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Westfjords Natural History institute

Natural History Museum in Bolungarvík

Íslenska

This part of the page is to explain better the life in Icelandic fishing stations in the 18th and 19th century.  It is also to give a better idea of what the museum has to offer.

    Fishing stations in 18th to 19th century Iceland were divided into four categories.  First are the home base or "heimaver", but that means that each farm had its own home base that they went fishing from.  If many farms were close to each other and there were many people living there then they would collaborate and go fishing from the same home base.  Away base or "útver" is a complete opposite to the home base, but in that case men left their home and staid in the away fishing base. "Viðleguver" was then the third kind and is a mix between home and mixed base, but in that one the men working there lived on the farms close by for the whole fishing season but were not locals.  The fourth was a mixed base "blandað ver"  but there were men that weren´t locals  fishing and living there in the fishing season but the locals would also be fishing from there.

    Most of the fishing stations were in Vestfjords, or 125 of the 326 that are known to have been in the country from the beginning of the 18th century.  Those were both home bases and outer bases.  T he bases were mostly located where it was short to the fishing grounds.  There were fishing bases in Brunnasandi, in Tálknafirði, in Arnafirði, in Dýrafirði, in Önundarfirði and in Bolungarvík. The biggest fishing base was in Bolungarvik.

Ósvör is the largest and the oldest fishing base in Ísafjardardjup.