Then the ships came closer. They were full of pirates.
300 men came running, armed with knives, swords and firearms. They burned down houses, stole valuables and hunted people. More than a hundred adults and children were captured and brought aboard the ships. Then they traveled on.
The pirates’ next target was the tiny island of Heimaey, south of Iceland.
There they had heard about the raid, but they had few weapons and no defenses. People gathered at the docks, but the pirate ships sailed past. Relieved, they went to bed.
Took the whole village
Only to be surprised the next day. The pirates had received help from English fishermen to get to the back of the island. No one had gone ashore there in the memory of man.
Again the pirates looked for people in every house and possible hiding places.
The pirates killed those who fought or ran away. The rest – men, women and children – were captured.
The priest Ólafur Egilsson was among the first to be taken. At first he thought the pirates were English, but then he realized they came from far away. Most of them were Turkish, the priest believed. Turks were what they called all Muslims. But there were also Germans, English, Danes and Norwegians among them, according to Egilsson, who wrote about the events a few years later.
234 inhabitants were captured, 34 were killed, and a few escaped by hiding in caves on the island, says the American researcher Adam Nichols on the blog Corsairs & Captives.
Weep when the homeland disappeared
On board the ship, Egilsson was beaten. The pirates wanted information about where the valuables were on the island. But Egilsson didn’t know about anything. There was little of value to be had from poor fishermen and farmers.
The three ships sailed home to Algeria and Morocco.
The prisoners were well treated. “The pirates behaved well towards everyone and were kind to the children”, writes Egilsson. His wife was heavily pregnant and gave birth to the child on board. Then the pirates were moved and donated clothes to the little one.
But the prisoners wept when they saw their homeland disappear.
When they arrived, the 400 Icelanders were sold as slaves.
Good shop in piracy
The Moors, who were Muslims from North Africa, ruled large parts of Spain and Portugal from the early 7th century. After 800 years it was over. The last Moors had to leave Spain in the 17th century. They then settled in Morocco.
Some of them took advantage of the knowledge they had of European ships and ports. They established themselves as pirates.
Hijacking ships, raids on land and kidnapping people for slavery or for ransom had been good business over the centuries.
In the 17th century, piracy was at its peak.
Pirates from Portugal, Spain, France and England hijacked ships from other nations, took over the cargo and enslaved the crew and passengers, more or less under state auspices.
But the most numerous and most skilled were the pirates from Morocco and Algeria.
Dutch pirate captain
It was ships from these two countries that raided Iceland in 1627. The captains were from the Netherlands.
Jan Janszoon was one of them. He started by hijacking Spanish ships on behalf of the Dutch authorities, but found that he was making more money on his own, according to Cosairs & Captives. When he was later captured by pirates, he went over to them. He converted to Islam, moved to Morocco and took the name Reis Mourad.
In Morocco, his career really took off. He was elected president of the city of Salé, which was the pirates’ headquarters. The city declared itself an independent republic and established its own navy with Mourad as supreme admiral.
In between he went on raids.
Big transition from Iceland to Algeria
When the ship with the priest Egilsson and the other Icelanders arrived in Algeria, a large crowd stood on the beach to welcome them.
The prisoners meant income, but people were also curious.
There was also a lot to take in for the Icelanders, according to an article by Þorsteinn Helgason at the University of Iceland.
Not only had they become prisoners, but they came to a city life that was far removed from life on the island at home.
The streets were narrow, the houses were many, and it was crowded with people from different nationalities. The Icelanders understood neither the languages nor the customs. It was probably both exciting and terrifying at the same time, according to Helgason.
Eyewitness Egilsson tells about the further fate of the prisoners.
Sold like sheep
“We Icelanders were separated from each other, friend from friend, children from their parents, and driven through the streets from one house to another, to the market place where we were put up for auction as if we were sheep or cattle”, wrote Egilsson.
The prisoners were assessed according to work ability, skills and appearance.
Hands, faces and bodies were inspected by potential buyers. The local king got to choose first. He chose Egilsson’s 11-year-old son.
The father’s last words to his son were that in God’s name he must not abandon his faith.
Religion was a major concern for the priest and other Europeans who were captured. The pirates were Muslims. The prisoners were Christians, and they feared both being forcibly converted and having to live among pagans.
Valuable women
For slaves who were not rich enough or had connections with money, slavery was the last stop. For others, there was still hope of being bought free by those back home.
Many of the Icelanders died in the early days – from the heat and disease, according to Egilsson. The rest were put to various types of slave labor.
Some became servants, cooks and babysitters, others got manual labor in the city or had to toil at the oars on ships.
The women were particularly valuable, according to cultural historian Khalid Bekkaoui at the University Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah in Morocco.
Women were labour, but could also be added to rich men’s harems.
The rumors about Anna
Likewise, Muslim women were valuable slaves in Christian countries, according to Bekkaoui. A Spanish pirate took part in a raid in Tunisia in 1602 and says that they captured all the women and children, but few men. In all, they took 700 prisoners with them.
Both Christian and Muslim women were seen as easier to convert, although many of them held on to their faith in captivity.
One of the women’s fate is known through a letter the father wrote.
Anna Jasparsdóttir and her father Jasper Kristjánsson were captured at Heimaey in 1627. Both were sold as slaves in Algeria, according to Corsairs & Captives.
Anna’s husband, Jón Oddsson, was left in Iceland. He heard rumors from Algeria that Anna was in a relationship with a rich Muslim man and that she had been seen in beautiful clothes around town.
An old and a new man
Then Jasper Kristjánsson came to Iceland. He had been bought free by Anna’s new husband and was allowed to go home. Then he wrote a letter to the bishop, so that the first man could get a divorce.
In the letter, Kristjánsson says that Anna has had two children with the Spanish Muslim Iss Hamet. He himself had lived with them for two years and was treated well.
Anna’s first husband got his divorce. Anna herself stayed in Algeria and never returned to Iceland.
Many of the Icelanders had to struggle hard.
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Big difference between the owners
The Icelander Guttormur Hallsson wrote about how it was in a letter home in 1631:
“There is a big difference here between the slave owners. Some of the slaves have good, gentle or decent owners. But some unlucky ones have ended up with cruel, cold-hearted tyrants who never stop mistreating them. They are forced to work and struggle with little food and clothing, bound in iron chains from morning to night.”
Although he described harsh conditions for many slaves, he himself had a decent owner. He was neither beaten nor yelled at. He worked in the fields and sold water in the city.
Guttormur got to keep some of the money he earned for food and clothes, but life was not easy anyway: “Oh God, how miserable we are in this terrible place,” he wrote in the letter.
The Stockholm syndrome before Stockholm
A new study published in The Historical Journal examines the relationship between the pirates and their captives.
Several former prisoners wrote about their experiences after the ransom was paid and they returned home. These stories sold well with European audiences.
A rich American was kidnapped in Morocco. He was held captive for six weeks, while diplomats negotiated his release. He later wrote: “… I was taken by the kindest and gentlest robbers imaginable.”
Four Swiss who are also bought free told of an emotional parting scene where they were given money, gold rings and warm hugs by the pirates.
It is similar to the Stockholm syndrome, historian Juliane Hornung writes in the study.
This phenomenon takes its name from a bank robbery in Stockholm where four employees were held hostage. By the time they were released after six days, they had developed warm feelings for the bank robber.
But it may also happen that the rich and released prisoners will present themselves in an advantageous way. Although they lost their freedom and were at the mercy of the pirates, they managed to make themselves well liked. They did not want to appear as victims, according to Hornung.
A few returned home to Iceland
The priest Ólafur Egilsson was in his sixties and was not seen as valuable labour. He was imprisoned on arrival in Algeria, but released after a month.
He was then assigned to travel to Copenhagen to arrange a ransom.
The Danish king was broke, but both the court and the church started fundraising.
After nine years, 34 Icelandic slaves were bought free. In the years that followed, a few more were freed or found their way home in other ways.
Only around 50 of the 400 Icelanders returned home.
Whore and heathen
Guðríður Símonardóttir was one of them. She was bought free from slavery after ten years.
Together with other freed slaves, she was first sent to Denmark to brush up on the language and her Christian faith. Then Guðríður was allowed to go home to Iceland.
There, she was not well received in her home village. She was nicknamed Tyrkja-Godda and was seen as a whore and heathen. She moved away, remarried a younger man and lived on until her death in 1682.
Some of the Icelanders, especially the younger ones, converted to Islam and continued to live in Morocco and Algeria.
Many died during the first years of hard work, unfamiliar climate and miserable living conditions.
Their stories are not as well known.
New disaster for Heimaey
What happened to Heimaey? The small island that was burned down and robbed of all its inhabitants.
The incident left a deep mark. For years afterwards, people sat on guard and scouted out to sea.
No new pirates appeared, but in 1973 Heimaey was struck by another disaster. A volcanic eruption spread so much lava and ash that the inhabitants had to leave the island. The houses were buried, and it took many years before it became habitable.
The island received renewed world attention when the orca Keiko, known from the film Free Willy, was set free and transported to a fjord on the island.
Today, 4,500 people live on the island.
References:
The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson: The Story of the Barbary Corsair Raid on Iceland in 1627. The Catholic University of America Press, 2016. Summary.
Khalid Bekkaoui: White Women Captives in North Africa: Narratives of Enslavement, 1735-1830. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
Þorsteinn Helgason: The 1627 Turkish Raid on Iceland, www.alandalusylahistoria.com, 12.1.24
Juliane Hornung: Before Stockholm: Emotions and Victimhood in Mediterranean Kidnapping Narratives, 1866–1921, The Historical Journal, Cambridge University Press, February 2024
Corsairs & Captives blog by Adam Nichols, University of Maryland.
Brit Berggren et al.: Norwegian shipping. Dreyer publishing house, 1989.
Tags: Icelanders kidnapped sold slaves
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