Abstract
By 1640, the first phase of one of North America’s earliest entrepreneurial ventures had already come and gone. In the early sixteenth century, Basque whalers crossed the North Atlantic by the hundreds, then thousands, and settled in Labrador.1 For many Europeans coming to the shores of Atlantic Canada in this period, cod was king, but whales were a close second. Right and bowhead whales brought the Basques to the shores of Labrador by 1520, where they founded about a dozen whaling stations on the Strait of Belle Isle.2 Over the course of a century, Basque whalers, especially those at the great whaling station of Red Bay, took an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 whales from North American waters.3 The cold Labrador Current carried ample food for migrating right and bowhead whales. Season after season, the Basques migrated along with the whales, finding both hardship on land and great fortune at sea in all those whales passing to and fro along the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
J. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 585.
S. Barkham, “The Basque Whaling Establishments in Labrador 1536–1632—A Summary,” Arctic 37.4 (December 1984): 515–19.
A. Aguilar, “A Review of Old Basque Whaling and its Effect on the Right Whales (Eubalaena glacialis) of the North Atlantic,” Report of the International Whaling Commission, Special Issue 10 (1986): 195.
R. Grenier, M. Bernier, and W. Stevens, eds., The Underwater Archaeology of Red Bay: Basque Shipbuilding and Whaling in the 16th Century (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 2007).
B. McLeod, M. W. Brown, M. J. Moore, W. Stevens, S. H. Barkham, M. Barkham, and B. N. White, “Bowhead Whales, and Not Right Whales, Were the Primary Target of 16th to 17th-Century Basque Whalers in the Western North Atlantic,” Arctic 61.1 (March 2008): 10 [1–15].
B. McLeod, Moira W. Brown, Timothy R. Frasier, and Bradley N. White,, “DNA Profile of a Sixteenth Century Western North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis),” Conservation Genetics ( January 30, 2009).
J. T. Jenkins, A History of the Whale Fisheries (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1921), pp. 59–118.
J. Proulx, “Basque Whaling Methods, Technology and Organization in the 16th Century,” trans. A. McGain, in The Underwater Archaeology of Red Bay: Basque Shipbuilding and Whaling in the 16th Century, Volume 1, ed. R. Grenier, M. Bernier, and W. Stevens (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 2007b), pp. 42–96.
P. Sutherland, “The Question of Contact Between Dorset Paleo-Eskmos and Early Europeans in the Eastern Arctic,” in The Northern World AD 900–1400, ed. H. Maschner, O. Mason, and R. McGhee (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2009), p. 282.
A. Smith and J. Kinahan, “The Invisible Whale,” World Archaeology 16 (June 1984): 95. Whales are not alone in this regard: “Certain animal food products leave no remains that survive in most soil types … Preservation chances can even hide information about the use of a species as a whole” (ibid.). An excellent comparative example is found in J. M. Savelle, “An Ethnoarchaeological Investigation of Inuit Beluga Whale and Narwhal Harvesting,” in Hunting the Largest Animals: Native Whaling in the Western Arctic and Subarctic, ed. Allen P. McCartney (Calgary: University of Alberta, the Canadian Circumpolar Institute, 1995), p. 143.
J. M. Savelle, “An Ethnoarchaeological Investigation of Inuit Beluga Whale and Narwhal Harvesting,” in Hunting the Largest Animals: Native Whaling in the Western Arctic and Subarctic, ed. Allen P. McCartney (Calgary: University of Alberta, the Canadian Circumpolar Institute, 1995), p. 143.
S. Barkham, The Basque Coast of Newfoundland (Newfoundland: Great Northern Peninsula Development Corporation, 1989).
D. M. Dunlop, “The British Isles according to Medieval Arabic Authors,” Islamic Quarterly 4 (1957): 20.
J. H. W. Poulsen and Ulf Zachariasen, eds., Seyðabrævið (Tórshavn: Føroya fróðskaparfelag, 1971).
A. Stine Ingstad. The Discovery of a Norse Settlement in America: Excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland 1961–1968 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1977).
A. Rick, Analysis of Bone Remains from L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, unpublished preliminary report (Halifax: Parks Canada, 1977).
A. Spiess, Preliminary Identifications of Calcined Bone from L’Anse aux Meadows, unpublished preliminary report (Halifax: Parks Canada, 1990). Some objects could correlate with Norse object types, but were too generic in form to be ascribed to Norse traditions. The objects’ stratigraphic contexts were either indeterminate or not Norse. The quantity of whale bone fragments, approximately 130 individually counted fragments and several bags labeled as “many fragments,” does not definitively reveal how many whales or which species were used on the site.
Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of a Fish That Changed the World (New York: Penguin, 1998): pp. 54–55.
R. McGhee, “When and Why Did the Inuit Move to the Eastern Arctic,” in The Northern World AD 900–1400, ed. H. Maschner, O. Mason, and R. McGhee (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2009), pp. 155–63.
The fate of the Dorset, in their interaction with the Thule, is remarkably similar to explanations used to explain Norse inability to compete with the Thule in Greenland. Both theories, regarding the Dorset and the Norse, are rejected by many, yet remain as common explanations for social collapse: “Whaling was a hallmark of Thule culture and expansion but was not adopted by the Dorset, who appear to have been rather conservative in their responses to changing environmental conditions. The Dorset became marginalized by the expanding Thule peoples (as both migration and population growth), eventually being pushed to the fringes of their former territory, a condition that perhaps led their failure to survive as a viable population.” W. Agger and H. Maschner, “Medieval Norse and the Bidirectional Spread of Epidemic Disease Between Europe and Northeastern America: A New Hypothesis,” in The Northern World AD 900–1400, pp. 322–23.
Arneborg, “Norse Greenland,” pp. 176–77. See also T. McGovern, “The Demise of Norse Greenland,” in Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, ed. W. Fitzhugh and E. Ward (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), pp. 327–39.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2012 Benjamin Hudson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Szabo, V. (2012). Subsistence Whaling and the Norse Diaspora: Norsemen, Basques, and Whale Use in the Western North Atlantic, CA. AD 900–1640. In: Hudson, B. (eds) Studies in the Medieval Atlantic. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137062390_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137062390_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29892-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-06239-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)