This week, we continue with the series of excerpts from Enslaved: The Story of the Barbary Corsair Raid on East Iceland in 1627, the book my Icelandic colleague, Karl Smári Hreinsson, and I recently published.
Here is this week’s excerpt.
(Because this is a translation of a four-hundred-year-old document, remember, background explanation is sometimes required; we have done this with footnotes. We have also added clarifications in the text in square brackets where needed.)
On Sunday [July 8], the murdering pirates went again into Breiðdalur, to see if any people had returned to their farms. They lay in secret in different places, watching. That morning, Reverend Höskuldur [of Heydalir] had sent eight of his men to scout around and gather any new information about the Turks. As these men were riding back to Heydalir, eight Turks leaped up from a depression in the ground and began chasing them. After some time, they managed to catch one of the fleeing men, but while they tied him up, the others rode over a hill and escaped.
That same day, a man from Hérað came riding by with a packhorse laden with some house timbers he had picked up.[1] He rode into Breiðdalur on a good horse. When he saw the pirates along the riverbank in the valley, he changed horses and rode the packhorse, with was lazier, and loaded the timber on the first horse. [The pirates saw the man and chased after him.] As they drew near to him, the man released the packhorse and spurred on the lazy horse he was riding. The pirates quickly caught up with him and captured him.
Also that same day, the evil pirates traveled all the way to Flaga, at the far end of Breiðdalur, nearly one and a half þingmannaleið [from where the corsair ships lay at anchor].[2] On their return to their ships, they encountered an old man almost eighty years old. They murdered him. They also captured a young man on the way back. So they took three men from Breiðdalur, and they killed a fourth [the old man]. When the pirates came to Núpur, on Berufjarðarströnd, with their three captives, they left two men at the farm there, guarding the captives, and the rest began searching the surrounding area to see if any valuables might have been be hidden thereabouts.
While the two pirates guarding the captives were in the farmhouse, the young man whom they had captured [in Breiðdalur] ran off, even though his hands were still tied behind his back. The pirates who were searching along the strand saw this and immediately chased after him. This young man raced up the mountain into a fogbank. As he ran, his trousers slid down and got tangled around his feet, and he could do nothing else but throw himself to the ground and trust in God’s mercy. The pirates walked everywhere around the depression where he lay, howling like wolves, for they knew the boy must be close by, but they could not find him.
After that, the Turks returned to the farm and their bound captives—the man from Hérað on the lazy horse and Reverend Höskuldur’s scout. The pirates beat both men and then brought them to their ships. They stole whatever they could on their way back. Such was their Sunday occupation. The young man who escaped got away to safety.[3]
On Monday [July 9], the pirates went again to Berufjörður [farmstead]. People think that they roasted two lambs there, as well as some chickens, for two lambskins were found on the ground in front of the church and some chicken parts were left in the ashes of the fire. They hacked the altarpiece into two sections. From there, they went down to the strand [on the fjord’s northeast shore]. When they came to Gautavík farm, they tried to burn the building down, but they failed. The fire had only just caught hold when they left, and it consumed nothing but the grass on the roof and the wood pile. After that, the pirates went to Berunes and broke the panelling of the chancel [in the chapel there], dashed the altar to the ground, and stole everything of value they could find, including thirteen bulls and eighty sheep with lambs.[4]
On that same day, they went to the Danish merchant ship [anchored in the harbor at Djúpivogur] and removed everything of value that they wanted from it. They then shot their cannons at the ship and sunk it.[5] They were not interested in the grain and iron that was on land, and they hacked the bottoms out of some of the barrels and broke the hoops of others, so that half the grain was spoiled. They did the same with the iron and the salt.[6] Such were their actions on Monday [July 9].[7]
On Tuesday [July 10], the pirates wanted to sail away, but because there was no wind, they got no further than Kross farm. They lay at anchor there on July 11 and 12.[8]
On July 13, the pirates were able to leave and sailed northwards.
For a further excerpt from Enslaved, see the next post here in this blog.
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[1] This man had likely just bought, or scavenged, a load of driftwood from the coast, the main source at this time for lumber in Iceland, and he was transporting it back to his home in the hinterland.
[2] A þingmannaleið equaled about 37 kilometers (23 miles), so the corsairs marched nearly 55 kilometers (34 miles) inland to the far end of Breiðdalur.
[3] The details of the Algerine raid on the East Fjords come from a document known as the skólapiltar (the schoolboy’s) report, which was compiled from the testimonies of students from eastern Iceland who attended Skálholtsskóli (the equivalent of Oxford University in those days in Iceland). Although it is not possible to know for certain, it is highly likely that the young man who fled into the fogbank and escaped the corsairs was one of the students whose testimony was recorded in the report — which is why his story has come down to us in such detail.
[4] The combined crews of the Algerine corsair ships, totaled between 200 and 300 men. After the month-long sea voyage to Iceland, fresh food was one of their priorities. They likely did not load all the stolen animals onto their ships but, instead, slaughtered many of them ashore and held one or more huge feasts. They would almost certainly have loaded some of the sheep aboard, though, for they regularly kept a supply of sheep to be used in religious rituals on board.
[5] It is not clear why the corsairs sank the Danish merchant ship rather than take it with them. Perhaps it was too small for them, or in poor condition. Or perhaps the opportunity to test fire their cannons to make sure they were all in good working order after a month-long sea voyage was more important than taking the ship—and they likely expected to encounter more ships that they could capture later on in the raid anyway.
[6] The grain, iron, and salt were among the supplies stored in the Danish trading post, kept there to be traded/sold to the Icelanders.
[7] According to the skólapiltar report, the corsairs took no captives at all on July 9. This is entirely possible, for by now they had been in the Berufjörður area for four days, and the local people would all have long since fled away to safety, leaving the countryside entirely deserted for quite some distance around the fjord.
[8] While the corsairs were becalmed, they likely spent their time making sure their ships were well trimmed and ready for action, topping up their supplies of fresh water, and gorging themselves on roast lamb and roast beef, stolen from the local farms.
The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson
The story of the Barbary corsair raid on Iceland in 1627
Amazon listing