NEWS
Below, you will find announcements for various pieces of news that we think readers interested in the 1627 raid on Iceland might find of interest.
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NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT
Back in 2016, we 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.
Over the past few years, we completed two more books devoted to the Barbary corsair raids on Iceland in 1627.
One book, 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.
Excerpts from both these books have appeared in Adam Nichols’ Corsairs & Captives blog (Corsairs & Captives).
This past summer, we 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.
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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.
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Adam will soon begin posting a series of excerpts from Enslaved in his Corsairs & Captives blog.
In the meantime, here’s a link to the online listing for Enslaved:
Here are links to the online listings for Northern Captives and Stolen Lives:
These links are to an Icelandic book seller, but they work the same as Amazon: you can order the books and have them shipped to you.
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VOICES OF THE PAST
There is a popular YouTube channel named Voices of the Past. It presents a series of videos that combine images and audio to tell stories from the past—hence the name. What makes this channel especially interesting is that it uses the text from historical documents to tell the stories. In other words, it’s a collection of (mostly) first-person accounts of historic events by people who were there.
Voices of the Past covers everything from an ancient Chinese description of the Roman Empire, to a first-hand account of the destruction of Pompeii, to a tenth-century Muslim Ambassador’s eye-witness account of a group of Vikings on the shores of the Volga River, in what is now Russia, to the first European description of the Philippines in the sixteenth century, to an Indian traveler’s description of England and European life in the eighteenth century, to five historical accounts of werewolves, to a horrified Soviet tourist’s description of California and Hollywood in the 1930s.
Quite fascinating.
Recently, Voices of the Past posted a new video titled…
Enslaved Icelander Describes Horror of Ottoman Slave Market (1627) - Diary of Ólafur Egilsson
The folks from Voices of the Past contacted us to get permission to use part of the text of The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson.
The video they put together using that text is now available for viewing on YouTube (when last we checked, it had over 2,000,000 views).
Here’s the link:
The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson
Enjoy!
NEW BOOKS
The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson: The Story of the Barbary Corsair raid on Iceland in 1627 was published by the Catholic University of America Press in 2016.
Over the past couple of years, we have completed two new books devoted to the Barbary corsair raids on Iceland in 1627.
One, titled Northern Captives (published in 2020), 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 (published in 2021), tells the story of the raid by corsairs from Algiers on southeastern Iceland and the Westman Islands. It details the events of the two attacks and then follows the Icelandic captives to Algiers, where they too were sold into slavery.
Below are the front-cover images accompanied by the back-cover blurbs for the books.
Northern Captives
In the summer of 1627, Barbary corsairs raided Iceland. They killed dozens of people and captured over four hundred, packing the captives aboard their ships and transporting them to North Africa to be sold in the slave markets there. The first place the corsairs attacked in Iceland was Grindavík. This book recounts the story of that attack and its aftermath—a story that has never before been told.
The very last thing the inhabitants of Grindavík expected, living as they were on an island close to the Arctic Circle in the middle of the turbulent North Atlantic, was to be attacked by Barbary corsairs from North Africa.
So when a lone ship silently approached the harbour early on a June morning in 1627, nobody on shore took alarm. Barbary corsairs had a reputation for brutal violence, but they also used stealth when it suited their purposes. By the time the people of Grindavík realized what was happening, it proved too late, and the corsairs, howling like a pack of wolves, were upon them.
This book recounts the events of the raid on Grindavík, as well as what happened afterward, when those captured were taken to Salé, a notorious corsair capital on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, and sold into slavery there. In particular, it follows the fortunes and misfortunes of one of the prominent farm families of the time, two generations of which were captured in the raid.
The full story of the Grindavík raid has never before been told. This book recounts for the first time the details of what happened and the terrors and triumphs of the Icelanders caught up in the raid.
Stolen Lives
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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 captured over four hundred, packing the captives aboard their ships and transporting them to North Africa to be sold in the slave markets there. Most of these captives were taken from Heimaey, one of the Westman Islands. This book recounts the story of the corsair raid on Heimaey and its aftermath, a story that has never before been told in full.
The corsairs landed over 200 men on Heimaey and in two days of violent raiding captured nearly 250 people, including many women and children. Adding these new captives to the more than 100 they had already taken in East Iceland, they then set sail for Algiers, their home port.
In Algiers, many of the captive Icelanders quickly succumbed to disease and shock. Those who survived were auctioned off into slavery and forced to endure hard servitude until a ransom expedition was finally organized to liberate them, almost a decade after their initial capture. In the end, only twenty-seven made it back to Iceland.
The full story of the Algerine corsair raid on Heimaey 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 the experience of being a slave in Algiers, the process by which the enslaved Icelanders were ransomed, and the journey home for the lucky ones.
Stolen Lives is a story of brutality and suffering, but also of the resiliency of the human spirit in the face of bitter adversity.
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These books were published in Iceland (Northern Captives in 2020, Stolen Lives in 2021) and are for sale throughout the island. So anybody who might be contemplating a visit to Iceland will be able to buy copies at any decent Icelandic bookshop.
For those who may not be contemplating a trip to Iceland, these books are also available online from an Icelandic vendor.
Below are individual links to Northern Captives and Stolen Lives at that vendor:
Northern Captives and Stolen Lives are narrative histories. That is, they tell the story—present a narrative—of what occurred in novelistic fashion, emphasizing the people involved and what happened to them. The focus is on the characters of the story as much as possible, and the books evoke for the reader what the early seventeenth century world was like, how it felt to be the victim of a corsair attack and to be sold in a North African slave market, and what it was like to live in a place like Salé or Algiers in the late 1620s.
Both are good reads.
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DUTCH TRANSLATION
A Dutch translation of The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson has been published under the title De reizen van Ólafur Egilsson (The Travels of Ólafur Egilsson).
Here’s a link to the Dutch publisher’s listing:
Here’s a link to the Amazon listing:
AUDIO BOOK
An audio book of The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson is available at Amazon.com:
A novel has just been published that we reckon should not be missed by readers interested in the events of the 1627 corsair raid on Iceland.
The Sealwoman’s Gift
- by Sally Magnusson. Published by Two Roads Books, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton.
Publication date: February 8, 2018.
Available on Amazon.com
and on
Reverend Ólafur’s narrative and the various letters tell in considerable detail the story of the corsair raid and its aftermath, both in Iceland and North Africa. Everything that was written, however, was written by men. Nowhere is there anything written about the experiences of women.
This is what drew Sally Magnasson, a U.K. broadcaster and journalist of mixed Icelandic and Scottish descent, to write her new novel. As she puts it:
“As a half-Icelander I’ve known for ages about the raid by Algerian corsairs in 1627. It remains one of the most traumatic events in Iceland’s history. But there has never been much known about what happened to the women and children. So I wondered… what might it have been like for a woman to be lifted violently out of her isolated culture and find herself experiencing not just the separations and agonies of captivity, but the reassessments that come in any age when intelligent eyes are opened to other lives, other cultures and other kinds of loving?”
The Sealwoman’s Gift tells the story of Ásta, Reverend Ólafur’s young wife, who was pregnant when she was captured, gave birth on the voyage to Algiers, and endured a decade of servitude in Algiers before eventually being ransomed and returning to Iceland and her husband. In relating Ásta’s story, Magnasson manages a neat feat of juggling. She has done her homework, and her evocation of seventeenth century Iceland and Algiers is historically accurate, but she never allows the historical dimension to overwhelm the story. Instead, as she traces the events of Ásta’s life, she weaves a compelling narrative of suffering, loss, and eventual redemption.
An altogether wonderful book. Accurate historical background, a strong story, a gripping read. We recommend it whole heartedly.
You can access Sally Magnusson’s website and find out more about the book at the link below: