Iceland review - 2015, Page 54

52 ICELAND REVIEW
crewmembers at Sandeyri, where they had
been processing a whale, and started fir-
ing at the house they were staying in. De
Villafranca asked for mercy and Ari agreed
to spare his life if he would surrender his
weapon and exit the building. “Then there
appears to have been some kind of frenzy.
Things get out of hand and Ari loses con-
trol of his men,” Ólafur describes the course
of events. De Villafranca was attacked with
an axe, so he jumped into the ocean and
tried to swim away—while singing. Some
of the men chased after him on a boat and
eventually killed him by stoning. “One of
the most touching moments in Hólmavík
[at the unveiling of the memorial this April]
was when a prayer for seafarers was sung in
Basque,” recounts Ólafur. “We don’t know
what he was singing—it could have been
something else—but it’s that scene people
were picturing.”
The 50 whalers who had left for
Patreksfjörður survived the winter in spite
of Ari’s plans to go against them too, sup-
posedly because of a storm that grounded
him and his men, possibly because Ari’s
mother, who lived nearby, protected them.
In the spring the Basques got away by
stealing an English ship. “I see him as a
diplomat rather than a warlord,” Ólafur
says of Ari, pointing out that he was follow-
ing the king’s order. “He tried to do what
was right.” The king’s motive may have had
more to do with business than protecting
Icelanders against raiding foreigners. “The
king had had Basque whaling ships in
Norway attacked too.”
MAKING AMENDS
The ceremony on April 22 included
West Fjords district commissioner Jónas
Guðmundsson revoking Ari’s order that
Basques could be killed on sight in the
region. “It was more of a joke and to shed
light on how ridiculous the order was in the
first place,” Ólafur explains. “Their names
weren’t mentioned, these weren’t convicted
criminals.” Magnús Rafnsson, board mem-
ber of the Icelandic-Basque Association,
who believes he can trace his family back to
one of the murderers, and Xabier Irujo, an
academic at the Center for Basque Studies
at the University of Nevada, who claims he
is the descendant of one of the slain whal-
ers, took part in an act of symbolic recon-
ciliation. “It’s unclear who was involved in
the killings as many of their names weren’t
mentioned. I could also be the descendant
of one of the killers,” says Ólafur.
A traveling exhibition with illustra-
tions by Basque artist Guillermo Zubiaga,
information about the Basque whalers in
Iceland, and their massacre, opened in
Ísafjörður, the West Fjords capital, on July
4, and in Snjáfjallasetur the following week.
It will also be put up in Hólmavík and
Reykir, Hrútafjörður, and opened in the
Aquarium in San Sebastian on July 17. The
exhibition will end in the National and
University Library of Iceland in September.
In mid-October, around the exact anniver-
sary of the slayings, a special program will
be held, the details of which have yet to be
presented.
According to Ólafur, there is much yet
to study about Icelandic-Basque relations.
“It isn’t long ago that the fourth [Icelandic-
Basque] language glossary was discovered
at Harvard,” he says—the glossary being
further evidence of long-term trade—
revealing his aspirations for the future of
the Icelandic-Basque Association. “I hope
that more people will be interested in
working with the association and in nur-
turing the relationship between the two
nations—and that their friendship will con-
tinue to grow.”*
HISTORY
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Ólafur J. Engilbertsson standing by the memorial in Hólmavík.