Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1999, Page 127

BRÓÐIR ORMSINS OG FISKAR SUM KONGAR
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man Johan Olof Broman (1912-54: 651,
676-677) reports from Hálsingland about
the belief in eel-mothers. In 1736, Johan
Duræus writes from Ydre in Óstergotland
that some people claim that there are
eel-mothers, which are similar to rotten
timber, with many holes on them, from
where this fish should generate; I have nev-
er seen it,’ he adds sceptically (Norrby,
1950: 157). According to the Swede Jacob
Gabriel Gyllenborg (1770: 41), the peas-
antry talked about ‘... a strange creature,
called the Eel-Mother, which is covered
with holes on all sides, from where small
eel juveniles emerge; and when this gener-
ation takes place, the grand Eel-Mother
tumbles up on the beaches, where the sun
during summertime is hottest in the water;
the small eel juveniles, in large number,
come out in the free water, where they as
other fishes, forage and grow. When you
ask them how this Eel-Mother was created,
and why it never can be observed by others,
the answer is that there are very few of
them, and according to some people, that
such a creature in the beginning was creat-
ed by God to take care of the reproduction
of the eels’. According to a later folk-life
record from Óstergotland in Sweden, an
Eel-Mother reigns in an eel’s nest (ULMA
91:21). The motif of an eel-mother has
been used by the Danish author H.C. An-
dersen in his short story ‘En historie fra
Klitteme’ (1860).
It is part of the traditional folk taxonomy
to categorise fish in accordance with hu-
man social stmctures and kinship systems.
According to this world-view, it was natur-
al that the eel had a mother who was re-
sponsible for its reproduction, and that the
strange eel was regarded as a relative to the
snakes, and, therefore, was called the
Brother of the Snake. In a record from
Himmerland, the eel has even been regard-
ed as the matemal uncle to the viper
(Hugormens morbroder) in Denmark.
Also in Finland, there are records that the
peasantry had regarded the eel as related to
the snakes. It was so similar to snakes that
many fishermen preferred to throw it back
into the water when caught, according to a
record from Bjorkoby parish in Ósterbotten
(Svanberg, 1999; SLS 656a).
The notions about the eel as the brother
of the snake are found in areas of the
Nordic countries where the eel traditional-
ly has been despised as food. In northem
Sweden, many areas in Finland, Norway
and the Faroe Islands, the eel has tradition-
ally not been considered a fish and has not
been eaten. ‘The inhabitants do not eat
them’, Jørgen Landt (1800: 275) writes in
his description of the Faroe Islands. The
Norwegian Fredric Grøn (1942: 150) re-
ports that the peasant’s distmst of the eel
has endured into modem times. Only
towns people have leamed to appreciate
eel, he continues. It must, therefore, have
been a question of social belonging, where-
in peasants have been reluctant to eat eel
and townspeople, and more socially ad-
vanced people, have been able to enjoy it.
In the Faroe Islands, Danish immigrants
have consumed eel, while the local popula-
tion has mistmsted it into modem times.
The prejudices against eel as food are also
found in other parts of Europe. For in-
stance, in Scotland the natives have dis-