In 1755, Samuel Johnson (this was before his honorary doctorates) defined the herring as ‘a small sea-fish’, and that was it. By contrast, Graeme Rigby has spent 25 obsessive years documenting the cultural and economic importance of this creature. The resulting omnium-gatherum is like the bulging cod-end of a bumper trawl net, farctate with glistening details that embrace zooarchaeology, cooperage, otoliths, skaldic verse and Van Gogh’s ear.

Clupea harengus is a highly adaptable, widely distributed marine teleost that can form shoals covering several square miles, and their milky spawning trails are so long they can be seen from space. The name may derive from the Germanic heer (army), and its nicknames include ‘Digby Chickens’. In Greenland, you should ask for Angmagssagssuaq . The

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