Photograph: Pomors taking away (“snugging down”) a long line to wooden trunks.

Russians

Arkhangelsk province

1914

8 x 11,2

РЭМ 3228-12

The photo shows fishermen stowing a long line into two trunks. A long line is a tackle, a long rope; multiple thin strings extended away from it with angles on their ends, on which baits, small fish or sea worms, were fitted. The long line was used as the main tool for catching cod and other ground fish. Cod fishery, primarily widespread on the western coast of the Kola Peninsula, moves to the eastern coast (“East Murman”) in the 17th century, and the inhabitants of the Pomor Coast and the lower Dvina land (Dvina people) begin to actively participate in it. By the 19th century it had become the main sector of economy for the fishermen and hunters of the Pomor Coast. Abstract by O.G. Baranova