Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1981, Síða 126
134
The Collection of Wild Birds’ Eggs and Nestlings in Sweden
especial attention and in this case they were often collected
systematically. This was practised both by people who lived along
the shores of lakes and watercourses in the interior and, above all,
by the people of the coastal areas in the archipelagoes on the east
and west coasts.
Only a few species of waterfowl build nests in trees; the majority
nest on the ground, the nests being completely open or more or
less hidden. Among the waterfowl that frequent fresh-water lakes,
attention was devoted, in the first place, to the mallard (Anas
platyrhynchus) and the diver (Gavia). A report from central Sma-
land in the 1850s says: “We took the eggs of the duck and the
diver, if we found them. The divers lay their eggs just by the edge
of the lake, because they cannot walk. ... We did not eat their
eggs whole but beat them into sauce. Duck eggs are like hen eggs.
If you break them, they are just a bit more watery.” (Granstrom,
1933, p. 9.) But people also robbed the nests of the greylag goose
(Anser anser), the red-breasted merganser (Mergus serrator) and
even the coot (Fulica atra).
Along the coasts, almost all the birds’ nests found were robbed.
The most accessible were the eggs of the common eider (Somateria
mollissima), the greylag goose and the red-breasted merganser. Re-
porting from the Finnish part of Lappland, Jakob Fellman says
that, in the case of the merganser, people even dug pits on shores
and islets to induce the birds to lay their eggs there (Fellman, 1906,
p. 80). But they also collected the eggs of the long-tailed duck
(Clangula hyemalis), the common guillemot (Uria aalge intermedia),
the black-tailed godwit (Limosa limosa),4 the velvet scoter (Mela-
nitta fusca), the razorbill (Alca torda) and the common tern (Sterna
hirundo). Nor were the eggs of the gull despised, in spite of the fact
that they tasted strongly of fish oil.
In Sweden, as in Finland, it was particularly the uninhabited
outer skerries and islets that were plundered. This was no doubt
connected with the fact that here the rights of ownership, in so far
as any such rights existed, were difficult to safeguard. In his History
(1555), Olaus Magnus also writes as follows: