NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT – Corsairs & Captives

Back in 2016, my Icelandic colleague, Karl Smári Hreinsson, and I published The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson: The Story of the Barbary Corsair raid on Iceland in 1627 with the Catholic University of America Press. There’s a link to that book here in this blog (at the bottom of all posts).

Over the past few years, Karl and I completed two more books devoted to the Barbary corsair raids on Iceland in 1627.

One, titled Northern Captives, tells the story of the raid by corsairs from Salé on southwest Iceland. It details the events of the attack itself and then follows the Icelandic captives to Salé, where they were sold into slavery.

The second book, titled Stolen Lives, tells the story of the raid by corsairs from Algiers on Heimaey, one of the Westman Islands, located off Iceland’s south coast. It details the events of the attack on Heimaey and then follows the Icelandic captives to Algiers, where they too were sold into slavery.

I have already posted excerpts from both these books here in this blog (Northern Captives: October – December, 2021; Stolen Lives: January – April, 2022).

This past summer, Karl and I published the third book in the series: Enslaved: The Story of the Barbary Corsair raid on East Iceland in 1627.

Below is the front-cover image of Enslaved accompanied by the back-cover blurb for the book.

In the summer of 1627, two groups of Barbary corsairs raided Iceland, one from Salé, on the Moroccan coast, and one from Algiers. Between them, they killed dozens of people and abducted over four hundred, packing these captives into the cargo holds of their ships and transporting them to North Africa to be sold in the slave markets there.

The first place the Algerine corsairs attacked was East Iceland.

These corsairs spent four days pillaging the area around Berufjörður, in the East Fjords. On the first day alone, they seized over a hundred people—men, women, and children. They then went on to the island of Heimaey, in the Westman Islands, where they took nearly 250 people. After this, their ships crammed with captives, they sailed back to North Africa.

The full story of the Algerine corsair raid on East Iceland has never been told. Drawing on a wide variety of contemporary sources, this book recounts for the first time not only the details of the raid itself, but also what it was like for the Icelanders to be slaves in Algiers.

Starting next week, I’ll begin posting a series of excerpts from Enslaved.

In the meantime…

Here’s a link to the online listing for Enslaved:

Enslaved

Here are links to the online listings for Northern Captives and Stolen Lives: