Lundø Birketing August 1646
On August 22, 1646, a court hearing took place at Lundø Birketing. The hearing was about an incident that had taken place about three weeks earlier at Lundø Tap. The main witness was Maren Jensdatter, who had been on the beach at Jelseodde, which is the northwesternmost part of the peninsula Lundø east of Skive, at sunrise, and she had been an eyewitness to the battle on the fjord, which Aakjær ironically calls “A sea battle” in his headline.
Sea battle on Skive Fjord
That morning, Maren Jensdatter had gone down to the beach to look for the local fishermen, as she used to do in the morning. She had spotted three boats with fishermen from Lundø rowing in under the coast at Lundø Tap, but suddenly another boat had appeared with four strong Sallingboers, who came sailing at great speed towards the Lundø fishermen. The largest of the Sallings, Jørgen Mikkelsen, stood up in the boat with a rifle in his hand and shouted at the Lundø fishermen to stop the boat and that they would be shot if they did not. The Lundø fishermen protested loudly and said that they had done nothing wrong. Jørgen Mikkelsen, however, shouted at them to obey the order, raised his gun and once again threatened to shoot them. At the same time, the Salling boat had come so close to the Lundo boats that the Sallings were able to throw a rope with a hook onto one of the boats. The hook snagged on the boat in question and the Sallings were able to start hauling in. The Lundø fishermen begged for their lives and claimed again that they had done nothing illegal, but Jørgen Mikkelsen dismissed them and suddenly there was a Sallingbo in one of the Lundø boats. With a piece of wood, the sallingbo hit the grower Kjeld Jørgensen on the arm, causing him to shout that his arm was completely “smashed”. Another seaman, Jens Pedersen, was knocked down and lay with his legs in the air, and Jørgen Mikkelsen and his accomplices then gave everyone in the boat a dry beating with a wooden blanket, causing wood splinters to fly over the rail. A long time passed while the Lundø fishermen begged for their lives before the Sallings gave up and rowed across the fjord to Salling.
The witness Maren Jensdatter
This is what Maren Jensdatter briefly testified about in court. Some details are not included in this retelling, including most of the lines that Maren had been able to remember, such as when Salling resident Jørgen Mikkelsen first called out to the poor Lundø fishermen: “Hold still, you shiver, or I will shoot you down”. She had apparently also known the supposed leader of the Salling residents, Jørgen Mikkelsen, and could also remember the abuse each Lundø fisherman had been subjected to by name. Objectively speaking, Maren Jensen appears to be a reliable and attentive witness, but I wonder if her sometimes dramatic account might have been biased in favor of the Lundø fishermen.
Landowners and principal subpoenaed
Jeppe Aakjær writes that a couple of days after the court meeting, a couple of bailiffs, representing the authorities, had sought out the owners Christoffer Friis at Astrup and Waldemar Lycke at Grinderslev Kloster in Østsalling. It was the two landowners’ servants who had sailed across the fjord to attack the seemingly defenseless and unsuspecting Lundø fishermen, and at that time the landowners were responsible for the actions of their servants. Therefore, the two landowners were subpoenaed for the assaults on Lundø fishermen. However, Jørgen Mikkelsen, who was appointed as the leader of the punitive expedition, was personally subpoenaed for the serious violent assault. Aakjær has not stated what the verdict was and what the motive for the assault was, or has been unable to find sources to back it up.
Cod war
However, Aakjær believes that the dispute was about the right to fish for cod in the fjord. In that case, there was a battle for the fish in Skive Fjord at the time, and if Aakjær’s assumption that the sea battle was about cod is correct, it is interesting from a contemporary perspective to know that there were cod in Skive Fjord in the mid-1600s. It’s been a long time since anyone has seen cod in Skive Fjord – if they have seen any fish. …..
Sources: Skivebogen 1926: A sea battle (and a wolf story by Jeppe Aakjær)