JÓN JÓNSSON: A CAPTIVE’S TALE – PART 1

Back in April of 2018, there was a three-part series of posts here in the Captives section of this blog that dealt with the misfortunes of the Járngerðarstaðir farm family, a well-to-do family who lived in Grindavík, a small coastal village located on the southern shore of the Reykjanes Peninsula, in the southwest corner of Iceland. Two generations of that family were taken captive during one of the two Barbary corsair raids on Iceland in the summer of 1627.

This blog tells the story of one particular member of the Járngerðarstaðir farm family: Jón Jónsson.

Jón was a scholar. In the summer of 1627, he had recently graduated from Skálholtsskóli.

In Iceland in those days, there were two institutions of higher learning: one in Hólar, in the north, and one in Skálholt, in the southwest. These two places were the official sees of the two appointed bishops of Iceland, so they were centers of religious and political affairs as well as educational centers. The schools in these places played a similar role in Iceland to that played by Cambridge and Oxford universities in England: educating the sons of well-to-do families so that they could take up prominent positions in society—largely as clergy.   

Despite the fact that Iceland was an isolated island way out in the middle of the icy North Atlantic, the Skálholtsskóli (Icelandic for “Skálholt’s school”) was no mere rustic schoolhouse. It was a serious institution of higher learning with ties to the University of Copenhagen. Students often travelled abroad to complete their education. Bishop Oddur Einarsson, who presided over the Skálholtsskóli when Jón was a student there, had attended the University of Copenhagen as a young man and, in his final year, had studied mathematics and astronomy under the famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. There is no indication that Jón ever studied abroad in Copenhagen, but, through the Bishop, he would have had a direct connection with one of the great minds of the seventeenth century, for it is hard to imagine Bishop Oddur not telling stories about the celebrated astronomer.

So Jón received his education—and as we shall see, it was a remarkably comprehensive one—and returned to the family farm at Járngerðarstaðir, just outside the village of Grindavík. No doubt he, and his proud parents, looked forward to him taking up a series of progressively more important positions in the local community and beyond. Jón had the makings of an important-man-to-be: he had a good education, came from an influential family that provided him with invaluable connections, and he was ambitious.

He had no chance to begin the eminent career he and his parents anticipated, though.

On June 20, in the incandescent light of an early northern summer morning, a Barbary corsair ship from Salé quietly slipped into the harbor at Járngerðarstaðasund, the little bay close by Grindavík. The summer shipping season was well advanced, and it was common for vessels from numerous places—England, France, Denmark, Norway, the German Hanseatic towns—to cruise Icelandic waters in the summer, so the sudden appearance of a strange ship would not have caused undue alarm.

Before any of the locals really knew what was happening, the Salé corsairs had put ashore somewhere close to fifty well-armed men.

Grindavík in those days was not much of a town by modern standards, consisting of no more than the local Danish trading post (Iceland was a Danish possession at the time), some houses near the harbor, and a scattering of outlying farms, the largest and most important of which was Járngerðarstaðir farm.

The horde of fifty corsairs—all armed to the teeth, as the old cliché goes—would have easily overwhelmed the place. No description of the corsair attack on Grindavík survives, but we do have a description of the corsair raid a couple of weeks later on Heimaey, one of the Westman Islands off Iceland’s south coast: “The pirates landed so suddenly that people found it impossible to escape them. They rushed with violent speed across the island, like hunting hounds, howling like wolves.”

Intimidation was the goal in an attack like this. The Salé corsairs would have leaped ashore from their boats, brandishing weapons, shrieking and hollering—all in an effort to terrify their victims into immediate submission. A certain amount of brute violence was inevitable. Anyone who resisted would have been viciously beaten down as an example to others. But in general the corsairs would not have wanted to seriously harm their victims. The point was to capture them alive and uninjured, so that they would fetch the highest prices possible in the slave market back in Salé.

Jón Jónsson was captured along with his two brothers, his mother, and two of his uncles (his mother’s brothers). Two of his other uncles (more of his mother’s brothers) tried to resist capture and were so badly beaten that both died later of their injuries.

Jón was ferried out to the corsair ship, along with a couple dozen other captives, shoved down into the ship’s hold, and manacled there in the odious darkness. His state of mind is not hard to image. After all, his entire word had just come crashing down around him.

Seventeenth century Icelanders knew of the existence of Barbary corsairs, but they would never have anticipated an actual attack by them. Iceland was a quiet, isolated place, quite beautiful in its own stark way, with a small population (see the illustration above for an idea of what seventeenth century Iceland looked like).

Having a horde of Barbary corsairs suddenly appear out of nowhere like this would have been as shocking and terrifying for the unsuspecting Icelanders as an unprovoked attack by aliens from the stars would be for us today. More so. For we at least are familiar with the notion of an alien attack from seeing it played out in science fiction movies. The Icelanders had nothing comparable to prepare them.

Jón and the other captives were kept manacled in the ship’s dank, dark hold for a week or so—in shock, no doubt—while the Salé corsairs raided other places along Iceland’s coast and more captives were stuffed into the hold with them. Only after the ship had left Iceland well behind and was on its way back to Salé (and there was no longer any possibility of desperate Icelanders being tempted to leap overboard and try to swim to shore) were the captives allowed to leave the cramped, smelly confines of their makeshift prison and walk about up on deck.

About them, there would have been nothing but empty ocean.

They had a month-long sea voyage ahead of them, and nothing to do to pass the time except contemplate what lay ahead for them: the overwhelming prospect of being sold into slavery in Salé.

For a continuation of Jón’s story, go to Jón Jónsson: a Captive’s Tale – Part 2