Research, understanding and exploitation of documents are central to historical knowledge. While those documents can be seen as History, they can also be perceived as links connecting historians to the past to reconstruct History. Yet, it must be admitted that there exist few primary sources dealing with fish and marine resources for the countries that are under investigation. Shortage of such resources has been known to lead to historians’ disinterest in a subject since retrieval of what exists can be time-consuming and often equate with searching for a needle in a haystack. Moreover, this unavailability or invisibility seems to drive historians to overuse some better-known sources to the detriment of others. There is no articulated body of theory to determine what is pertinent in history, it is rather that the historian should draw on whatever he can find among all sorts of theories and common-sense beliefs which may be used to explicate the events in which he happens to be interested.

By reviewing and evaluating primary sources and archives, it is possible to extract data that can be used to build up the literary theory on the exploitation of fish and the subsequent fish based economy developed by Iceland's settlers and to a certain extent the Scandinavian colonies of the Faeroes Islands. Additionally, excerpts of sagas as well as various archives related to fishing are thematically presented to illustrate the role and place of fish in Icelandic narratives and laws.

Part 1: Icelandic and Faeroese primary sources and the writing of History

In the medieval period, writings could be classified as ‘romantic’ and ‘realist’. The majority of literature contemporary to the sagas was idealistic.