INGVAR SVANBERG, MADELEINE BONOW & HÅKAN OLSÉN Fish Ponds in Scania, and Linnaeus’s Attempt to Promote Aquaculture in Sweden C arl Linnaeus’s visit to Scania in 1749 had been successful. By 1751, his account of the journey was available at the booksellers. The task he had been assigned ten years earlier by the nation’s parliament was thereby concluded. The purpose of his journeys through the provinces had been to keep a careful record of what he observed, with respect to both private household practices and large-scale economic patterns. He paid particular attention to any innovations which might favour the fatherland. Sweden was poor; and notwithstanding a wide range of efforts, the provision of suffi cient foodstuffs for its people was far from having been reliably secured. Indeed, the consumption of animal products had declined during the eighteenth century, and fish made up a markedly smaller proportion of the diet than 200 years earlier. Food crises and famine lurked constantly around the cor- ner. It was the task of the scientists of the time to solve the problem, and Linnaeus was one of those from whom the authorities expected practical advice. He had therefore taken particular pains to study the situation of agriculture, although he also paid due attention to local industries and to private efforts at improving economic life. 1 Among the economic activities Linnaeus observed on his trip to Scania was the raising of fish in ponds, especially at some of the larger estates. He described this practice in detail in his travelogue, and he formed the firm conviction that aquaculture should be practiced in Sweden’s more northerly regions too: Our nation should give more thought to this practice, which hitherto has not—at least further up in the country—enjoyed the esteem that it merits, inasmuch as [there are] splendid locations for fish [that] could one day be highly valued, to the advantage of the country. And the rocky regions, which yield less in the way of crops, could make up for the lack with fish. 2