THE BARBARY CORSAIR RAIDS ON ICELAND IN 1627

Back in the summer of 1627, two lots of Barbary corsairs from North Africa raided Iceland. One group came from Salé, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. The other came from Algiers. Between them, they carried off somewhere between 400 and 500 people—men, women and children—to be sold into slavery.

Nobody really knows what prompted the corsairs to make the long, risky voyage across the turbulent North Atlantic. One Icelandic source, however, does contain an explanation. This source is Tyrkjaráns-Saga (The Turkish Raid Saga), compile by an Icelandic scholar named Björn Jónsson in 1643, only sixteen years after the corsair raids.

Here is the bit from Tyrkjaráns-Saga that deals with the origins of the Barbary corsair raids of 1627.

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A HISTORY OR ACCOUNT OF THE SHOCKING AND MISERABLE EVENTS
THAT OCCURRED IN ICELAND

Nobody has known of such events since this country was settled by the Norsemen: that pirates and evildoers from the southern part of the world came here to the north and kidnapped people and stole their valuables, pillaged, shot and killed people with weapons, destroyed buildings and animals, and committed many other unspeakable acts…

The following story takes place 1627 years after the birth of our lord Jesus Christ, during the reign of King Christian the Fourth of Denmark and Norway, and during the time when Holgeir Rosencrantz was Governor of Iceland.

The people called the Turks are from the southern part of the world known as Africa, which is one third of the world. They also inhabit a large part of the eastern world, known as Asia, as well as that portion of the northwest continent known as Europe which they dominate. These despicable people are well-known for their evil deeds and horrific acts, which Christian people are aware of and are haunted by, for the Turks force Christians to convert to their ungodly faith or force them into slavery for the rest of their lives—unless they are ransomed for a great deal of money. These Turks have warships to travel around Christendom, in the northern part of the world, taking people and things of value every year wherever they can, and hijacking ships, laden with food and goods, that sail the seas…

Some Turkish Commanders were arguing over whether raiding Christian countries was profitable. One such country mentioned was the island in the north-western sea called Iceland. The Chief Turkish Commander claimed it would not be possible to get even the smallest stone out of Iceland, much less a man. Another said it was possible and wagered that such a raid would be very profitable, for it was said that even one infant could fetch as much as three hundred dalers in their country.

Present at this discussion, which included Commanders and Captains, was a Danish captive who had long been enslaved, but remained a Christian, named Páll. This man saw an opportunity to free himself from bondage and slavery by guiding the Turks to Iceland, for it would not be a difficult journey to reach these Christian folk. He broached this subject with the Turks. The idea appealed to them, and they promised to set him free. This Dane, Páll, explained to them that the Icelandic people were not used to warfare or fighting, so it would be easy to capture them, and that he knew how to sail to Iceland, since he had been there many times before with other Danish people.

Immediately after this conversation, the Turks quickly began to prepare for their journey to Iceland. It is said that a total of twelve warships set out on the raid, but God allowed only four of them to actually reach Iceland. These ships came to Iceland in two groups and were from two different cities in Barbary.

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So according to Tyrkjaráns-Saga the 1627 corsair raids were the result of a bet. This might seem improbable on the face of it, but it is exactly the sort of seemingly improbable story that, given human nature and the tempestuous life corsair captains often led, could very easily be true.

Corsairs were, after all, a wild bunch—Christian renegade corsairs in particular. Few eye-witness descriptions of corsair captains exist from this period, but there is the following brief but revealing portrait of Captain John Ward, an English renegade corsair captain, in a report tendered to the English Ambassador in Venice in 1608:

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John Ward, commonly called Captain Ward, is about 55 years of age. Very short, with little hair, and that quite white; bald in front; swarthy face and beard. Speaks little, and almost always swearing. Drunk from morn till night.
            Most prodigal and plucky. Sleeps a great deal and is often on board when in port. The habits of a thorough ‘salt.’ A fool and an idiot out of his trade.

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Captain Ward as he is depicted here—an alcohol-sodden rogue—was likely an extreme example, but corsair captains, especially renegade captains, and their crews were certainly a rough bunch who, despite Islamic injunctions against such activities, spent much of their time ashore drinking, whoring, and gambling.

Father Pierre Dan characterized corsairs as frequenters of “cabarets and other places of debauchery,” and claimed that “their strongest passion was to spend on the pleasures of the flesh all the money they had acquired at sea.” Barbary corsairs, in other words, behaved the way pirates did pretty much everywhere.

So the sort of bet described in Tyrkjaráns-Saga would absolutely have been in character for such men.

There were other factors at play in the summer of 1627 that could have motivated ruthlessly practical corsair captains to take the hugely risky voyage across the North Atlantic, but this story of the bet does seem to be an entirely plausible candidate for the “precipitating condition” that served to get the raids started.

An example of how big events have small beginning perhaps.

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For those who may be interested…

The excerpt about the bet comes from Björn Jónsson, Tyrkjaráns-Saga (Reykjavík: Prentsmiðja Íslands, 1866), pp. 12-13. The “daler” mentioned in the text is the Danish rigsdaler, the standard silver coin used by Denmark during this time. The rigsdaler was equal in value to the Spanish real de a ocho, the famous “piece of eight.”

The description of the drunken Captain Ward comes from Horatio F. Brown, ed., Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Relating to English Affairs Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, and in Other Libraries of Northern Italy, Vol. XI, 1607-1610, Entry #268, pp. 140-41.

The characterization of corsairs as obsessed with “the pleasures of the flesh” comes from Pierre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie, et de ses corsaires, des royaumes, et des villes d’Alger, de Tunis, de Salé, et de Tripoly (History of the Barbary, and its Corsairs and Kingdoms, and of the Cities of Algiers, Tunis, Salé, and Tripoli), Seconde édition, 1649, p. 313.