Iceland review - 2015, Page 51

ICELAND REVIEW 49
MASSACRE REMEMBERED
This is how Jón lærði (‘the learned’)
Guðmundsson, in the translation
of Viola Miglio, describes what is
known as the only massacre in Icelandic
history. The victims mentioned in the
excerpt were among the 18 shipwrecked
Basque whalers murdered on Æðey island
in Ísafjarðardjúp and at nearby Sandeyri
on Snæfjallaströnd, the West Fjords, on
October 18, 1615, at the order of magis-
trate Ari Magnússon from Ögur. In refer-
ence to a mandate by King Christian IV of
Denmark that thieves should be “captured
and harmed,” he had determined that the
Basques were to be slain at will in the
region. Farmers who refused to follow him
were fined and made take responsibility for
the actions of the whalers. Thirteen others
had earlier been killed in Dýrafjörður fjord.
Jón lærði, a self-taught academic from the
Strandir area where the whalers were based,
was deeply upset by these events and wrote
a report, Sönn frásögn af spanskra manna
skipbrotum og slagi, based on the accounts
of eyewitnesses, in the whalers’ defense. He
had corresponded with them, and counted
some of them, including Pierre the pilot,
whom he named in the report, as his
friends. Jón lærði was prone to coming into
conflict with the authorities; eventually he
was exiled for sorcery.
FOUR CENTURIES OF GUILT
“Growing up on Tyrðilmýri, the outermost
farm on Snæfjallaströnd, and herding sheep
from Æðey and Tyrðilmýri at Sandeyri, I
heard stories surrounding place names such
as Gulanef [‘Yellow Cliff’] on Æðey, where
the bodies of the Basques were dumped
into the sea—‘yellow’ in reference to their
skin color, considered to be yellow or tan,”
says historian and cultural communicator
Ólafur J. Engilbertsson, who chairs the
Icelandic-Basque Association. “Otherwise,
they weren’t much talked about.” Ólafur
doesn’t remember anyone describing the
deeds as heroic. “Not at all. It was more
as if people were ashamed. The stories
touched me because there were supposedly
HISTORY
Æðey island seen from Snæfjallaströnd.