.The
island of Hille, Vest-
Agder, Norway. (Photo:
Christer Westerdahl)
Societal functions
This will be a slight exercise in the “philosophy” of maritime culture. The aim is to understand
the significance of maritime culture in society as a whole .
The first reflection would be that the quantitative role of maritime culture, in terms of people
involved or employed, must necessarily be vastly disproportionate to its societal role , although
this is in any case hard to measure .
Maritime cultures often appear as a reserve and a kind of safety valve for land-bound socie-
ties, in more wa ys than one . They offer a contrast to the solid agrarian adherence to a place
inland, where movement within the economy is less significant. The maritime life mode
225
reminds us of its ultimate origins in a hunting , gathering and fishing culture before the Neo-
lithic. Cognitively it represents a certain “freedom,” which is to some extent illusory but which
is highly valued by those who practise it.
In a material sense marine resour ces have always been an indispensable reserve for subsis-
tence in a country or region, even though the direct exploiter s may be only a tiny fraction of
the entire population of the society . One example of the almost ever -present need of such a
reserve would be England around AD 1500-1660. Production in agriculture doubled, but this
meant little since the increase of the population in the countryside was even larger . The yield
was highly variable. One harvest in six was a total failure . The years of famine often coincided
with epidemic diseases .71 In Scandinavia at the same period such crises are supposed to ha ve
occurred even more frequently than in England, which in the European context was a very
highly developed country. The tangible marine reserves consisted of fish and the resour ces of
freight carried by sea. The role of non-material factor s affecting people’ s mentality – such as
new ideas from abroad, an awareness of the possibility of escape through emigration and, per-
haps, a consequently greater determination to survive – is impossible to judge , but it becomes
infinitely more important during the following centuries .
The role of a safety valve for society is another significant factor . Persecuted individuals or
groups or other victims of exclusion from society alwa ys had the possibility of escaping to the
coast to avoid intolerance and the long arm of the law. An example from northern Europe would
be the P omorians, a Russian group (Russ . po morye ’at the sea’; see above). They were “old
believers”, starovertsy, who were persecuted during the 15th century by Grand Duke Ivan III
of Moscow and his son Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible), in the name of the Orthodox Church. To be
able to practise their old wa ys they settled by the White Sea and on the Kola peninsula. Their
new occupations consisted of fishing and hunting seals , whales and walrus . Later they traded
with northern Norwa y, and they were still active in this pur suit up to the Fir st World War.72
Some of the starovertsy hunters wintered in Grumant,Svalbard (Spitsbergen), where they went
in summer in their large sewn vessels , or lodki. Other old believer s, the raskolniki, fled the
country and settled in Ottoman Turkey, in present-day Romania, Dobrugea, the Danube delta,
or Bulgaria, as Lipovenes. We may find other marginal socio-cultural groups forming a mari-
time version of the tinker s, in Scandinavia called ‘travellers’, resande (folk), tatere, fanter, in
northern Sweden coastal Saamis, kustlappar, with various levels of sedentariness. But the mari-
time kind of escape is often of a more individual kind, involving isolated families or other tiny
groups. To succeed, these people often but not always make use of some variety of earlier expe-
rience of boats or maritime experience. Otherwise they might equally well migrate to a moun-
tainous and sparsely populated area.
The exploiters of the sea have been the most important reserve for military ambitions at sea.
Their skills ha ve then suddenly become indispensable . When such ambitions were current
among kings and princes , sailors and fishermen were for ced to enlist in the na vy. But their
potential was often limited. The lack of experienced sailor s is a recurring theme in the history
of the would-be great powers, including Sweden with Finland during the 17th century.73
The Danish crown drew a large part of its maritime potential from Norwa y. The authorities
were dependent on the same group for the upkeep of the sailing routes , sea marks, pilotage etc.
Otherwise their occupations were usually despised as representing one of the lowest strata of
society, since the amount of revenue to be expected was small and uncertain relative to agrarian
taxes. When not urgently needed, the coastal people were treated with indifference . In some
respects their normal everyday life was even made more difficult. 74
A characteristic development of idiosyncratic elements , like vessel types , rigging, fishing
implements, maritime folklore, language or dialect, including place names, may in many cases
be understood as expressing the strength and activity of a certain maritime cultural area. But it
226
might equally well indicate isolation. The general characteristics of maritime culture are , how-
ever, not isolation, rather the contrary. The operative factors are, as one might expect,people and
influences coming from other coasts. Ivar Modeer emphasizes that “communications have often
been more lively between the coastal settlements than between the coast on the one hand and
the inland settlements on the other.” But there is also scope for separate development:“the coast
has been a world in its own right. ”75
Furthermore, maritime culture has, throughout its existence, been a crosser of borders to a far
higher degree than other cultural patterns . That is to say, a crosser of borders or boundaries of
various kinds created by the authorities, including both those shaped by laws defining jurisdic-
tion over an area and those created for the sake of territoriality .
Even the potential for mutual influence does not guarantee a homogeneous culture on both
sides of a sea. Rather, it may facilitate a rich variety. Such a variety would presuppose comple-
mentary needs in the respective coastal areas, leading to trade and other intercourse.76 The lack
of certain resources on one side corresponds to its abundance in the other. The forested but agricul-
turally barren south coast of Norway supplied the treeless peninsula of Jutland with timber and
iron. Conversely, the fertile plains of Jutland provided Norway with corn and animal foodstuffs.
The same complementarity could be exemplified on a roughly north/south divide all over the Bal-
tic and Scandinavia: timber, other forest products and iron in the north, foodstuffs in the south.
A peculiarity of maritime cultures is their comparative lack of historical source material, even
when other segments of society are well covered by such material, so that it seems appropriate
to call them sub-historical. They thus have a tendency to be under-communicated. One of the
reasons is certainly that authorities concerned with the control of revenues find it difficult to
apply the same methods successfully to maritime culture as to inland conditions. They lack suit-
able instruments of control. The consequence of the problems involved is on the one hand the
indifference already referred to , and on the other hand the professed independence of coastal
dwellers. Authorities are not favourably inclined towards maritime occupations and attempt to
discourage them, since they draw people from the mother economy where the yield is compar-
atively secure and measurable . The maritime countryside is looked upon as a residual area in
comparison with the plains inland. Unfortunately this attitude on the part of the authorities has
spilled over on to historians, who depend on the availability of traditional source materials.
The position of fishermen in the north may normally be one of (an uncertain) independence.
In spite of this they seldom appear, or think of themselves, as entrepreneurs. To be able to real-
ize the economic potential of shipping as a means of rising in rank is difficult. Becoming a
humble sailor is a far less difficult step . The transition to a higher level ma y require several
generations while the risk-taking spirit is built up , starting with very small-scale ventures into
trade and ship-owning. The first to try these pursuits would therefore normally be big farmers
living near the coast, not fishermen and small-scale skipper s, although the latter ma y possess
shipping experience and even the capacity to invest and to build moderate-sized vessels . There
is, I think, a fairly characteristic hierar chy in the development of maritime pur suits, to some
extent mirrored in the concomitant slow growth of their central places , those which I ha ve
called maritime enclaves and maritime cultural centres.
Fishing comes first, then small-scale shipping, shipping undertaken by farmers or shipping on
a collective basis in settlements , recruitment to the mer chant navy at different levels , possibly
also to the navy, and, alongside these, work in pilotage or as sea mark attendants or lighthouse
keepers, or for the customs , etc. The structure is class-bound, and to cross the threshold to
higher status requires exceptional energy in a traditional society . Another prerequisite will be
an independent and enterprising spirit, which only comes to the fore with any rapidity if the
market is on a spectacular upward curve . Otherwise it will be a slow and gradual process over
generations.
227
Fig. 30 A common and almost in visible feature of the maritime cultur al landscape are the ballast sites. This
island at the mouth of the Ångermanälv en river of Sweden consists almost entirely of ballast. It is called Lilla
Norge (”Little Norway”), thus indicating the origin of most of the ships which tr ansported timber from here in
the 19th century. (Photo: Christer Westerdahl)
Identity, habitus, mentality

If a group identity is to be determined today, a reasonable way to do this is simply to ask people
what group they consider themselves to belong to . This criterion could also be applied in rela-
tion to a maritime culture.
But what would they say in this case? Is there any general word at all – in any language – for
people who practise maritime trades? I do not think so , although Hasslöf did coin one (see
below). The people we would need to ask would characterize themselves as farmer s, fishermen,
sailors, etc., but not as practitioner s of maritime culture . This means that our identification of
them is analytic,not cognitive. On the other hand,their way of distinguishing between “us” and
“them” would be more interesting. “Them” would be the landlubbers. In a way this reminds us
curiously of the cognitive content of maritime culture , the age-old opposition between sea and
land. In other words, identity is relational. “Them” is not “us.” The next step is to look at the
attitudes of others towards our practice of maritime culture .
Certainly most forms of maritime culture hold a romantic, and thus positive , attraction for
outsiders. As usual with romanticism, however, this is based on a lack of adequate knowledge
and the admiration of skills not possessed by the observer . But in the past everyda y maritime
culture has not been seen by the ruling class as a very dignified pur suit. It has been firmly
classified as proletarian in the social scale. Besides, the authors of classical antiquity set the tone
in another respect. The people of the harbour s, the sailors and merchants were considered un-
reliable, dangerous and detestable elements.77
I suggest that we could use pictorial art and belles-lettres to follow up the slight variations in
these attitudes over the course of the last few centuries. It is symptomatic of the prevailing atti-
tude that, as we shall see, such everyday people and such everyday activities have normally not
228
been depicted at all. Dutch bourgeois realism during the 16th and 17th centuries represents a
unique and comparatively isolated case.
Nor were small-scale shipping , barge traffic and the like considered dignified as a métier. At
best the sometimes dramatic high seas fishing by professionals inbussen may excite some inter-
est among artists painting for the mer chant burghers. Except in travel stories about voyages of
discovery or the exploits of the East Indiamen, even an occasional mention was of little interest
to high society. Even the geographical areas inhabited by poor people using the sea were de-
spised and under-communicated. This is another reason why maritime culture of the everyda y
kind is largely overlooked in history.
A genuine interest sprang up only with the inception of fashionable sea-bathing and when it
became customary for middle-class townspeople to spend their holida ys in fishing villages ,
during the 19th century. While the industrial working class , dressed in drab colour s, increased
in numbers in the cities, the fishermen and sailors were seen as representing a colourful, primi-
tive, clean and authentic life-style . On the other hand this mainly resulted in a new roman-
ticism, creating stereotypes such as that of the laconic and sly old fisherman, quoted by writers
as a picturesque oracle and a speaker of a distinctive dialect.
Knowledge follows class. Maritime culture is not homogeneous. Like all cultures, it is a ques-
tion of class . The first real scholar to treat maritime culture from the deck and not from the
bridge was Olof Hasslöf, son of a fisherman from Bohuslän and a fisherman himself as recent-
ly as from the 1940s to the 1970s . At that time even the difference between skeleton building
and shell building was not known. “Everybody” seems to have thought that vessels had always
been built on the skeleton-first principle, like those of the standard 19th-century shipyards. The
Fig. 31 A common view of the great herring fisheries of the European north was and still is that the y were
wholly dependent on the sudden arriv al of fish shoals. The disappearance of these shoals would also explain
their decline after perhaps 300 y ears. However, it is possible that they were based almost as much on the arri-
val of people eager to exploit les conjonctures, war economies and other crises. In any case, historical fishing
traditions largely form a continuum on a modest, day-to-day scale everywhere, except in the deadly climatic
fluctuations of the Arctic. Only today is there a real crisis. Olaus Magnus tells us in his Historia (1555), 20:28
that the waters of the Falsterbo peninsula of south Skåne (present-da y Sweden) were so full of fish that the y
could be scooped up with a simple hand net. Another factor leading to the establishment of fisheries at the site
was its geographical role as a transit point between two basic tr ansport zones, incorporating those of the Sound
and the Kattegat and those of the Baltic .This created excellent conditions for a market across the peninsula
(Westerdahl 1995, 2003c).
229
class that dominated thinking was the same which represented the ship-owner s and those who
owned the yards. The simple reason was that no one so far had bothered actually to observe the
boat-builders at their work, nor drawn any well-founded conclusions from archaeological finds.
Hasslöf did, and as well as finding out that the small-scale boat-builder still built from the shell,
he also found irrefutable evidence that this was the all-pervading principle in prehistoric socie-
ties and those of classical antiquity. It is remarkable that this discovery, which is of immeasur-
able significance in ship archaeology, was published so late.78
The terms invented by Hasslöf for maritime culture and those who practise it were the Swe-
dish sjöbruk and sjöbrukare, literally ‘sea use’ and ’sea user’. This is perfectly understood in any
of the Nordic languages (but a Finnish equivalent to sjöbruk, merenkäyttö, sounds more brutal,
a little like har sh exploitation). But the form of the term carries a very important implication:
that it is the opposite of, and equal to, the Swedish jordbrukare, literally ‘soil user,’ i.e. “farmer.”
Hasslöf thought with some reason, as we have seen, that the role of maritime culture had been
under-communicated because of the vested interests of the great land-owner s of the past. By
creating this term he aimed to create a more rational relationship , to restore the balance . But
unfortunately the problems of translation into other and more important languages did not help
him. Dutch zeebouw, as opposed to landbouw, is all right; so are the German words Seebau and
Wasserbau, but its counterpart, Landwirtschaft, is formed in a different way; and while English
has agriculture and mariculture, they do not work as a pair in this context because the term
mariculture has already been appropriated by fish-breeder s.
The pejorative term landlubber fits well enough into Hasslöf’s categorization and world. But,
as we have seen, those practitioners of everyday maritime culture whom we have met have had
a foot in both “cultures.”
The work of Hasslöf dra ws attention to another important consideration. Maritime culture
should always be under stood in terms of class and power in society . Take the sailor s. There is
indeed a proletarian maritime culture. The Death Ship, a novel by B. Traven, comes to mind, but
so also do the works of Weibust.79 Our everyday coastal cultures are a little different: maritime
pursuits are carried on semi-professionally and may represent only a part of an individual’s life
cycle. In the maritime culture the other stratum is that of captains , ship-owners and ship
brokers. Hasslöf sets alongside this strict class division the Nordic crew team structure of fisher-
men and cargo ship crews jointly owning their ships themselves . He was probably dreaming of
a classless society modelled along these lines . But he certainly had intimate knowledge of the
crew teams of Bohuslän. On a world scale this social structure is rather unusual, and it cannot
be stated on the basis of the a vailable evidence that it has had precur sors in history . Hasslöf
would say that this is because the sour ce material was compiled by those in authority, who did
not understand the principles of the team, where any man could be registered as the sole owner
and skipper. Yet the existence of such a structure ma y mean that we ought to talk about mari-
time cultural patterns rather than just a single maritime culture .
Kjell J. Bråstad mentions other features of coastal societies around the Skagerrak, which may
be more widespread than he explicitly sa ys: “a combination of stubborn individualism and
unbreakable fellowship.” He claims to see the fir st in “the fight for fishing grounds or in the
rivalry for getting pilotage work. ” The latter is the solidarity “when catastrophes and misfor-
tunes befell a family, as for example when a ship foundered. ”80 I have observed the same com-
binations of opposites: pauperistic individualism for instance in the refusal to join the organi-
zations for the collective sale of fish, and a true “millimetre justice” applied over centuries in
the distribution of fishing lots along the coastline .
Another feature that could perhaps be called a more stable part of its habitus , as a pervasive
mental trait of everyda y maritime culture , is fatalism in the face of the vicissitudes of life . A
moving expression of this fatalism from the world of the theatre can be found in the one-act
230
play by J .M. Synge, Riders to the Sea of 1904. It is one of the principal works of the Gaelic
Renaissance of Ireland. Its environment is the poor Gaelic-speaking west coast (the Aran
Islands). An old woman has lost five of her sons at sea.Now the sea robs her of her last son.But
in spite of its context in an explicitly literary nationalism, the drama has universal significance.
The losses at sea were appalling in former times . In Norway the cultural historian and pio-
neering sociologist Eilert Sundt attempted to rever se the trend by publishing statistics of
drowning accidents in Norway from 1846 to 1860. 81 The number of widows in coastal commu-
nities was striking. It is not surprising that the situation made these communities a hotbed of
new religious movements at the time. Perhaps a kind of fatalism is the main background to the
religiosity so characteristic of fishing villages around the North Sea.The many varieties include
the dark and strict orthodoxy of Bohuslän, the possibly slightly less oppressive ver sion in Thy
and Vendsyssel and the Limfjord of Jutland – the theme of a great novel, Fiskerne (‘The Fisher-
men,’ 1928) by Hans Kirk – and, perhaps a little more cheerful still, the variety found in Sør-
landet, the Agder province, in South Norway. It is not surprising that the main support for this
movement came from the women. 82 Among the men Håvard Dahl Bratrein observed rather “a
belief in fate , a fatalism, which the clergy termed religious indifference or the like .”83 There
may be many varieties of fatalism.
What significance the sea and the water had in prehistoric times is perhaps a not entirely dif-
ferent question. A possible notion is that the sea was experienced as a kind of chaos , the “un-
ordered,” the “non-human”, in the cognitive systems of people living near the sea. It may have
had multiple meanings as a threat and a challenge , a blessed provider of subsistence , source of
news and means of rapid movement. The cognitive role of the boat is another issue . Precisely
what really makes it different from land conditions? And so on. I have already published a few
ideas on these subjects 84, and I will, hopefully, continue to do so.
What do we make of maritime culture?

There obviously seems to be a whole range of approaches in this field. As a catalyst for various
such approaches I think the term maritime culture certainly deserves far more attention than it
has hitherto been accorded. Would it not be a good idea to see this as an umbrella concept under
which various forms of multidisciplinary education and resear ch could be brought together so
as to achieve a synthesis, rather than chopping up the work into only ar chaeology or only his-
tory?
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kring människor båtar vattentransport och segelsjöfart från förhistorien till tiden före sekelskiftet 1900. Skärhamn.
Westerdahl, Christer: 2003c. Farledskorridorer och transportzoner i Östersjöområdet i äldre tid. In: Ericsson., C./Mon-
tin, K. (red.): Maritima kontakter över Östersjön. Jungfrusund 7:5: 9-74. Åbo.
Westerdahl, Christer: 2004. Lindesnes och sjömäns dopseder. In: Agders Historielag. Årsskrift 80, 2004: 105-136.
Westerdahl, Christer: 2005. Seal on Land, Elk at Sea: Notes on and Applications of the Ritual Landscape at the Seaboard.
In: International Journal of Nautical Archaeology (2005) 34.1: 2-23.
Westerdahl, Christer: 2006. Maritime Cosmology and Archaeology. In: Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv 28, 2005: 7-54.
Notes:
1 Westerdahl 1998.
2 The best illustration of this holistic approach is perhaps Molaug 1989 (1985) on Norwa y.
3 Bråstad 1992: 239.
4 E.g. Meijer/van Nijf 1992.
5 Hinkkanen 2003.
234
6 Bråstad op. cit.: 242.

7 Weibust 1976 (1969); cf. also Weibust 1958.
8 Cf. Kirby/Hinkkanen 2000.
9 Flatman 2003.
10 Gjerdåker 1992: 210.
11 Westerdahl 2003a.
12 E.g. Jasinski 1993a, 1993b.
13 Kloster 1996: 70.
14 Holm 1991.
15 Gjerdåker 1992, loc. cit.
16 Erixon 1938.
17 Cunliffe 2001.
18 Jones 1977.
19 For a critical appraisal see Parker 2001.
20 Westerdahl 1999, 2002b, 2002d, 2004, 2005, 2006.
21 Kloster 1996: 73.
22 Westerdahl 2003a, 2003b.
23 Braudel 1986 (1949), 1988 (1985), 1989 (1986).
24 Also recorded by Holm 1991.
25 Bratrein 1992: 217.
26 Bråstad 1992: 239.
27 Stoklund 1985.
28 Prins 1965, preface X.
29 Ibid. (my italics).
30 Cf. Østmo 1998.
31 E.g. the ship yard tales, mentioned above, Westerdahl 2000.
32 Lundström 1998.
33 Kroeber/Kluckhohn 1952.
34 Højrup 1995.
35 Fitzhugh 1975.
36 Weibust 1958, 1976 (1969).
37 Westerdahl 1986, 1996b.
38 E.g.Westerdahl 1987a.
39 Cf. Westerdahl 2002c.
40 Cf. Bill/Clausen (eds.) 1999.
41 Cf. Westerdahl 2002c.
42 Bødtker Petersen 1994, Crumlin-Pedersen 1985, Nørgård Jørgensen 2002, Svanberg 1995.
43 Westerdahl 1997.
44 Crumlin-Pedersen et al. (eds.) 1996.
45 Westerdahl 1986, 1987, 1989, Norman 1995.
46 E.g. Stylegar 2004, Westerdahl 2004, both on the Lindesnes area, South Norway.
47 For a study on medieval fishing in the North consult Norman 1993.
48 Cf. Westerdahl 2002e.
49 Cf. Nørgård Jørgensen et al. (eds.) 2002 with e.g. Westerdahl 2002c.
50 Cf. Westerdahl 1987a.
51 Especially Westerdahl 1989.
52 Westerdahl 1999, 2002b, 2002d, 2003a, 2004, 2005, 2006. Further below.
53 Cf. e.g. Westerdahl 1987a, 1989 with source material as appendix.
54 Bill/Clausen (eds.) 1999.
55 This aspect of a bathing resort at the Baltic is illustrated by e .g. Schumacher-Gorny 1997.
56 For this part Westerdahl 2002b, 2002d, 2003a, 2004, 2005, 2006 with references.
57 Hunter 1994.
58 McGhee 1977.
59 Westerdahl 1993.
60 Westerdahl op. cit.
61 Also in Westerdahl 1982; cf. Westerdahl 1986.
62 Rudolph 1980.
63 Granlund 1956, 1978.
64 Tuovinen 2005; and in general edition no. 65 of Nordenskiöldssamfundets tidskrift, Helsinki 2005.
65 Eames 1981: 9.
66 But cf. Lundström 1998, as above.
67 On land or along river valleys they can be replaced parallel to their general axis; e.g. Sherratt 1996.
68 Sherratt 1996.
235
69 For Swedish examples see Westerdahl 2002a, 2003b.

70 Beaudoin 1985, Litwin 1995.
71 E.g. Thomas 1971.
72 E.g. Kraft 1968.
73 Villstrand 1989.
74 Cf. Holm 1991 on obstacles imposed by the Swedish crown.
75 Modéer 1945 (transl.)
76 Holm op. cit.
77 As above Meijer/van Nijf 1992.
78 Hasslöf 1958.
79 As above 1958, Hasslöf (et al.) 1972.
80 Bråstad 2002: 239.
81 Sundt 1976; on North Norway cf. Bratrein 1992: 218.
82 Cf. Holm 1991: 243ff.
83 Bratrein 1992: 224.
84 Westerdahl 1993, 2005. The changing roles of the sea to land relationship must have been noted in very early times.
In some areas the land rose per ceptibly, in others the land sank into the sea, perhaps slowly, perhaps very dramati-
cally, through the action of tectonic for ces. How did these changes influence human thought?
Author’s address:
Dr. Christer Westerdahl
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Institute of Archaeology and Religious Studies
Erling Skakkes Gate 47B
N-7012 Trondheim
Norway
Fish and Ships. Zur Entwicklung einer Theorie der maritimen Kultur
Zusammenfassung
Ausgehend von einem ar chäologischen Standpunkt, führt der Autor aus, warum »Küstenkul-
tur« als Begriff für die Anpassung der Menschen an bestimmte örtliche Umgebungen verwen-
det werden sollte, während sich »maritime Kultur« als allgemeiner Terminus für das eignet, was
diese Anpassungen gemein hatten und haben, einschließlich der ver schiedenen gesellschaftli-
chen Schichten der Seefahrer im Überseehandel. Maritime Kultur wäre demnach der allgemei-
nere Begriff.
Einige der in ihr enthaltenen wichtigen Merkmale sind der Habitus der maritimenWelt, seine
Urbilder, seine kulturelle Landschaft und nicht zuletzt seine kognitive und rituelle Landschaft,
die auf dem Gegensatz zwischen See und F estland basiert und charakteristischerweise in der
Verwendung von Tabu- und Noa-Namen bzw. Wörtern sowie in anderem Verhalten Ausdruck
findet. Andere Eigenschaften jenes Habitus sind die Rolle des Bootes als Verlängerung des
menschlichen Körpers, der in der Religion – aber auch in einer Gleichgültigkeit gegenüber der
Religion – verkörperte Fatalismus sowie ein klarer Sinn für gemeinsame Identität und Zusam-
mengehörigkeit, besonders gegenüber »Landratten«. Zu seinen sozialen Funktionen gehören
die vielschichtige, Grenzen überschreitende Rolle, die Rolle als »Sicherheitsventil« der Gesell-
schaft im Sinne des Beschützens verfolgter oder geächteter Einzelner bzw . Personengruppen
sowie die Tatsache, dass er als Reserve für materielle Güter fungierte, ohne die die Binnenland-
gesellschaft nicht überlebt hätte. Er war zudem der einzige Lieferant für seemännischen Nach-
wuchs und fungierte als »Kanonenfutter« einer expansionistischen Marinepolitik. Da sich
maritime Kultur über die wirkungsvolle Kontrolle und Besteuerung dur ch die Behörden hin-
236
wegsetzt, wurde sie ansonsten vergessen und entwickelte sich in gewissem Sinne zu einem
untervermittelten Subthema der Geschichte, die höchstens als randständiges Element einer auf
die Landwirtschaft konzentrierten Gesellschaft Beachtung fand.
Jedoch waren ausschließlich maritim-kulturelle Muster in der Vergangenheit sehr selten. Sie
standen immer mit einem Fuß an Land. Die Beziehung zu landwirtschaftlichen Elementen war
so unterschiedlich wie die Rolle der Frau. Weitere zentrale Themen sind maritime Kosmologie,
die Überreste und ver schiedene Aspekte der maritim-kulturellen Landschaft sowie die Zonen
der Verkehrsgeographie, d.h. der soziokulturelle Raum der Bewegung auf Schifffahrtswegen,
maritimer Enklaven und der Zentren maritimer Kultur . Es stellt sich die F rage, ob die Erfor-
schung der maritimen Kultur nicht das Dach eines neuen, disziplinübergreifenden wissen-
schaftlichen Fachgebietes bilden könnte.
Fish and Ships. Du développement d’une théorie de la culture maritime

Résumé
En prenant l’ar chéologie comme point de départ, l’auteur considère que le terme de «culture
côtière» devrait être utilisé pour faire référence à l’adaptation humaine à des environnements
locaux particuliers, tandis que celui de «culture maritime» devrait l’être en tant que terme géné-
ral pour ce qui était commun à ces adaptations et l’est toujours, y compris les différentes classes
sociales de marins dans le commer ce d’outre-mer. Culture maritime serait en conséquence le
terme le plus générique.
Quelques-uns des importants traits communs qui la composent sont l’habitat de la sphère
maritime, ses archétypes, son paysage culturel, et notamment son paysage cognitif et rituel, qui
se base sur le contraste entre mer et terre ferme , et qui s’exprime de manière très caractéristi-
que par l’emploi de noms ou de mots tabous et noa,ainsi qu’au travers d’autres comportements.
D’autres caractéristiques de cet habitat incluent le rôle du bateau en tant que prolongement du
corps humain, le fatalisme per sonnalisé dans la religion, mais également dans l’indifférence
vis-à-vis de la religion formelle , ainsi qu’un sens prononcé de l’identité et de l’appartenance
communes, tout spécialement par rapport aux «terriens». Les fonctions sociales incluent le rôle
frontalier aux multiples facettes, et son rôle de soupape de sécurité de la société dans le sens qu’il
protège des individus ou des groupes de personnes persécutés ou tenus à l’écart, ainsi que le fait
qu’il servait de réserve pour des biens matériels sans lesquels la société terrienne n’aurait pas
survécu. Il s’avérait de surcroît être le seul fournisseur de marins et de chair à canon, tels que
les nécessitaient les politiques maritimes expansionnistes . Puisque la culture maritime ne pou-
vait être contrôlée efficacement ou fiscalisée par l’administration, elle fut oubliée autrement et
dans un certain sens , se développa jusqu’à devenir un sous-thème de l’histoire peu communi-
qué, et considéré simplement comme un élément périphérique au courant dominant de l’agri-
culture.
Toutefois, des modèles exclusivement maritimes et culturels étaient très rares dans le passé.
Ils avaient toujours un pied à terre. La relation avec des éléments de la chose agraire était aussi
variable que l’était le rôle de la femme . D’autres thèmes centraux sont la cosmologie maritime,
les vestiges et les différents aspects du paysage maritime culturel, ainsi que les zones de la géo-
graphie des transports, ce qui signifie l’espace socio-culturel des déplacements sur les voies de
navigation, des enclaves maritimes et des centres culturels . La recherche portant sur la culture
maritime ne serait-elle pas en passe de figurer à la tête d’une nouvelle pluridiscipline scientifi-
que?

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Westerdahl 26.09.

2008 18:15 Uhr Seite 191

SOZIALGESCHICHTE DER SCHIFFFAHRT

Fish and Ships

Towards a Theory of Maritime Culture

Fig. 3 The kind of maritime

However, in making a survey of the lack of theoretical foundations of maritime ar chaeology,

On the need for definitions

Fig. 11 Among the outer

The gender perspective

Fig. 12 One of the author’s most

Maritime culture: The role of the boat

Culture and life mode

The archaeology of the maritime cultural landscape

Aspects or facets of the maritime cultur al landscape

The ritual landscape and its cosmolog y

Fig. 25 The great nodes of

The structure of the human landscape

Fig. 26 A recurrent feature

Traditional zones of transport geography

Fig. 29 The remains of

Identity, habitus, mentality

What do we make of maritime culture?

6 Bråstad op. cit.: 242.

69 For Swedish examples see Westerdahl 2002a, 2003b.

Fish and Ships. Du développement d’une théorie de la culture maritime

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