Note 476 — Chapter VIII · —Coast Peoples

Brittany's active part in the maritime history of France is due not only to its ragged contour, its inshore and offshore islands, its forward location on the Atlantic which brought it near to the fisheries of Newfoundland and the trade of the West Indies, but also to the fact that the "Golden Belt," which, with but few interruptions, forms a band of fertility along the coast, has supported a denser population than the sterile granitic soils of the interior,476 while the sea near by varied and enriched the diet of the inhabitants by its abundance of fish, and in its limy seaweed yielded a valuable fertilizer for their gardens.477 The small but countless alluvial deposits at the fiord heads in Norway, aided by the products of the sea, are able to support a considerable number of people. Hence the narrow coastal rim of that country shows always a density of population double or quadruple that of the next density belt toward the mountainous interior, and contains seventeen out of Norway's nineteen towns having more than 5,000 inhabitants.478 It is this relative fertility of the coastal regions, as opposed to the sterile interior, that has brought so large a part of Norway's people in contact with the Atlantic and helped give them a prominent place in maritime history.