Not just fisherfolk: winter housing and the seasonal lifeways of rural Euro-Newfoundlanders

Abstract

From the mid-seventeenth to the mid-twentieth century, European and European-descendent people in rural parts of the island of Newfoundland practiced a semimigratory, i.e. transhumant, tradition known colloquially as winter housing. This tradition saw rural Euro-Newfoundlanders shift their primary homes from the fishing villages in the summer to wintering camps in more sheltered areas of the island where they hunted, trapped, cut lumber, and prepared for the next fishing season. Through examination of written and oral accounts on the tradition and archaeological surveys of five different winter houses, this research seeks to broaden the understanding of this tradition. It is argued that instead of being apart from the fishery, winter houses are elements of a deeply complex, integrated, organic system that allowed early Euro-Newfoundlanders to maximize life in their environment and survive in a rugged, unpredictable, North Atlantic environment. Euro-Newfoundlanders were not just fisherfolk but adaptable, resourceful residents of their island home.