What is a sluttseddel (sales note)?
A sluttseddel is the mandatory sales and landing note that records every first-hand sale of wild-caught fish in Norway. Signed by both the buyer and the fisher at landing, it lists species, product condition, exact weights, price, the vessel and the buyer. It is the legal and statistical backbone behind Norwegian landings data.
Norwegian law requires that all first-hand sale of wild marine resources go through, or with the approval of, a fish sales organisation. The sluttseddel is the document that captures that sale: it must be completed and signed before the catch leaves the landing site. A related document, the landingsseddel, is used when fish is landed without a simultaneous sale; only the sluttseddel carries a price.
Because every commercial landing generates a seddel, the resulting dataset is effectively a census of the Norwegian fishery rather than a sample. Each record names the vessel, the receiving buyer, the species, the product condition (for example whole, gutted, or filleted), the preservation method, the exact weight in kilograms, the sales organisation, the date and — on the sluttseddel — the price.
This is the source that platforms like Landingsdata aggregate into landings statistics. The completeness of the seddel system is why daily volume figures are reliable; price and value fields, by contrast, are finalised and released later as the sales organisations settle payments, which is why monetary figures typically lag volumes by around a year.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between a sluttseddel and a landingsseddel?
- A landingsseddel records a landing without a simultaneous sale, while a sluttseddel is a combined landing-and-sales note signed by both buyer and fisher. Only the sluttseddel includes a price.
- What information does a sluttseddel contain?
- Species, product condition, preservation method, exact weight in kilograms, price, the vessel, the buyer, the sales organisation and the transaction date.
- Why is sluttseddel data so complete?
- Because the law requires a sales note for every first-hand sale of wild-caught fish, virtually every commercial landing is recorded, making the dataset close to a full census.
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