Norwegian fishermen were astonished when they landed a most strange and portentous fish on the 26 November 1597.
On one side of the 14 inch long herring was the image of two soldiers in combat wearing military helmets, with one waving a sword while being struck in the belly by the other’s lance.
Next to this image were some symbols, one of which looks like a capital A, followed by what seems to be two bushels of wheat.
On the other side of the herring in the same blood red were some letters or symbols, some familiar (M) and others not.
A Most Strange and Wonderful Herring
The fish was taken to local magistrates and the nobility and an account was printed in Dutch before being translated into English in an anonymous pamphlet titled A Most Strange and Wonderful Herring 1598.[i]
According to the author, the herring was sent by God as a sign to turn us away from sin. It is, he says, ‘a strange and wonderful token of God’s wrath figured forth in a silly herring’.
The two fighting soldiers are there to tell us that God will visit war upon us to scourge the wicked. The bushels of wheat are taken by the author to be rods for whipping sinners, representing the two scourges that the Lord will use on us – war and famine.
As to the letters on the fish, the author of the pamphlet admits defeat. He acknowledges that although some characters are familiar, others are ‘strange and not understood’.
He is certain, though, that whatever the characters stand for, it is a ‘heavy sentence against the sins of this age.’ The author sees the miraculous herring as a sign that the end of the world is near. ‘Repent,’ he tells us, ‘for the Kingdom of God is at hand’.
Did an enterprising artistically inclined Norwegian fisherman carve the pictures and letters into the fish for a prank or a money making scheme? Or were superstitious fishermen interpreting natural markings on the fish in the light of contemporary fears and anxieties? Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how accurate the drawings reproduced above are, or how they might have been embellished.
The pamphlet tells us that the doomsday herring was caught near the city of Drenton which does not appear to exist. My best guess is that the city is Trondheim which in some historical sources is rendered as Drondheim which could be plausibly if clumsily anglicised as Drenton.
However, this is not the only fishy tale about apocalyptic herring. Scandinavia has a weird history of ominous doomsday fish…
More Prophetic Fish
The early modern period was replete with accounts of strange signs and wonders related in bizarre pamphlets to a sensation hungry public. The upheavals, persecutions and conflict that came with the religious reformations of the times gave many in Europe the sense that they were living in the end of days, a feeling that has some resonance with our troubled times.[ii]
But why would God send his message on a fish, you might ask? The pamphlet suggests this is because the herring is a popular fish and one of the most commonly eaten.
Strangely, the doomsday herring was not the first portentous fish to carry God’s warning. In November 1587, king of Denmark and Norway Frederik II set his wisest experts the task of deciphering gothic script found on two herring. The best his learned men could do was suggest the characters said something along the lines that his herring fishing days were numbered.[iii]
In any case, everyone assumed the gothic letters meant the King was doomed. And doomed he was – he died a few months later…
In November 1587, four fish covered in letters, hieroglyphs and symbols were caught off the Danish coast. A learned theologian studied them and worked out the message from God: the world as they knew it was coming to an end, and Jesus was about to return and judge the living and the dead…[iv]
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an image of this doomsday herring. In any case, the doomsday prediction is some four centuries overdue.
Epilogue
Speaking of doomsday fish, could herring farts bring about a nuclear apocalypse? Well, throughout the 1980s the Swedish military, media and government were convinced that Soviet submarines were intruding on their waters. This was understandable after a Soviet ‘whisky class’ submarine ran aground off the country’s south coast in 1981. The press jokingly referred to it as ‘whisky on the rocks’, but it caused a major cold war diplomatic incident.
In the years following this, the Swedish navy were constantly hunting mysterious Soviet submarines in their waters, though never found any. Military equipment was picking up acoustic signals of underwater activity, and all the experts were convinced the Soviets were all over their waters. However, whenever Swedish submarines picked up one of these signals and pursued it, the source was never found.
Even after the cold war ended, the mysterious submarine activity off Sweden’s coast continued. It prompted Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt to complain to a bemused Boris Yeltsin about Russia’s nefarious submarine activity.
Eventually the military enlisted some outside scientific help to solve the mystery. And two of the scientists on the team, Magnus Wahlberg and Hakan Westerberg, happened to be experts on herring farts.[v] They knew that when herring in shoals of several square metres get spooked by a predator, or a Swedish submarine hunting phantom intruders, the collective release of fishy farts is huge.
The scientists demonstrated their theory in a top secret military backed experiment that involved squeezing herring they bought from the supermarket in a water tank to create bum bubbles from the fish
Once the fishy flatulence was recognised for what it was and ruled out, reports of invading submarines stopped.[vi]
Sweden’s military, media and political class – the best and the brightest – had been fooled by fish farts.
For the Yorkshire serial killer witch whose chicken laid a doomsday egg, see here: https://paulweatherhead.com/2024/03/19/yorkshire-serial-killer-witchs-chicken-lays-doomsday-egg/
[i] Anon, A Most Strange and Wonderful Herring…(London: John Wolfe, 1598). Available at: https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_a-most-strange-a-wonder_herring_1598/page/n7/mode/1up?view=theater
[ii] Diarmuid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700 (London: Penguin, 2003), pp.550-556
[iii] ‘Prophetic Herrings’, Rigby’s Encyclopaedia of the Herring, Available at: https://www.herripedia.com/strangely-marked-herrings/
[iv] A breefe coniecturall discourse, vpon the hierographicall letters & caracters fovnd upon fower fishes taken neere Marstrand in the kingdome of Denmarke, the 28. of Nouember 1587. Treating by considerations poligraphicall, theologicall, Thalmudicall & cabalisticall. Seene and allowed.” In the digital collection Early English Books Online 2. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A07082.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections.
[v] Magnus Wahlberg, and Håkan Westerberg (2003) ‘Sounds produced by herring (Clupea harengus) bubble release’, Aquatic Living Resources,16(3), pp.271-275, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0990-7440(03)00017-2
[vi] Marc Abrahams, The curious true tale of the Swedish prime minister, a Soviet submarine, and farting herring. 23 March 2014 available at: https://improbable.com/2014/03/23/the-curious-true-tale-of-the-the-swedish-prime-minister-a-soviet-submarine-and-farting-herring/
Paul Weatherhead 