Jon Gudmundsson Laerdi’s True Account and the Massacre of Basque Whalers in Iceland in 1615

On the night of September 20,1615, the eve of the feast of St. Matthew, an expedition of Basque whalers lost their ships in a fjord near Trekyllisvik, Iceland, during a terrible storm. This led to a series of events that culminated in their October massacre at the hands of the islanders.The Basque mariners’ bodies, dismembered, would not be buried. However, not all the Icelanders saw the massacre with good eyes. One of them, Jon Gudmundsson, better known as Jon laerdi (1574-1658) or the wise man , wrote an essay on those events in defense of the victims titled Sonn frasaga (The true story). Four hundred years later, on April 20,2015, an international conference investigated various aspects of this tragic episode of the history of Iceland and the Basque Country. The academic meeting took place at the National Library of Iceland with the participation of experts from all over the world. The program, commemorating the fourth centenary of the massacre of Basque whalers in Iceland, was sponsored by the Govrenment of Gipuskoa and the Government of Iceland and organized by the Etxepare Institute, the Basque-Finnish Association, the Center for Basque Studies of the University of Nevada, Reno and the Barandiaran Chair of the University of California, Santa Barbara.