Iceland’s English Century

In the autumn of 1467 the governor of Iceland, Björn Þorleifsson, was troubled. He had to deal with criminals who challenged his authority and stole stockfish, livestock, woollen cloth, and boats, not only from him, but from a local monastery and from farmers on the Snæfellsnes peninsula in Iceland’s Western Quarter, too. Although some of the criminals were caught and executed, Björn suspected that other forces were at work, miscreants who he believed were conducting illegal trade with English merchants – in a letter he describes them as ‘anglicised’ (‘engaðir’). The governor decided that the time was right to move against these rogue traders. He went to confront English merchants from King’s Lynn, who were at anchor in the harbour of Rif in the northern part of Snæfellsnes. This official visit turned to disaster. As his overlord, King Christian I of Denmark and Norway, wrote to the council of King’s Lynn, the English sailors ‘viciously killed our noble governor’ and, to top it off, ‘they took the body of the governor whom they had killed, robbed it and threw it into the sea’.