The French Migratory Fishery and the Maritime Cultural Landscape of Newfoundland’s Petit Nord

Landscapes endure for centuries. A landscape can been understood as a network of landmarks where human activity occurs, for example the extraction of natural resources. The relationship of landscape and landmark is recursive; landscapes of different scales nest, like Matrushka dolls, one within another. A landscape at one level is a landmark, taking a broader view. The fundamental geographical unit in the early-modern, transatlantic, dry salt-cod fishery was the fishing room, the shore station needed for processing fish caught in daily voyages. Within the wider context of the whole Petit Nord, fishing rooms were landmarks -- but their complex structure suggests that they were also, in their own way, landscapes. This session explores the cultural landscape of the Petit Nord at several different levels, including taskscape, gender and the interdependence of land and sea in coastal zones.