THE JÁRNGERÐARSTAÐIR FARM FAMILY – PART 2

(This post is a continuation of The Járngerðarstaðir Farm Family – Part 1. If you haven’t done so already, it’s best to read that post before continuing on here.)

On Wednesday, June 20, 1627, in the incandescent light of an early northern summer morning, the Salé corsairs dropped anchor in Járngerðarstaðasund (“sund” is “sound” or “channel,” in Icelandic, so “Járngerðarstaðasund” refers to the sound or channel near Járngerðarstaðir). Given the fearsome reputation of Barbary corsairs, one would expect them to have immediately swarmed ashore and violently attacked everybody and everything in sight.

They did not.

Instead, being experienced plunderers, they first took time to reconnoiter.

Nearing the end of June as it was, the summer shipping season was well advanced, and it was common for vessels from various places—England, France, Denmark, Norway, the German Hanseatic towns—to cruise Icelandic waters in the relatively warm summer months, so the appearance of a strange ship was not, by itself, cause for any immediate alarm. The Salé corsairs sent men over in a ship’s boat to talk politely with the captain of a Danish merchant ship, manned only by a skeleton crew, that lay moored in Járngerðarstaðasund. They lied to the captain, telling him they were whalers who had been blown off course, and used the opportunity to find out about the state of things ashore. Then they rowed back quietly to their ship.

At this point, the Danish factor (the official Danish representative in charge of the trading post at Grindavík) sent out eight men in a rowboat to see who the newcomers might be. As they clambered aboard the corsair ship, all eight of these men were overwhelmed and taken prisoner. One of them was Guðrún’s brother, Jón Jónsson²—the first of the Járngerðarstaðir Farm family to be seized.

The Salé corsairs then captured the moored Danish merchant ship—a simple enough task, since almost all of its crew were ashore—and took whatever they could from it.

Then they rowed ashore and attacked the settlement of Grindavík.

The leader of these Salé corsairs was a Dutch renegado (a Christian who had converted to Islam) named Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, known by his Islamic name as Morat Reis (Captain Morat). He would have had a crew of about eighty men, fifty or sixty of whom he would have put ashore in the attack. Grindavík in those days wasn’t much of a town by modern standards, consisting of not much more than the Danish trading post, a few fishing boats, and some scattered farmsteads—Járngerðarstaðir Farm being the largest. Morat Reis’s horde of sixty or so well-armed pirates would have easily overwhelmed the place.

Barbary corsairs have a reputation for merciless brutality, but the primary goal of an attack like this was intimidation rather than death and destruction. Whatever else they might have been, Barbary corsairs were businessmen engaged in a commercial enterprise in order to make a profit. Morat Reis and his men would have leaped ashore from their boats, brandishing cutlasses, scimitars, muskets, pistols, and lances, shrieking and howling… all of it in a calculated show intended to terrify their victims into cowering submission. A certain amount of brute violence might have been inevitable—especially if people tried to resist—but, whenever feasible, they would have avoided seriously harming their victims. They wanted uninjured captives that would fetch as high a price as possible in the slave market back in Salé.

Coming ashore in a wave, the Salé corsairs sacked the Danish trading post, taking whatever they could. The Danish factor had already fled, though, and had removed or hidden as much of his merchandise as possible, so the corsairs didn’t get very much. Next, they moved on to Járngerðarstaðir Farm. The first person they fell upon there was Guðrún, whom they quickly overcame. Guðrún’s brother, Philippus, tried to rescue her, but the corsairs beat him off and left him lying in the road “half dead,” as the Icelandic text puts it. Another of Guðrún’s brothers, Hjálmar, had been out riding, and he also tried to rescue her. The corsairs swarmed him and dragged him from his horse. Hjálmar was unarmed except for a riding crop. He struck at his attackers with this, but it proved ineffectual. In the fighting, the corsairs stabbed him multiple times and left him, too, lying inert in the road.

They then looted the farm, flung Guðrún up onto Hjálmar’s horse, and took her and their plunder down to the beach.

In all, the Salé corsairs seized an unspecified amount of booty and perhaps a couple of dozen people—men, women, and children—whom they ferried across to their ship where it lay at anchor. Of the Járngerðarstaðir Farm family, they captured not only Guðrún and her brother Jón, but also Halldór, her fourth brother, and her three sons, Jón, Helgi, and Héðinn. The corsairs also rounded up Guðrún’s husband, Jón Guðlaugsson, who was herded down to the beach along with his sons and Halldór. Jón was too old, though, and he was, apparently, sick to boot. The corsairs saw no profit in taking him, so they left him behind, prostrate on the beach.

With that, their ship loaded, Morat Reis gave orders to weighed anchor, and the corsairs sailed away.

The Icelandic texts do not say if Guðrún’s brothers, Philippus and Hjálmar, recovered from their wounds. It is likely that they did not. Guðrún’s husband, Jón, was dead within a year—from natural causes.

In the space of a few short hours, the comfortable prosperity and promising future of the Járngerðarstaðir Farm family had been utterly destroyed.

Chained together in the hold of the corsair ship, traumatized and exhausted, those taken captive were now facing the prospect of being sold in the Salé slave market and, after that, of enduring lives of hard servitude.

See the next post in this Járngerðarstaðir Farm Family series (“The Járngerðarstaðir Farm Family – Part 3”) for details about what happened to the various family members after they had been enslaved.