Ocean, grounds, skerries, and reefs

The first term discussed in the book is “hav,” usually translated as “ocean.” Hovda is critical of this rendering, however, and argues that hav is not a generic term like ocean but indicates a fishing ground or location. Where there are no skerries (rocks in the sea), hav may start where land meets water, while in other regions along the coast of Norway it refers to fishing grounds that lie beyond the skerries. Correlative to this, the word may be used to indicate perspective. A stretch of water may be called the mouth of the ocean (havgap) when going out, while the same place will be called the mouth of the fjord (fjordgap) on the return passage. Hovda likewise points out that hav often will occur in combination with other words that more precisely give a location or describe the type of fishery taking place there (Hovda Reference Hovda1961, 19–23). Finally, a philological examination of the oldest known terms for deep water fishing gear also supplies Hovda with arguments that support his understanding of hav as fishing grounds. He concludes that the word “has a rather clear meaning as fishing grounds along most of the Norwegian coast, at the Faeroe Island and at Shetland” (Hovda Reference Hovda1961, 33). The common denominator or linguistic root of the connections that he posits is the Old Germanic word for “haul” – in the sense of catch, drag, or draw. This initial philological argument serves to frame the entire book, the terminology that it presents, and the knowledge that this terminology reflects. It defines hav as a zone of human activity and human knowledge, referring to practice, to customary rights of use and exploitation, and to the knowledge that is a prerequisite for this. Hovda’s hav corresponds to Maurstad’s cultural seascape: It is a stretch of the sea imbued with human activities and human knowledge, but the traces of all this are discernible only through “cultural modes of transmission”.

From the introductory philological explorations, Hovda moves on to terms and expressions that reflect more exact observations and empirical knowledge. He presents the terms for two different types of submerged rocks: A flu is visible at low tide but will be under water when it stands high. A båe, usually farther out in the ocean, is never seen above water. Competent fishermen are nonetheless able to locate it due to the currents it creates, which will show as ripples on the surface of the water, most easily discerned in quiet weather. For this reason, Hovda relates the word båe to bod, meaning message or warning (Hovda Reference Hovda1961, 44). The skerries serve the fishermen as signs and carry messages of good fishing grounds, because fish often cluster around their sloping hills. Likewise, forest and kelp (skog and tare) refer to fields of underwater vegetation, some of it in great depths. A rich fauna lives among the large plants, and several species of fish can be taken there. At the same time, there is a great risk of losing fishing gear that gets caught in trunks and stalks. To avoid the loss but still get the fish, the competent fisherman will know the forest well enough to keep at its periphery.

The rich and detailed terminology for underwater geography consists largely of words and expressions that also are in use ashore. These include names for, for instance, a hill, a plain, an edge, a hole, a hammer, and so on. In themselves, these terms are not related to the sea or to fisheries as such and do therefore not represent a specialized or technological vocabulary. What nonetheless makes them stand out as expressions of expert knowledge is their very number and hence the possibilities for highly nuanced and detailed descriptions that they represent. The words, in great detail, refer to the height, depth, and shape of the seabed, sunken rocks, and underwater valleys, plains, and summits. Some terms also describe the qualities of the seabed itself: clay, sand, pebbles, or rock. Even if not all the terms have been used all along the coast, and some of them are local words for local phenomena, this vocabulary nonetheless reflects expert knowledge of a very specialized kind.

Its most striking aspect is that, with all the details and nuances for which it gives room, this vocabulary represents empirical knowledge of things never seen by the knowers. The hilly and rocky underwater landscapes, its slopes and plains, and the material making up the sea floor and the deep-water vegetation had not been directly observed by the fishermen. Nonetheless, their vocabulary described all of this in precise terms. The fact that they were able to navigate, locate the grounds, position their vessels and equipment precisely, catch the fish, and explain and pass on the knowledge bears witness to the quality and reliability of their insights: This was practical, working knowledge. Moreover, despite consisting merely of words, not drawings, models, or maps, it can rightly be called three-dimensional. This terminology does not describe the sea as mere expanse or surface. It concerns depths, and it is spatial. The terms that Hovda collected and explained were modeling tools used to create mental constructs of such space and to make it practically navigable. By the means of these tools, the three-dimensional world which was the actual working space of the fishermen appeared clearly and distinctly to them.

To the list of terms that model depth and space, Hovda adds his inventory of words that have to do with the actual fishing. This includes names for different kinds of current, drift, and leeway. Others refer to kelp, seaweed, or other materials that could be seen adrift in the water and yet others to drift nets and other types of gear based on movement and the exploitation of currents. Yet another group of terms refers to the position of the vessel during the fishing and to how boats were organized when working close to each other on the same fishing ground. There are also a number of terms for the different types of grounds and the gear fit for each of them. Furthermore, a range of terms concern the throwing, setting, hauling, and drawing of fishing gear, related to the type of fishing grounds as well as to the species of fish for which it was used. Finally, a group of terms has to do with going out to the grounds and returning home. These terms have their root in the word for rowing (ror), but in their different forms can also be used for the journey itself by oars, sails, or even engine, for the distance crossed or as a generic term for the work at sea. Once again, not all these terms were used along the entire coast, because of both differences in the dialects and variations in geography, currents, species of fish, and so on. The terms are nonetheless sufficiently numerous to indicate a rich and varied vocabulary. They enabled very specific and precise information to be communicated.

This category of terms, more directly related to the fishing activity, can be said to be more “two-dimensional” than the one discussed above, because they concern things that can be seen or that take place above water, in or from a boat. A large portion is nonetheless of a more hybrid nature, for instance those referring to how specific types of fishing tools are being lowered from the boat and how tools and catch later are being hauled. In their different ways, these terms connect the fishermen and their work to the sea, its forces, and its resources. From this also appears the most distinctive feature of this category: These terms refer not only to action but to interaction. This may concern the crew working as a team or several boats working in cooperation with each other on the same fishing ground. Mostly, however, the interaction that the terms reflect is both more fundamental and more complex. It concerns the entanglement of man, boat, fishing tools, sea, fish, and natural forces.

The term for, say, leeway, gives little meaning without the vessel, knowledge about the right position for a boat on a good fishing ground, the species of fish supposedly caught there, and the tools that are fit to do so. As part of the fishermen’s specialized and professional vocabulary, each term comes with layers of meaning that relate it to the others and to the practice of which it is a part. This also implies that the three-dimensionality of the first category of terms also plays a vital part here. The unseen underwater landscape that these terms served to model is exactly where much of the interaction takes place. Consequently, the “in-depth” knowledge represented by the terms and names is fundamental even here.

Markers and bearings

Only at the end of his book, after presenting this very extensive and specialized terminology, does Hovda turn to the markers. He describes how bearings are taken from the boat to visible points on land or among the islets. A cross bearing needs two lines, with the position one wants to find at their intersection. Hovda explains that to indicate the lines, formulas like X (e.g. name of a small island) over Y (e.g. name of an inland mountain seen from the sea) were common. This was meant to describe a position where the closest of the two points was “laying over” the other, i.e. covering it or being in front of it, when seen from the boat. The first of the two lines needed to determine the crossing was usually taken straight out from land and called the “marker out-in” (médet ut-inn). The crossing line was determined by the same method of two fixed points laying “over” each other when seen from the boat, and usually called the north or the south marker, according to the direction of the coastline (médet nordføre and médet sørføre; Hovda Reference Hovda1961, 197). This second line should intersect with the first, and the intersection would then indicate the marker. Hovda also underscores that the markers were not the fishing grounds, but signs of them, and that the names consequently concerned the markers and how to find them. This method of finding positions at sea is purely visual. It does not require special equipment, nor does it include measurements or calculations. The points that are being used to determine the two lines are not pre-defined fixed points as in trigonometry or other methods of land surveying, and the crossings are not physically marked. Instead, the markers were fully relational, each of them based on fixed points and the position of the boat.

Hovda points out that if placed on a map, the markers would often appear to lie beside each other on a line and thus create the impression that the same bearings could be used for many of them. This would not be the case, however, because along the coast of Norway, “the edge, the bridge, the hill is full of indentations and inlets, and so the fisherman has to make use of several different markers both ‘in-out’ and ‘south’ to find the various fishing grounds, even if they are close to each other.”Footnote ³ His statement has important implications. First and foremost, it makes clear that the two-dimensionality of the markers – consisting of two crossing lines in the same plane – is merely apparent. The markers were also defined by the three-dimensional underwater space. Each marker consequently will have three coordinates, not merely the two of the crossing lines. Without its perpendicular reference, the point indicated by these two would not be a functional marker, but rather merely a random crossing on the surface of the water. The third coordinate, in its turn, would rest on the fishermen’s knowledge of the unseen depths and their ability to “model” this landscape.

The position of the boat also enters into this process. The method for taking bearings is strongly perspectivized. It builds on the relation between two fixed points and a third, which is moving: the vessel with the men aboard. Distinct from a geographic position that is externalized in terms of longitude and latitude and seen from “above,” and independent of human presence, the cross bearing would not exist without the fishermen and the horizontal view from his boat. This was also the reason why the same inland mountain or the same islet might have different names according to which markers they were part of, and thus from which angle they were seen. The names were given to indicate the marker rather than the landscape formations used to determine it (Hovda Reference Hovda1961, 206). The same location might also have different names dependent on the direction from which one arrived – as is the case with the difference between the mouth of the fjord and the mouth of the ocean, as discussed above. A bearing was, moreover, related to both the position and the height of the boat, the eyesight of the fishermen, and not least the weather conditions. Being on the sea in thick fog, for instance, was not only generally dangerous, it more particularly meant that the markers were not available. The system of taking bearings and finding the fishing grounds thus depended on the fishermen and boats being integrated into the environment, themselves becoming parts of this three-dimensional seascape.

Hovda insisted that the knowledge produced by the method of cross bearings and based on a three-dimensional apprehension of the underwater geography was extremely precise. From his own fieldwork, he could disclose a good deal from following a fisherman on the ocean outside Karmøy on the south-western coast of Norway. When they arrived at the fishing ground with the boat lying still, Hovda was instructed to throw the sounding line and stone. He measured thirty-five feet and found a sea bottom of rocks on one side of the boat. He was then told to throw the same line on the other side of the boat, getting the result of seventy-five feet and clay (which stuck to the grease on the stone). The fisherman explained that just at this place, there was a hollow ridge. Many men had lost their fishing gear down there, the danger being greatest when the currents were strong and from the north. Competence to do “fine marking” (finméding) was vital (Hovda Reference Hovda1961, 17–18). When asked about place names on land, close to where he lived, this man had absolutely no knowledge beyond his own garden. But when sitting at home, looking outwards, men like him claimed to be able to “see the bottom of the sea all the way out as far as I have been working.”Footnote ⁴ Another example given by Hovda is fishermen who lost their equipment far out at sea due to bad weather. As they had taken good bearings, however, they were able to go out to dredge for their lost gear once the storm was over. At the very first throw of the grapnel, it was all recovered (Hovda Reference Hovda1961, 133).

The fishermen’s seascape as a format of knowledge

In the introduction to this article the fishermen’s expertise was presented as oral, informal, and based on lived experience. It can now be described in further detail. Formats of ocean literacy have “decisively shaped activities at sea and influenced parameters for ocean use,” according to Krefting and Paulsen (above), and as the exploration of Hovda’s work has shown, the cross bearings and precise knowledge about underwater geography were fundamental to the fishermen’s use of the sea, the way that they have spoken and thought about it, and the way the work at sea has shaped their lives and those of their families.

First, this format of knowledge was not local in the sense of being parochial. According to Hovda, it had existed over most of the North Sea area, and dated back to the Old Norse period. It was nonetheless intensely localized in that the method of taking cross bearings made sense only when applied to specific localities and was largely also defined by them. Even if the method as such was widely in use, any fisherman would only be able to use it in those parts of the sea that were known to him through experience and tradition. He would have to know which bearings made sense, which landmarks were to be included. He would also have to know the sea bottom, its formations, and types of soil or rock, and what species of fish could be expected. A marker would always point to one specific fishing ground in one particular section of the sea. Without this place-based knowledge, even the most competent “fine marking” fisherman would be at a loss. He could still use the generic aspects of the method and choose some cross bearings in order to position his boat according to them, but without a fundamental knowledge about the underwater conditions, this would only be a position, not a marker of anything special. The method was general, but its use highly particular and grounded in specific conditions.

As a format, this distinguishes the fishermen’s knowledge about markers and bearings from, say, the use of acoustic sounding or GPS navigation. This kind of technology can be successfully used in any waters as long as the fisherman has learnt to operate it and the instruments are working. In this way, modern technology is separated from the field on which it is used. The opposite was the case with the system of cross bearings and markers, which brings forward the next important aspect of this format: It was not only dependent on specific contexts to work, but also deeply embedded in it. The knowledge was not merely applied to the location, it was also positively an integral part of it. This is perhaps most easily seen in the “three-dimensional terminology,” that is the wealth of words describing underwater conditions. These terms do more than just refer to hills, rocks, soil, and so on; they are also substitutes or stand-ins for things and phenomena that the fishermen have not seen, but still know well. The terminology, then, is not merely a way of transmitting knowledge about something; it does in itself constitute this knowledge. The words are presentational rather than merely referential. Seen separately, they are mere names, often the same as those used ashore about similar landscape formations on land. As part of the fishermen’s vocabulary, on the other hand, these names and terms do not merely refer to an underwater landscape; they are themself parts of a practice that actively engages with it. The names and the words cannot be changed or substituted with others without interfering with this activity and disrupting it.

Finally, knowledge in this format is fundamentally relational. This has again to do with the fact that it cannot be lifted out of context, externalized, and made generic. More precisely, its various elements relate to each other and depend on each other. Cross bearings will not be markers without knowledge about what is underneath. This knowledge in its turn is of comparatively little use without the right gear for the species of fish to be caught at just this ground or without knowledge about how to position the vessel in the current and the wind at this location. This interconnectedness between the various components typically stands out in the traditional formulas to indicate the markers. Phrases like “the islet N in front of the mountain M” illustrate how perspective and relative positions are fundamental to this format, as does the fact that the hills, islets, and so on may change name according to which marker they are made part of. The relation in which they are involved and the perspective required to identify it are decisive to the naming. These relations, and the dense network that they make up, involving both the sea, the land, the vessels, the fish, the equipment, and the human agents, are constitutive to this format of knowledge.

Reformatting I: Maps and perspectives

Traditional knowledge of the kind examined here will often be quietly forgotten once the context changes or the knowledge is no longer of practical use. The network of interrelated components, as described above, will break up. Hovda points out that in the period of his fieldwork, the mid twentieth century, this was happening due to the introduction of modern technologies for navigation and fish finding, like the use of acoustic sounding and sonar (Hovda Reference Hovda1961, 16). As the fisheries changed, much of the older knowledge became obsolete and had little relevance to the practical work of the fishermen. In the present case, however, it is also possible to follow how this specific body of knowledge has been taken up by other actors with other interests, and to explore the way it has been reformatted during such processes. This has a value in itself but will also add to the understanding of the distinctive features of the original format.

An early reformatting took place in 1896, when the geologist Amund Helland published an article about fishing grounds along the coast of Romsdalen, the north-western coast of Norway.Footnote ⁵ The text appeared in the journal Norsk Fiskeritidende, the first fisheries trade journal in Norway. Apart from innovative research on his own fields of mineralogy, mining, and geology, Helland is known for his ambitious and comprehensive topographic description of the entire Norwegian realm, Norges Land og Folk (1885–1921). The huge work was organized by regions and demonstrates a highly detailed knowledge about natural conditions, trade and industry, customs, and local life in all parts of the country. This work was also the background for Helland’s knowledge about the fishing grounds and the traditional methods used to find them. He describes the use of markers and cross bearings and adds that this makes fishermen fully able to navigate the sea without any assistance from maps or compasses.

The information about the markers that Helland presented in the article had been collected with the aid of the director of the national lighthouse service, Didrik Hegermann Rye, who in his turn had contacted people in the region. From the list of names presented, the informants seem to range from professional fishermen to the local branch of the Society for the Promotion of the Norwegian Fisheries (Selskabet for de Norske Fiskeriers Fremme) in Ålesund. Altogether 200 markers were collected. Helland also collaborated with the Geological Survey of Norway (Norges Geografiske oppmåling), the state institution that was responsible for maps and charting.

The aim of the 1896 paper was to make the markers more generally known and thus let them be part of the shared knowledge base of people and organizations connected with fisheries and fishing in Norway. The article itself was a means to this end, but equally important was the plan to inscribe the markers on the printed “fisheries maps,” issued by the Geological Survey. The project as a whole was a step toward developing and modernizing the trade and its professions. In actual practice it also meant lifting the markers out of the contexts where they had worked and inserting them into a more general body of knowledge, available to a far larger number of people and projects. The knowledge about markers and grounds would still be locally situated – that is, valid and effective only in its original context of sea, land, and sea bottom – but its expressions would become more referential and descriptive. It would be accessible to all via maps rather than through oral communication and personal experience in situ. The knowledge became mobile, but this process also brought changes to it.

Collecting knowledge locally was only one part of the method employed by Helland. For the markers presented in his article, only the cross bearings were given by the informants. The depths, on the other hand, were taken from the maps already produced by the Geological Survey, onto which the markers subsequently were to be inscribed. This hybrid method is another indication of the reformatting going on. As pointed out above, the cross bearings would only work as markers once the third dimension of depths was added. In the original setting, this was also part of the fishermen’s knowledge and their ability to model the underwater geography by the means of their elaborate terminology. Helland acknowledges this knowledge about the underwater conditions, but still gives greater authority to the results of scientific dredging carried out from the 1840s onwards. His reformatting thus also reduced the knowledge of the fishermen to merely two dimensions, that is, to a form that would not really work alone. The value of this information instead became dependent on information already inscribed on the maps. As many species of fish preferred hills or slopes, and the fishermen well knew this, their indications of depth would usually refer to a span of feet rather than to an exact measure (Helland Reference Helland1896, 230). Substituting this with information from maps consequently implied reformatting an “analogue” understanding as a “digital” one. In this process, the span indicated by the fishermen and functional to actual fishing would be conceived as an imprecision, something to be corrected and made more exact.

The work was not without difficulties, however. It was no easy task to inscribe the bearing and crossings on maps. The main challenge was that the tops and hills used as landmarks often were too small or insignificant to have proper names on the existing maps. It might also occur that a tall mountain top used for a bearing was situated so far inland that it was not included in the fisheries maps. Furthermore, and as one of the informants pointed out, such tops and formations may be given different names on different occasions, depending on the lines they were used to indicate. Mountains and tops used for taking bearings may consequently be referred to with other names than their “correct ones,” as Helland himself wrote (Helland Reference Helland1896, 223–224). As pointed out above, this perspectivism is fundamental to the format of the fishermen’s knowledge: The elements that constitute a marker will always be seen from a distinct point and, implicitly, also by a specific human being. Helland’s struggle to get the markers inscribed in a regular map illustrates an important difference between this format and that of cartography. Regular maps have no standpoint apart from the all-seeing perpendicular and no perspectives comparable to that required by the method of cross bearings. Several of Helland’s informants refer to these facts and the difficulties of reformatting the intrinsic perspectivism. Helland for his own part acknowledged the challenge that this represented, but was nonetheless confident that “special investigations” would make it possible to draw the lines of the markers “with full certainty” (Helland Reference Helland1896, 224).

When Helland published his article, fishermen’s experiential knowledge had not yet been ousted by new technology. It was still fully working. The process of modernization and innovation in the fisheries, of which both Helland and the Society for the Promotion of the Norwegian Fisheries were parts, brought changes to it. This did not stem from a wish to do away with it. The aim was rather to develop, improve, and share knowledge among a far larger number of agents. As this discussion has shown, the work implied a reformatting of the knowledge, which in turn also had an impact on its contents and structures. Inscribed on maps, the knowledge of the fishermen lost its perspectivism, became more referential and less based on experience, and gained a more hybrid character.

Reformatting II: Oral and written knowledge

Helland’s work also represented another significant reformatting: the transition of knowledge from oral to written form. Writing was not new to the knowledge about markers, however. Books of markers were kept among the fishermen as hand-written collections. Their existence had long been known to folklore collectors, though only very few copies have been preserved. During his fieldwork, Hovda managed to get hold of one such book, given him in exchange for information from a similar manuscript already in the University Library in Trondheim (Hovda Reference Hovda1961, 237–239). As the knowledge about good fishing ground sometimes was kept secret, the books of markers likewise presented secret knowledge. The owner of a book might wish to hide it and even to destroy the book when he no longer needed it for his own work (Solheim Reference Solheim1940). As was the case with other books of recipes and secret knowledge, most notably the so-called “black books,” the hand-written books of magical formula, rumors, and stories seem to have been far more numerous than actual books (Alver Reference Alver2008). Seen as a whole, however, the totality of books and rumors about books indicate a traditional understanding that the knowledge about markers and fishing grounds was to be found in both oral and written form.

Writing something down not only gives it a fixed form but will also potentially increase its range and scope of transmission. The contents will be physically separated from its author and able to circulate in time and space, independent of any original situation of transmission. These are fundamental tenets within scholarship on orality and literacy (Ong Reference Ong1982; Hobart and Schiffman Reference Hobart and Sayre Schiffman1998). For the traditional books of markers, this seems only partly to be true, however. The books remained strictly personal, secret and well-guarded by their owners from all others. Due to this, fishermen’s hand-written books of markers did not fundamentally reformat the knowledge. They remained lived, embedded, and relational in the same way as the rest of this body of knowledge. Contrary to this, the writing represented by Helland, by the fisheries maps, and for that matter by the present article, have the explicit aim of lifting the knowledge out of its original setting, making it more generally available and inserting it into new contexts and other projects. Helland and his collaborators wanted to contribute to the modernization of fisheries in Norway. The present article is written in the context of the research project Maritime Modernities, which has an analytical focus on formats and their impact on knowledge production.

A similar ambition was also vital to Hovda, despite his closeness to the work, life, and knowledge of fishermen. His aim was not only to collect the fishermen’s knowledge, but to explain, interpret, and conserve it. Most basically, the reformatting implied by this has to do with writing down the information gained from the informants. Even if Hovda and his colleagues took part in their work, followed the fishermen out on the sea, and observed the markers under their direction, this was not to learn the trade, but to take notes. Moreover, these notes were not going to be part of a private book of markers, but of a university collection and of the national institution of place name research, of which Hovda was the director. The reformatting implied by this stands out even more clearly in the analytical work. Comparative philology is the basis of the methodology employed by Hovda. His book is structured according to the lists of terms (cf. the discussion above), largely presented in alphabetical order. This serves as a kind of cleansing. The markers and grounds become disentangled from the waters of their oceans, the mud, the kelp, and the fauna from the sea, and appear as pure and dry words, pieces ready to be moved around on the chessboard of philological work. When orality at times is evoked in the book, it does not refer to the voices of living informants but consists of phonetic notation according to academic custom. For each entry, phrases and names from different parts of the coast are being discussed and compared. The connections to their original locations are being loosened – each word is an item that can be compared with similar items from other places, as well as with entries from dictionaries and other research and collections.

Hovda drew on dictionaries of both Norwegian dialects and standardized Norwegian, and on similar works from other Nordic countries and the North Sea region. He also made use of historical material, going back to the Old Norse language. The items that he constructed by cutting the words loose from their physical setting and geographic contexts consequently were set on courses that took them on extensive travels in both space and time. To follow them on their journeys and assess the probability of the routes claimed for them, specialized knowledge in philology and linguistic history is needed. Hovda reformatted the expertise of the fishermen as expert knowledge of a new and different kind.

Reformatting III: The Anglo-Norwegian fisheries case

The most significant reformatting, however, had taken place a decade before Hovda published his book, and probably had been an important inspiration for it. From the early twentieth century, British trawlers had been fishing in Norwegian fjords and close to Norwegian territory. After a period of conflict, Norway took the UK to court in the Hague in 1951 and won recognition for a national fishing zone of twelve nautical miles. Both the width of the zone and the way to draw its line were disputed during the case. Customary use was at the core of the Norwegian argument, and place names were among the means to document this: The existence of names on islets, rocks, grounds, and so on reflected human presence and activity. The linguistic form of the names and terms, furthermore, were upheld as expressions of the old age of this use. Among the material presented in court was a short treatise by Hovda. Its original title was Namn på fiskegrunnar og fiskeméd frå Træna til Varangerfjorden (Hovda 1951, Ms 2).Footnote ⁶ For the case, it was translated into French as Les noms des lieux des pêche depuis Træna jusq’au Varangerfjord (Hovda 1951, Ms 3). This version was published as annex no. 93 to the Norwegian rejoinder (ICJ 1951).

Hovda started his thesis by stating that

From this he moves on to an argument that coastal fishing has been going on as long as the land has been inhabited, referring to both archaeological material and to the linguistic roots of place names along the northern coast to document this. From these premises Hovda turns to the actual place names and the markers. He explains the method of taking cross bearings and gives the names of a number of important grounds, supplying each with linguistic explanations. Several of the grounds and their markers were named after animals on land, like “pig,” “horse,” or “goat.” Names referring to supranatural beings, like trolls, also occur. Hovda also explains the absence of Norwegian names that were by custom taboo at sea: The use of certain words, names, and phrases was banned because they were thought to bring bad luck. Instead, words from life on land might be used, either because they were considered neutral or seen as positively “good names” (godnemningar), words and expressions pleasing or flattering to the forces that ruled the sea and the fish. Such customs and beliefs naturally were of very ancient date, he pointed out, and the names consequently indications of an equally long use. The main line of argument supplied by Hovda and his exposé of place names consequently was historical. He also presented some places and markers that were named after persons or nearby farms. Here, the argument was that such names indicate ancient and well-established rights of use.

The text differs significantly from Hovda’s later book. This concerns the context – the treatise was explicitly prepared in support of the Norwegian argument about customary rights to the fishing places and hence the extension of the zone.Footnote ⁸ It is also far more concerned with the specific place names and considerably less with the more general terminology surrounding underwater topography, or the competence required to take bearings and work the grounds. The reason may be that this type of information was considered less relevant for the court case, but also that Hovda had not yet developed his own understanding about this. There are in fact indications that his work for the court case was what inspired him later to pursue his own scholarly interests in the names and the topographic vocabulary (Hovda 1951, Ms 4).

The later treatise represents a reformatting of the original knowledge of the fishermen, and as such it shares some of the features already discussed. Most notably this concerns the disconnection of the knowledge and place names from the lived experience of local fishermen, and the subsequent insertion into quite a different context represented by international maritime law. In a very concrete way, this shift was marked by the required translations. The official languages of the ICJ were English and French. Norway had engaged a Belgian lawyer and expert on international public law, Maurice Bourquin, and all documents produced for the case hence needed to exist in French. The French version of the Hovda treatise was produced by Carl Arnesen in Oslo, an experienced teacher and translator of French, and reviewed by Hovda himself. The translation is nearly ten pages longer than the Norwegian original, largely due to the number of explications of words and terms that had to be inserted (twenty-seven and eighteen pages respectively). A separate table of terms was also developed for the case, presenting the Norwegian words for reefs, rocks, and small islets in both French and English translations (Hovda 1951, Ms 1). Even more clearly than the treatise itself, this table illustrates how the words were cut loose from their original context and set afloat in international waters. In addition to the translations, more detailed explications were added in French. The Norwegian term tørrfall is thus given in English as “rocks which cover and uncover” and in French as “rochers qui couvrent et découvrent,” but also explained as “gros pointillage entre les niveaux marqués respctivement par la marée haut et la marée basse de vives eaux, pointillage points fin entre ce dernier niveau jusq’au la profondeur de 0,5 m. à la marée basse des vives eaux” (Hovda 1951, Ms 1).

The result in the Hague was highly important to Norwegian national interests, but the case and the judgment also came to impact international maritime law (Funderud Skogvang Reference Funderud Skogvang2012). The Anglo-Norwegian fisheries case has become a juridical reference point for similar conflicts in other parts if the world (MacChesney Reference MacChesney1980). In this way, the disconnected and reformatted knowledge gained a life of its own and in quite other contexts and places than those of its origins. Compared with the other types of reformatting, discussed above, the disconnection in this case was also more profound and the reformatting far richer in consequence. Nonetheless, this is not only an example of “extreme reformatting,” but in a certain sense also of the opposite. The material presented at the court case could not run the risk of losing contact with the physical realities of the Norwegian coastline, the experience and expertise of the fishermen, and the maritime resources of just those waters. This “seascape” was largely what the case was about. The lived and embedded knowledge likewise was at the core of the argument presented. The terms, the names, and continuous practice kept up by the fishermen were meant to document rights of use based on tradition and custom. If not locally situated and anchored in specific topographic particularities, the material and the knowledge that it presented would not serve its function. The reformatting thus had to balance two opposite needs: on the one hand that of presenting the knowledge about the Norwegian coastline in a way that was adequate for the rationalities and workings of international law and the ICJ, and on the other it also had to be kept sufficiently close to the physical localities and (implicitly) natural resources that the entire conflict was about. The result indicated that the balance was found.

At the end: The force of formats

During the middle part of the twentieth century, Per Hovda collected and examined a rich vocabulary of place names, fishing ground markers, and terms for underwater topography along the entire Norwegian coast. This article has argued that the vocabulary of the fishermen was part of a cultural seascape and represents a specific format of knowledge that was localized, embedded, and highly relational. Contrary to the supposition, common in much research literature, that knowledge about the ocean traditionally was largely two-dimensional and as such “superficial,” this understanding of the seascape in fact was three-dimensional: It included an intimate knowledge of the underwater topography. Even if this topography had never been seen by the fishermen, it had been practically experienced. The vocabulary represented a means to transmit this knowledge and supplied tools to model its three-dimensional reality.

As this article has shown, this body of knowledge has been reformatted in three different ways: that of Amund Helland and the modernization of the fisheries in the 1890s, that of the philological work of Per Hovda in the mid twentieth century, and finally that of the treatise prepared by Hovda for the Anglo-Norwegian fisheries case in 1951. For all these reformattings, the original body of knowledge has been a highly valuable resource. At the same time, making use of this resource meant that it was itself reformatted. Disconnected from its original context, the knowledge has been relocated to different projects used to fill new aims: developing national fisheries, comparative philological research, and use in developing international law. Disconnected, the knowledge has become mobile and destined to travel. In doing this, it has also changed in itself. The disconnections and dislocations have implied cleansing and itemization of the knowledge. Instead of acquiring and maintaining its meaning from its embeddedness in specific seascapes and the experience of fishermen in various locations in the North Sea region, it has been transformed into marks on widely distributed national fisheries maps. Likewise, it has become entries and lemmata in comparative research and has proven its efficiency as part of a case in the ICJ. These are widely different contexts – different not only from each other but also from the original context. It is nonetheless not the contexts that change the knowledge. The vital force of change is the formats and the reformatting that new contexts require. The formats adapt the knowledge to new use and new settings, shaping and adapting the knowledge as part of the work that they carry out.