Iceland review - 2019, Blaðsíða 43

41
Iceland Review
Completing the Golden Circle
Enjoy the natural pools and organic steam rooms
in the beautiful scenery of Lake Laugarvatn.
Only 1-hour drive from Reykjavík.
Book your tickets and learn
more at www.fontana.is
Geothermal baths
Geothermal bakery
Organic steam rooms
Sauna
Ari promised his “soldiers” that any booty from
the Basques would be shared among them. If that
weren’t enough, he threatened them, too. Failure
to participate in the assaults on the Basques would
result in steep fines for non-combatants, corre-
sponding to the damage and other costs that the
foreign sailors would surely cause. Ultimately,
however, the militia did not get their share; Ari
informed them afterwards that all the plunder
must be given over to the Danish Crown, as was
called for in the relevant laws. Perhaps unsurpris-
ingly, there is no record of any returns of plundered
Basque goods to the Crown which suggests that Ari
may well have kept the booty for himself.
A period of peace
The young García wouldn’t have lasted long on his
own in the autumn of 1615 in the Westfjords. Yet,
no doubt with the help of empathetic locals, he was
eventually able to find the other party of his ship-
mates that had been travelling in five rowboats fur-
ther north looking for a large enough vessel to get
all the rest of them home. Once reunited, he told his
shipmates about how his party had been attacked
and the atrocities that the Icelandic militia had
committed. They vowed to protect him and get him
safely home. They sailed south to Patreksfjörður,
broke into a Danish merchant’s warehouses in the
remote village of Vatneyri, and prepared for winter.
When they set sail from Iceland the following spring
of 1616 in a stolen English ship, García was no doubt
very relieved to be escaping the wrath of Ari and
the Icelandic militia which eagerly followed his
bloody commands.
No Basque whalers returned to Iceland for a
decade after the massacre of 1615. French and
Dutch whalers were more often spotted in the
Westfjords. Whaling continued until the end of
the 17th century and relations between Basques
and Icelanders improved significantly, despite
the Danish trade monopoly and Ari’s dire predic-
tion that the Spanish would come back looking
for revenge. Fortunately for Iceland, no revenge
was taken and peace, of a sort, ensued. In 2015,
during a commemoration on the 400th anniver-
sary of the Slaying of the Spaniards, the District
Commissioner of the Westfjords formally nullified
Ari’s directive that Basques should be killed on
sight. Let’s hope Basque tourists to the Westfjords
can breathe a bit easier now.