This week, we conclude the series of excerpts from Enslaved: The Story of the Barbary Corsair raid on East Iceland in 1627.
This book, remember is now available on Amazon. Here’s the link to the Amazon listing:
Enslaved, remember, focuses on the raid, by corsairs from Algiers, on the East Fjords area of Iceland (the southeast quadrant of the island) and on what happened to the Icelandic captives when they arrived in Algiers. Much of the book is drawn from the Skólapiltar Report (the Schoolboys’ Report)—last week’s excerpt came from that report.
However, Enslaved also includes a couple of letters written by Icelanders: one written in Iceland by a Bishop; one written in Algiers by a captive. This week’s excerpt is drawn from the captive’s letter.
That captive was Guttormur Hallson. We encountered him in last week’s excerpt: he was the master of the Búlandsnes farmstead, one of the first farms the Algerine corsairs hit on the first day of their raid on the East Fjords.
Guttormur wrote to his family and friends back in Iceland in 1631, four years after he had been captured.
Here is an excerpt from his letter.
As you know, I was captured and taken from my native soil on the 6th day of July, in the year of our Lord 1627. After the Turkish pirates had gathered up me and my poor fellows, they sailed to the Westman Islands, where they viciously attacked the inhabitants, like bloodthirsty wolves swarming carrion.
They burnt the buildings, tortured and killed many of the people, and took away all the captives they could, like cruel hunting hounds. But you no doubt know all about this, for these terrible events must be common knowledge in Iceland…
There were three [corsair] ships, with a total of 400 captive people on board. We had following winds both night and day for over three weeks, until we came here to this alien land on the 12th of August. The name for this country is Arabia. The part where we were taken is known as the Barbary. The town where I am is called Algiers.
During the voyage here, we had a miserable and wretched time. We Icelanders were tossed about from one place to another, and each had almost to lie atop another in the ship’s hold.
The ship I was on held a hundred people, both young and old. Such a wailing and lamenting was to be heard from the poor souls as would have amazed you. Two women passed away on that ship: the wife of Rafn and a woman from Gautavík. The pirates hurled an old woman from Búlandsnes alive into the sea. Two more people died upon arrival here at the Barbary. The others captured with me are alive.
Reverend Jón and Katrín have passed away, but others of his people live.[1] Of the rest that I know about here (with the exception of Jón Egilsson and Jón the carpenter), few of those captured in the east of Iceland have converted [to Islam]. But God alone knows what they have suffered.
We spent an entire week, after our arrival at Algiers, imprisoned here. Crowds of people came to see us, for to them we were a rare type of people. Many of the heathen women here, both black and white, had pity on us, shaking their heads and shedding tears. Some of them gave the children bread, and some gave small coins. Thereafter, we were little by little brought out to the marketplace and sold there as sheep are sold.
The first choice went to the King [i.e., the Ottoman Governor of Algiers]. By tradition, he owns the right to an eighth part of those captured. After that, the remaining prisoners were led through the streets to the market where Christian captives are normally sold. But nobody there wanted to buy us, because they thought we were a foolish, weak, and ignorant people. Moreover, we did not have any skills for the hard labour which this land demands.
Also, they knew, which is very true, that nobody would trouble to buy us from here, because they would not find any silver for ransom payments in our poverty-stricken home country, and so we would be obliged to live here all our lives and be their slaves until our deaths.
We were sold and separated from each other with many a sorrowful cry and scream of pain, so that no one knew what had happen to another until time had passed and people gradually became acquainted with what had gone on and where everybody was.
There is a great difference here between masters. Some captive slaves here get good, gentle, or in-between masters, but some unfortunates find themselves with savage, cruel, hard-hearted tyrants who never stop treating them badly and who force them to labor and toil with scanty clothing and little food, bound in iron fetters, from morning till night. Many have had to endure unfair beatings.
God in heaven alone knows all that we Christian people have had to suffer here in this terrible place at the hands of these vicious criminals. I will say no more of this now. Our Lord knows of the wickedness that transpires in this town. There is nothing here except fear and fright, grumbling and quarrel, murder and manslaughter, haughtiness and arrogance and demoniacal possession, day after day. It may truly be said that we live here in earthly, hellish torment, but that God, because of His great mercy, graciously helps us in our struggle.
There are all kinds of people here. First there are those of the Turkish race. Then there are the Moorish North African people, and the black people, and each have their own language. Then next is the Jewish people, and then those who have been Christian but have renounced their faith. There are also captured Christian people from many countries, especially many hundreds from Spain and France, from Germany, England, Holland, Denmark, Italy, Greece, and even those from India and other smaller countries, islands, and remote areas. There are so many different kinds of languages that I cannot begin to explain them.
I have a Turkish man as my master, an elderly man, but his wife is very young, and they have four children, all young. They have both been gentle with me, especially the wife, so that I have neither been beaten nor insulted. When my master has shouted rebukes at me—the Turks have devilish tempers—his anger has subsided due to his wife’s kind interventions. May God be praised.
When I first came to this land, after I had been here for two weeks, I fell sick with an ague that lasted almost five weeks. I was in great distress because this is not a good place for sick people.
Once I recovered enough strength and could walk a little, I was set to work ploughing fields by hand with a tool called a “sappað” which is run over the ground to break up the earth—a custom in this country.[2] I had to walk to and from home daily, in bad weather and good, a distance about twice that between two farms.[3] But God so supported me step by step so that it eventually became easy for me.
The hardest time in this country, when the labour is most difficult, is from the winter moon until the seventh week has passed of summer. During the rest of the year, when I am not ploughing, I must walk about the town selling water, which is a difficult labour and one that many Christian people must endure. We have to pay our masters a certain amount of money every day. If we can get more than that amount, it is to our profit, and we can use it to feed and clothe ourselves. But if we cannot earn the required amount, then it is taken out of our clothing and our food.
Oh, God, how miserable we are in this terrible place!
This concludes the series of excerpts from Enslaved.
Next week, we’ll start a series of excerpts from Turbulent Times: Skálholt and the Barbary Corsair Raids on Iceland in 1627.
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[1] The “Reverend Jón and Katrín” whom Guttormur mentions here were Reverend Jón Þorvarðsson and his wife Katrín Þorláksdóttir, who, along with six local people and three men who were tenant farmers, were captured on the first day of the corsair raid at Háls farmstead, located a few kilometres northwest of Búlandsnes farm. Guttormur would no doubt have known the deceased couple quite well, as they were neighbours.
[2] Guttormur seems to be describing a plough here, an agricultural tool that would have seemed strange to him. Farming in Iceland at this time consisted predominantly of raising livestock—mostly sheep—rather than crops, so Guttormur probably would not have spent much time tilling the soil. Also, when Icelandic farmers of this period did prepare land for planting, they used spades rather than ploughs. Although spelled in the original text with the Icelandic letter “ð” (known as eð or eth), the term Guttormur uses for the plow—“sappað”—is not a recognizable Icelandic word. It may be a corruption of one of the Turkish words for plough: “saban.”
[3] The “distance between two farms” is not an exact measurement, but it is not exceptionally far: around two kilometers (1.25 miles) perhaps. However, this would have meant that Guttormur had to regularly traipse around eight kilometers (5 miles) a day to and from his work in the fields outside the city.
Corsairs and Captives
Narratives from the Age of the Barbary Pirates
The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson
The story of the Barbary corsair raid on Iceland in 1627
Your work on keeping the legacy and intrigue of the Barbary pirates is excellent but I’ve never understood why a comprehensive treatment on the subject hasn’t been attempted. Your book ‘Corsairs And Captives’ is a great collection of stories from the Barbary Coast, but a single volume from 1500 covering the regencies of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and even Sale before their collapse in the 18-900s is something I would pay big money for!
Such a single volume covering the regencies of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and Salé does exist, though it’s a bit dated. It was written in French, in the first half of the seventeenth century, by a Trinitarian friar named Pierre Dan. It’s titled Histoire de Barbarie et de ses corsaires, des royaumes, et des villes d’Alger, de Tunis, de Salé et de Tripoly (A History of Barbary and its Corsairs and Kingdoms, and of the Towns of Algiers, Tunis, Salé, and Tripoli). I’ve just finished the first-ever English translation of this work. It will be published next year by the Catholic University of America Press under the title of A History of Barbary and its Corsairs and Kingdoms. It’s a fascinating book. If you’re interested in Barbary corsairs, I reckon you’d find it worth reading.