Iceland review - 2019, Page 40

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Iceland Review
Night time, October 5, 1615. García, the youngest
member of a group of shipwrecked Basques is struck
with horror as each his shipmates screams and dies
at the hands of an unknown band of armed Icelandic
attackers. He hides underneath a cot, shivering in
the dark while dozens of strange, angry men shout
in a harsh sounding language, rushing about the
shed where they had been sleeping, while beating
and stabbing 14 of his shipmates with clubs, spears,
and swords. He remains perfectly still, whimpering
silently while the vengeful attackers roughly pull off
the sailors’ clothes and mutilate most of the corpses.
Minutes pass, feeling like hours for the hidden youth
while the Icelandic vigilantes methodically stab and
then cheerfully drag the mutilated corpses down the
beach to the shore of the fjord. One after another, the
naked, blood-drenched bodies are cast into the fjord’s
clear, cold water. While the attackers are occupied
with removing the corpses, García realises he has a
chance. Under cover of the night, he quietly makes his
escape, intent on survival but with a single objective.
To warn the remaining parties of Basque whalers
before the Icelanders kill them, too.
A lucrative business
The Basques, whose homeland straddles the west-
ern end of the France-Spain border, became the
first Europeans to hunt whales commercially at the
beginning of the 11th century. Right whales were
the primary species targeted because they were
extremely valuable and relatively easy to hunt. The
Basques were continuously exploring the Atlantic
in search of bountiful whale hunting and made
their way across the Atlantic to Newfoundland
even before the European colonisation of North
America. Long considered masters of their trade,
the Basques caught around 300 whales on the
shores of Newfoundland each year in the late 16th
century, making their homeland one of the wealthi-
est in the world.
When catches gradually diminished due to over-
exploitation by the beginning of the 17th century,
this highly profitable business involving hundreds
of men and dozens of ships was in dire need of
new hunting waters and began exploring the seas
around Iceland’s Westfjords. The first-recorded
mention of foreign whalers in Iceland was in 1608:
“The Spaniards came north in three whaling ships
to Strandir, stole timber and valuables, and they
also recruited/kidnapped a local boy.”
In the summer of 1615, three Basque whaling ves-
sels with a combined crew of over 80 were moored
in Reykjafjörður, in the southeast Westfjords,
where tons of blubber from some 11 whales was
being melted and put in casks. Local Icelandic
labourers helped process the whales and eagerly
traded with the Basques. However, that June at the
Alþingi (Iceland’s general assembly), a royal decree
was read out prohibiting all whaling and fishing by
foreigners due to the infamous Danish-imposed
trade monopoly of 1602.
The royal decree of the Danish Crown
Icelanders were forbidden to trade or even speak
with the Basques. Any Basque property was to
be requisitioned and any Basque sailor was to
be killed on sight. At a local assembly in Súðavík
at the beginning of October 1615, presided over
by Sheriff Ari Magnússon, the Basques, called
“Spaniards,” by Icelanders, were found guilty of
numerous crimes over the previous three years and
were summarily sentenced to death. Their crimes
were almost certainly exaggerated to justify the
murders. While unaware of the recent attack on
October 5, the assembly did know that 18 ship-
wrecked sailors had settled on Æðey island for
winter hibernation with guns, shields, and other
weapons. The Basques had abducted and stolen
“people, cows, and sheep” in the vicinity over the
past three years, for which it was all but inevitable
that they would face violent retaliation.
According to the laws that had been technically
in force since the year 1281, the killing of robbers
by the Danish Crown’s subjects was considered
justifiable. To bolster the argument for vengeance,
reference was also made to the royal decree of April
30, 1615. The fact that the Basques had resorted
to theft and aggression to meet their needs rather
than “seeking alms in the name of God,” was con-
sidered enough justification for vengeance by the
Icelanders.
Violent murders
On October 13, 1615, Icelanders sent a clandes-
tine reconnaissance team to Æðey island, just
across the bay from Ari’s farmstead at Ögur. It was
reported that all 13 Basque men apart from five
were away on nearby Sandeyri on Snæfjallaströnd,
butchering a whale which had washed up there.
The next day Ari gathered a team of 50 armed
men. A storm had delayed the militia’s trip to Æðey
island by a week after the assembly’s conviction of
the Basques. Not every man had been willing to join
the militia, but they had been threatened with fines
and promised rewards in the form of plunder if they
joined. The Icelanders landed in several boats on
Æðey island and quickly murdered the five men
they found. All their possessions were pocketed,
their clothes taken. The dead men were then bound
together and thrown off a cliff into the sea.