TURBULENT TIMES: JASPER KRISTJÁNSSON’S LETTER – PART 1

The Barbary corsair raids on Iceland in 1627 upended the lives of hundreds of people, wrenching them out of their homes and hauling them off to what must have seemed an utterly strange and dreadful place. The few who were eventually ransomed and managed to return home put their lives back together as best they could—re-uniting with parents, siblings, children, spouses, or re-marrying and starting over again.

It was not just the people who had been abducted who had to deal with the aftershocks of the raids, however. Those who had avoided capture were also affected.

Spouses of abductees who had not returned found themselves in an uncomfortable position, for they were legally married, yet there was virtually no possibility they would ever see their lost spouse again—and in those days the Lutheran church was not in the habit of granting easy divorces. People found themselves in a kind of limbo.

One of these people was a young man named Jón Oddsson.

Jón was a well-to-do farmer on the island of Heimaey. At the time of the Algiers corsair raid, he had been newly married to Anna Jasparsdóttir, whose father, Jasper Kristjánsson, was a prosperous Dane who also lived on Heimaey.

Both Anna and her father were captured in the raid and taken to Algiers, where they were sold into slavery. Jón Oddsson, however, managed to avoid capture. As the years went by and no word came of his abducted wife, he became more and more restless. Eventually, he took up with another woman and had a child with her. This was, of course, scandalous behaviour—but it was also entirely understandable.

Heimaey had been virtually depopulated by the corsair raid, and it says something about the resiliency of the Icelandic authorities that in the chaos following the raid, with local people trying to reconstruct their lives, with a wave of newcomers arriving on the island to take over the vacant farms and fishing boats, and children being born (Jón Oddsson was surely not the only man to find himself in such an uncomfortable position), that the church and the local government could still hold effective, formal legal proceedings.

Order was being re-established over chaos.

Proper form had to be followed, however.

In those days in Iceland, very few circumstances could convince the church to allow somebody to divorce and remarry. Death of the spouse, of course, was one. Adultery was another.

The problem for Jón was that he could not know with any certainty what Anna might be doing way off on the other side of the world. She might be dead—but maybe not. She might have converted to Islam and married some Muslim man—but maybe not. Unflattering stories had filtered back about Anna’s behaviour in Algiers, how she had indeed entered into a relationship with a wealthy Muslim and could be seen flouncing about the streets of the city dressed in sumptuous purple and scarlet robes. But these stories were more rumor that fact, and not enough to base a divorce case on.

So Jón Oddsson found himself in a very uncomfortable position. It is not clear whether Jón personally managed to involve Kláus Eyjólfsson, the Sheriff for the Westman Islands, and Bishop Gísli Oddsson (the Bishop of Skálholt at the time) in his case, or whether these two men took an independent interest in resolving the issue. Whatever the reasons, they did become involved.

Despite all their authority, though, they could not simply grant Jón a special dispensation for a divorce. The case needed legally acceptable testimony from a witness who could provide definitive evidence regarding Anna.

The case was not resolved until 1635. Why it took so long is unclear. There is no evidence for when exactly Jón started seeing his new woman (who is not named), or when their child was born. So perhaps Jón hung on for years, hoping for Anna’s return—and then gave up. Perhaps the child was not born until 1635, and Jón and the woman rushed to marry to legitimize the birth. Or perhaps the witness whose testimony finally resolved the case was reluctant to testify.

That witness was Anna’s father, Jasper Kristjánsson, who submitted his evidence in the form of a signed letter.

It would be perfectly understandable if Jasper had, for a time, refused to provide testimony. Thanks to his daughter, he had been ransomed and had returned to Iceland sometime in the late 1620s (the exact date is nuclear). His daughter, however, remained in Algiers. By testifying, Jasper would irrevocably close the door on a chapter of his and his daughter’s life, for once he provided Jón with the legal evidence he needed, Anna would, in effect, be erased from Heimaey society—even if, against all hope, she someday returned to Iceland. It would be a kind of death.

Jasper begins his letter by saying that Bishop Gísli himself demanded that he submit written testimony, so it seems as if the Bishop put pressure on him. Perhaps the local Sherrif, Kláus Eyjólfsson, put pressure on Jasper as well. Or perhaps Jasper simply bowed to the inevitable. Whatever the case, he did indeed provide a written deposition in the form of a signed letter.

That letter has never before been translated into English. We present it here for the first time.

The documentation is sparse, but it seems that Jasper’s testimony was sufficient to allow Jón to marry and legitimize his new wife and child. It is not impossible that some of his descendants still live on Heimaey today.

As for Anna… She married (or at least lived with) a Muslim man, had several children with him, and made a new life for herself in Algiers. She never returned to Iceland, and Jasper and she never saw each other again.

Parts of Jasper’s letter require some background explanations in order to make clear sense. We have supplied those explanation via footnotes.

To see the text of Jasper’s letter—his legal testimony in the divorce case of his abducted daughter and her soon-to-be ex-husband—see the next post here in this blog. It cannot have been an easy letter for Jasper to write.