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That is, a shift from nature conceived of as divinely constructed to nature explained

through a scientific environmental discourse. For Pálsson (1991, p. 3) discourses are:

…words used in face-to-face interactions in the process of making a
livelihood, the commonplace statements they exchange about their
resources and their productive efforts, their “folk” theories of nature and
production, and the general paradigms within which they cast their
theories about the workings of nature and human-environmental
interactions.

He distinguished three phases of fishing during this period that reflect wider

transformations to an environmental order and discourses of fish and fishing. In the

first phase, which lasted up to the mid-1800s, fishing was regarded as an exchange

with nature. For example, some Cod roe, which humans ate, was often thrown into the

ocean to restore fertility and the fishers spoke of their prey as a gift from god (Pálsson

1991, p. 90). A key concept was “fishiness”: the ability, unevenly distributed amongst

fishers, to get fish (Pálsson 1991, pp. 90-91). I say ‘get’ because in this context

catching is too active a term since fishing was not understood as a human controlled

activity, rather fishers who possessed fishiness were seen as passive recipients fated to

this success (Pálsson 1991, p. 91). Icelanders used natural signs to strategise

production, for example, the appearance of certain birds meant the migration of

certain fish (Pálsson 1991, p. 88). The catch was confined as fish was supplied to a

limited local market and through specific colonial owned trade (Pálsson 1991, pp. 84-

86). Fish was ranked aesthetically, for instance herring was not considered fish

because of its foul smell, and marine invertebrates ‘shameful and untouchable’

(Pálsson 1991, p. 92).

A second phase soon arrived with the emergence of capitalist relations of

production and the development of new markets for Icelandic fish products in the late

th
18 century when the market opened targets became indefinite (Pálsson 1991, pp.

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