Fishing Families in Three Danish Coastal Communities

Abstract

Earlier studies of population in Denmark have dealt mainly with demographic behavior in rural areas that depended on agriculture and where restricted access to limited resources resulted in very high ages at first marriage and small average household size. This study concentrates on another agrarian variant—fishing communities. Developments in three coastal communities were analyzed for the period 1787–1901. The inhabitants lived mainly from fishing. Given the technology of the day, this was an occupation with nearly unlimited resources. Furthermore, there were no legal restrictions on the partitioning of land in the hamlets on the coast or on fishing in nearby coastal waters. These conditions resulted in earlier marriages, but not in a different family type. Young people in the hamlets established their own households when they married, and fishermen conformed to the nuclear family pattern dominant in the Nordic countries.