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105-109). This was enabled by the legal framework of the Freedom of the Seas,

th
which had been set down in 17 century by a Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius in the book

Mare Liberum (Freedom of the Seas). Beyond a three nautical mile belt along the

coast, the law stated the seas are free to all and owned by none. In this period the seas

th
were still largely seen as inexhaustible. In Iceland during the 18 century, the new
capitalist relations and paradigm introduced different concepts of nature, production,

fishing and fish. ‘In particular the relative power of fish to humans was reversed’

(Pálsson 1991, p. 103). Human labour came to be viewed as creating value and ‘[t]he

peasant’s mythology, and its image of the cosmic order replaced by the notion of

infinite natural resources’ (Pálsson 1991, pp. 100-110). Nature was considered

random but calculable and the term “fishing by cleverness” entered the vocabulary

(Pálsson 1991, p. 130). The role of the skipper became more important and the crew

relationships hierarchical. In this period fishing technology underwent important

changes. Complex gear was introduced – long lines, gillnets and trawls – and the value

of certain fish also changed, as European and American tastes began to define the

market. Some of the fish, which in the past were considered inedible and smelly,

became a delicacy (Pálsson 1991, p. 109).

The third phase emerged with the threat of overexploitation in the 1960s.

Pálsson argues that this lead to the ‘social authority of marine biological research’ and

with this, a scientific discourse on resource use (Pálsson 1991, p. 133). Biological

information became the authoritative knowledge and the new rationale that emerged

was based on the idea that humans are collectively responsible for the maintenance of

fish and the seas (Pálsson 1991, p. 133). On a local level, fishing success became less

about fishiness or skill, or the size of catch due to the new ceiling on production, and

more about capital, technology, gear and ecological factors. The credibility of the

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