Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

Content Warning: This section discusses the European slave trade.

The Basque live in the northwest corner of Spain and southwest edge of France. They have lived in this region since before historical records began. Their language, Euskera, may be one of the oldest in Europe and is one of only four European languages that do not originate from the Indo-European family. Throughout history, others in the region, from the Celts and Romans to the Spanish and French, have “tried to subdue and assimilate them, and all have failed” (18). 

In the Middle Ages, the Basque came to great renown and economic power by securing an unknown fishing ground and bringing back whale and cod to the European masses. One of their folktales, about a fisherman who catches a cod that speaks the Basque language, demonstrates the importance of cod to their culture, though cod is not native to Basque or Spanish waters.

The Basque were not the first to catch Atlantic cod, the Vikings having found it on their travels. The Vikings, led by Thorwald and his son Eirek the Red, traveled the ocean in around 985 CE from Norway to Iceland, and then to Greenland. From Greenland they reached the rocky shore of what is now the Labrador coast, following it southward into areas of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, or Maine.