The fisheries of Norway are among the most important in the world, yielding the nation more than seven million dollars a year, and furnishing employment to eighty thousand men.  The sea-fisheries play the chief part in this branch of industry.  The long coast line and the great ocean depth near the coast combine to give the fisheries of Norway unusual advantages.  The abundance of fish is also due to the presence of masses of glutinous matter, apparently living protoplasm, which furnishes nutriment for millions of animalcules which again become food for the herring and other fish.  The fish are mainly of the round sort found in deep waters, the cod, herring, and mackerel being the most important.

The cod yields the largest monetary returns.  This fish migrates to the coast of Norway to spawn and in search of food.  The best cod fisheries are in Romsdal, Nordland, and Tromsoe counties, the Lofoten islands in Tromsoe alone furnishing employment to more than four thousand men.  The cod weighs from eight to twenty pounds and measures from five to six feet in length.  Some are merely dried after having been cleaned.  This is done by hanging them by the tail on wooden frames.  The others are sent to the salting stations where they are salted and dried on flat rocks.  A fish weighing ten pounds will yield two pounds of salted cod, the loss being due to the removal of the head and entrails and the drying out of the water.

There are numerous secondary products from the cod, the most valuable being the cod liver oil.  The livers of the fish are exposed to a jet of superheated steam which destroys the liver cells and causes the small drops of oil to run together.  The roe are salted and sent to France to be used for bait in the sardine fisheries.

In the matter of the handicraft industries carried on in the homes, Norway has long taken high rank.  As early as the ninth century her artisans were skilled in the manufacture of arms, farming implements, and boats, and her women in cloth weaving and embroidery.  During recent times the ease and cheapness with which foreign products could be obtained caused a marked decline in home industries; but at the present moment an effort is being made to rehabilitate them through a national domestic industry association, organized in 1891, which has taken up the manufacture of hand-carved articles, sheath-knives, skis, sledges, and woven and embroidered woolen and linen goods after the old Norwegian patterns.

The manufacture of lumber and wooden ware is one of the leading industrial pursuits.  With the exception of the two most northern counties, practically every section of the country is represented by sawmills and planing mills.  Ship-building in recent times has attained considerable importance, and the manufacture of paper of the chemical wood-pulp variety has become one of the leading industries.  There are a few cloth, rope, and jersey mills at Bergen and Christiania, but the textile industries of Norway are relatively unimportant.  On the other hand, leather, India rubber, glass, metal, and chemical industries have become important of late years.