THE SUM OF A MYRIAD OF INDIVIDUAL HUMAN LIVES

On a July morning in 1627, people on Heimaey, the largest of the Westman Islands off Iceland’s south coast, spotted three ships offshore. The islanders had received word from the mainland that there were pirates about. They gathered at the Danish Merchant Houses near the harbor for defense (Iceland was a Danish possession at the time) and stayed there all day. By nightfall, the Danish said the pirates must have gone and the three ships were part of the defensive force created to protect Iceland, so the islanders returned to their homes.

The pirates, however, had not gone. The next day, they lowered their ships’ boats, put close to three hundred men ashore, and attacked the island, rushing, as one eye witness put it, “with violent speed across the island, like hunting hounds, howling like wolves.”

We know all this because one of the men taken captive by these pirates wrote a chronicle of his experiences. He was Ólafur Egilsson, a Lutheran priest in his sixties.

The pirates were ‘Turkish’ corsairs, operating out of the Barbary coast of North Africa. Such Barbary corsairs were at their peak in the seventeenth century. Having learned from Europeans how to build and use large sailing ships, they were raiding not only along Mediterranean coasts but also as far north as Britain, the Faeroe Islands, and Iceland, taking booty and capturing men, women, and children whom they sold into slavery. There are many documents connected with these corsairs, but few first-hand accounts of the actual raids themselves. Reverend Ólafur’s testimony, along with letters based on eye-witness accounts, offers a dramatic and vivid glimpse of what such raids must have been like.

Here is his description of the corsairs’ initial attack:

“The pirates quartered the island, capturing people wherever they found them, young and old, women and men and infants. They chased after people in their houses, across the mountain slopes, in caves and holes, and killed everybody who fought against them. The dead lay everywhere… Only a few of the people who were strongest, or had nothing to carry, or did not pay attention to anybody else, managed to avoid capture. I and my poor wife were amongst the first to be taken.”

The letters contain further details:

“The pirates surrounded Landakirkja church, shooting and hewing at it with axes until they broke in. First they stole the vestments and dressed themselves up. Then they trooped away, driving everyone they captured towards the Danish Houses. Those who could not move as fast as the pirates wished, they beat to death and left lying behind.

“Up in the cliffs, the pirates found five stout men, whom they fell upon and captured. They then caught sight of two girls. When they chased after these girls, they passed over a hill so that one of the girls managed to evade them and return to the bound men. As she approached, one of the men implored her to untie him, which she did in a hurry. After that, one man untied another. The men ran off as fast as they could, scattering in all directions.

“One man who crossed the path of the pirates tried to run away. They struck him across the head above the eyes and killed him. When his wife, who had been fleeing with him, saw this, she at once fell across his body, screaming. The Turkish took her by her feet and dragged her away, so that the cloth of her dress came up over the head. Her dead husband they cut into small pieces, as if he were a sheep.

“In many places, women lay dead, some stabbed, some cut into pieces in front of their farmhouse doors, left there so disgracefully that their clothes were hauled up to their necks so that they were nakedly revealed where they should not be.”

These descriptions bring home the harrowing nature of such raids. Reverend Ólafur’s account, however, is more than just a simple report of the violence. He gives us a very human description:

“Truly speaking, the pirates are like other peoples, different in size and look, some small, some large. Some are not of Turkish origin at all but are Christian people of countries like England, Germany, Denmark, or Norway. Those who have not forsaken their religion dress after their own fashion but have to labour and are sometimes beaten as a reward.

“The Turks themselves all dress the same, with red caps pointing upwards, the lower parts of which—some made of silk, some of other material—are wound into turbans. They wear long jackets bound around the waist with a strip of cloth, and light linen trousers. Many wear no socks, but have red, yellow, and black shoes with iron-shod heels. The Turks all have black hair, and they shave their heads and their beards, except on the upper lip. In truth, they are not a very wicked looking people. Rather, they are quiet and well tempered in their manner—if it is possible to describe them like that. But the ones who have once been Christians and have forsaken their religion, although they dress like the Turkish, are by far the worst of people, and cruelly brutal to Christians.”

We tend to think of history in the aggregate, to see it as composed of large scale events. Primary source documents like these Icelandic texts put a human face to such events and give us a unique opportunity to see into individual lives. Part of one of the letters, for example, describes the following:

“When the eleven-year-old son of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson came by, all unsuspecting, to see his parents, the pirates captured him at once and tied his arms behind his back. He was left outside the farmhouse. The boy asked an old woman to untie him, but she said that she did not dare. When the Turks came out from searching the farmhouse, they checked to see if he was still tied. They had taken two other children, whom Reverend Ólafur had taken in, and they drove everyone, children and adults, towards the Danish Houses.”

Reverend Ólafur and his wife and children—including his eleven-year-old son—were taken, along with nearly 400 other Icelanders, to Algiers, where they were sold into slavery. Here is Reverend Ólafur’s description of what happened in the Algiers slave market:

“The Westman Islands people were brought to the market place, which was a square built up of stone with seats all around it. The ground was paved with stones which appeared glossy—which I understand is because they were washed every day, as were the main houses, sometimes as much as three times a day. This market place was next to where their local King (if I may call him that) had his seat, so that he would have the shortest way there, because, as I was told by those who had been there a long time, their laws concerning the sharing out of prisoners were as follows.

“The Commander got whichever two of the captives he wanted. Then their King took every eighth man, every eighth woman, and every eighth child. When he had taken these, those people who remained were divided into two groups, one for the ship owners and one for the pirates themselves.

“We poor Westman Island people were brought to the market place in groups of thirty. The Turks guarded each group in front and behind and counted heads at every street corner because the inhabitants of that place will steal such captive people if ever they get the chance.

“In the market place we were put in a circle, and everyone’s hands and face were inspected. Then the King chose those whom he wanted (every eighth, as I mentioned). His first choice amongst the boys was my own poor son, eleven years old, whom I will never forget as long as I live because of the depth of his understanding. When he was taken from me, I asked him in God’s name not to forsake his faith. He said with great grief, “I will not, my father! They can treat my body as they will, but my soul I shall keep for my good God!”

Here we get a glimpse into the momentous consequences that can follow from small events in individual lives. The five captured men escaped when a woman untied the hands of one of them. If the old woman had untied reverend Ólafur’s son, he too might have escaped and been spared enslavement. But she did not, and he could not.

And so, because of that single, small thing, he was loaded aboard the corsairs’ ship, taken to Algiers, and enslaved.

Having come to an arrangement with his captors, Reverend Ólafur traveled across Europe and tried—unsuccessfully—to arrange ransom from the Danish king for his family and the other Icelanders. He returned to Iceland alone, a year after his capture. At the urging of the local Bishop, he wrote out an account of his experiences. At the end of it, he writes:

“My dear reader, I must confess that, because of the loss of my wife and children, I cannot talk or write as I want or should…”

The narrative concludes shortly after this, but we know the finish of the story from other sources.

Reverend Ólafur never saw his children again. Ten years after his return, thirty-five Icelanders were ransomed, one of whom was his wife. The two of them were able to live together again for only a couple of years before Reverend Ólafur died, in his early seventies.

History is indeed composed of big events, but those big events are the sum of a myriad of individual human lives. First-hand accounts like Reverend Olafur’s put a very human face to all this and allow us to see not just the great events, but the small, touching human aspect of it all—history at its most moving.