Pétursson experienced a new challenge in 1665, when he was struck with leprosy. He was still able to preach and attend some meetings, but eventually had to retire and spent his last years bedridden and almost blind. His most moving hymns were written during this time. He died at Ferstikla, near Saurbær, on 27 October 1674.

The news that Hallgrímur Pétursson was ordained as Lutheran minister at Hvalsnes, Iceland, raised many eyebrows. He had not completed his education and, what was worse, he had fathered a child out of wedlock. But Brynjólfur Sveinsson, bishop of Skálholt, believed that Pétursson had repented and was ready for the ministry. Time proved him right.

Overturned Plans

Pétursson was likely born in 1614 at Gröf of Skagafjörður, in the northern region of Iceland. While he was still young, his family moved south to Hólar, where his cousin Guðbrandur Þorláksson was a bishop over the local Lutheran churches. Pétursson’s father served as a bell-ringer.

As a young man, Pétursson left home and travelled to mainland Europe, possibly to learn the blacksmith trade. He met Sveinsson in Copenhagen, Denmark. Sveisson, who had recently graduated from the University of Copenhagen, was already esteemed as a poet and churchman. He encouraged Pétursson to attend the seminary at the Vor Frue Skole in the same city, and probably sponsored his studies.

Pétursson was in his last year of seminary, with good prospects for his future, when an event turned his life upside down.

Around 1637, a group of about 27 Icelanders landed in Copenhagen. They were part of a group of 300 people who had been kidnapped ten years earlier by North African pirates and had been sold as slaves in Algiers. This raid, known as the Turkish Abductions, had inflicted a heavy toll to an economically poor and scarcely populated country.[1]

At that time, Algiers was a powerful city in the Ottoman Empire, where slaves were in high demand. Since ancient times, slaves from northern Europe had been especially prized for their size and strength.

Pètursson was sent to minister to this group of ransomed slaves. One of them, Guðríður, had arrived without her son, who had been kidnapped with her when he was four and was never released. This was a common story. The ransomed Lutheran pastor Ólafur Egilsson, who had been abducted at the same time, was able to rescue his wife, but never saw his children again.[2] That’s because children of captives were forced to convert to Islam and, by doing so, lost all rights of moving back to a Christian country.

Guðríður and Hallgrímur fell in love, in spite of their age difference (she was sixteen years his senior). Eventually, their relationship resulted in a pregnancy. To make things worse, Guðríður was a married woman, whose husband had escaped the raid. Unable to continue his studies, Hallgrímur moved back to Iceland with Guðríður and settled in Njarðvík, a village in the Reykjanes Peninsula. The two lived in separate homes.

With the help of friends, Pètursson found work for Hallgrímur and was able to avoid the punishment (either a hefty fine or a flogging) the government imposed on adulterers. Hallgrímur did some manual labor, then worked as an interpreter for Danish merchants.

In the meantime, Guðríður looked for her husband, Eyjólfur Sölmundsson. She had written a letter to him in 1635 but had never received a reply. She discovered that he had remarried, fathered more children, and died in a shipwreck. Sölmundsson’s death gave Hallgrímur and Guðríður legal rights to marry. This allowed them some respectability, although some legends rose about Guðríður being a witch who enchanted Hallgrímur[3].

Pastor and Poet

After his unlikely ordination, Pétursson pastored the church in Hvalsnes, near Sandgerði (in the same peninsula where he had been living). He was not unanimously well received. Some resented the fact that he had been ordained in spite of his insufficient education and his stained past. A story is told of a man who poked a hole in the communion chalice just to get Pétursson in trouble.

But the greatest sorrow of Pétursson’s life was the death of his three-year daughter Steinunn. He wrote two funeral elegies for her. One is still sung at Icelandic funerals today. The poem starts with the biblical comparison of human life to a flower that flourishes briefly, and is gone, reflecting on the uncertainty of life, and on man’s inability to stop death.

Since Adam’s nature courses
Through every human vein,
My heritage enforces
Return to dust again.
Life is no freehold, granted
To seisin or the sword;
My soul, in flesh implanted,
Was lent me by the Lord;
In his control it standeth
To claim his own anew;
Death is the slave he sendeth
To seek the Maker’s due

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