Stolen Lives

In the summer of 1627, two different sets of corsairs raided Iceland. The first expedition, which came from Salé (located on the Atlantic coast of Morocco), made landfall on June 20. After spending a little over a week pillaging southwest Iceland-including the settlements of Grindavík and Bessastaðir, where the Danish Governor had his official residence-they set sail for home.

The second corsair expedition, which came from Algiers, arrived on July 5 (well after the Salé corsairs had left). They spent ten days plundering the East Fjords, in southeast Iceland, and then attacked the island of Heimaey, off the south coast, eventually leaving Icelandic waters on July 19 and returning to their home port. Between them, these two sets of raiders killed dozens of people and captured close to

five hundred, packing the captives aboard their ships and trans- porting them to North Africa to be sold in the slave markets there.

There was little the Icelanders could do to defend themselves.

Iceland had no navy of its own, no military of any sort, and ordinary Icelanders did not possess weapons. They had no need of them; under normal circumstances, the island's isolation itself offered protection enough. Denmark sent naval warships to patrol Icelandic waters every summer, but in 1627, those ships were late, leaving Icelanders without any meaningful defence.