Episode 159 of the Renaissance English History Podcast was all about the Tudor relationship with Iceland. Henry VIII had the chance to buy Iceland three times, but he declined. Read on for resources and transcript.
Sources and Books:
Icelandic Cod on the Mary Rose
https://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art536388-mary-rose-cod-fish-iceland-canada-newfoundland
Hansdoc online resources of documents pertaining to the Hanseatic League shipping in the North Sea.
Proposals to sell, annex, and evacuate Iceland, 1518-1868 by Hannes Gissurarson
https://www.academia.edu/17606016/Proposals_to_Sell_Annex_and_Evacuate_Iceland_1518_1868
English and Hanseatic Trading and Fishing Sites in Medieval Iceland: Report on Initial Fieldwork by Mark Gardiner and Natascha Mehler.
https://www.academia.edu/1750659/English_and_Hanseatic_Trading_and_Fishing_Sites_in_Medieval_Iceland_Report_on_Initial_Fieldwork
The International Law of Fisheries: A Framework for Policy-Oriented Inquiries by Douglas M. Johnston
Rough Transcript of Episode 159: The Tudor Relationship with Iceland
Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity.
This is episode 159, and it’s called Let’s Trade with Iceland! There’s definitely an exclamation point at the end there. Basically, Iceland is my favorite place on the planet – I’ve been going there since 2012, and it’s basically the perfect place for an introvert who loves being alone in nature, books and baths. There is no better place. But I was interested in how our Tudor friends would have interacted with Iceland, if they even would have. Obviously there was trade with Iceland during the period when the Danes were living in England some 600 or 700 years before, but what about during our period? Well, as I started to dig into it, I found some really interesting connections with Iceland during the 16th century, and some changing relationships that had to do with, as everything else seems to have in this century, the Reformation.
But let’s go back a bit.
The whole thing starts with fish. And I read recently that DNA testing on bones of food found on the Mary Rose showed that some of the fish came from the North Sea, and in the waters just off the south coast of Iceland, showing that there was this element of globalization going on in Tudor England that we don’t often think about. We know that Henry VIII expanded the English navy – I did a few episodes on the Tudor navy including an interview with Benjamin Redding, a naval expert, back in 2016. That growth was supported by large stores of salted fish – namely cod. The growth in the fishing trade really made possible the growth of the English navy, and the navy also helped grow the fishing trade. It was one of those sorts of symbiotic circle relationships where each part helps the other grow.
Also, cod was an excellent food for urban populations who couldn’t have a cow in their backyard, but could easily store a lot of salted fish. So Icelandic cod also made possible the growth of cities.
Europeans south of Scandinavia started learning about Iceland in the 13th century. Even before that, supposedly King Arthur went to Arthur in the 6th century, but King Arthur did a lot of stuff that doesn’t seem very likely, including taking swords from fairies in lakes (which, as Monty Python reminded us, is really no basis for a system of government) so we’ll put that story aside. Of course the Scandinavians had known about Iceland for centuries – the sagas talk about settlements in the 10th century. But by the 13th century, knowledge of Iceland had trickled down to the Mediterranean.
Iceland was attractive to southern Europe because it was a source of goods and natural products that they either didn’t have at all, or didn’t have enough of. The rich fishing grounds provided an easy natural resource for fish, which was incredibly important during the Catholic period when there were so many fish days. Iceland also offered other export goods, such as wool, animal skins and fleeces, and sulphur. These goods formed the basis of a vibrant trade between Icelanders, the English, the Hanseatic league, the Dutch and the Norwegians. And then there were even luxury items, such as walrus-ivory and falcons.
In 1531 the Swedish cartographer Olaus Magnus created a map of Iceland, one of the earliest we have, which highlights the important economic areas, also showing the natural dangers like volcanoes, and areas that are rich in sulphur along the southwest coast. It also shows tents storing fish along the south coast, where modern day Vik would be.
The southwest coast of Iceland, particularly the peninsula where Keflavik airport is now, is dotted with medieval trading village, and archaeologists have found pottery that is continental in origin, showing that early traders had been on the scene by the end of the 14th century, and english pottery was found at Gásir in the north. In 1402 the Plague even arrived in Iceland via a ship.
The English ships started coming around 1412, and began what some Icelandic historians call The English Period. The Icelandic merchants traded in dried fish, called stockfish, which were dried, whole, and headless. But because Iceland didn’t have any coinage system, the merchants had to figure out other ways of negotiating trades. Iceland wanted things like ground corn, beer, clothing, and products that were manufactured like scissors, knives, kettles, and even some luxury and religious items. In 1420 the merchants came up with an exchange rate that set the rate for goods brought from England in terms of the amount of dried fish they would get in return. Additionally, some of the trading ships were also fishing ships – so the merchants on board would do some trading while the fishermen would fish. The ship would come back to England with both traded stockfish as well as fresh salted fish caught in the waters off Iceland. In 1430 a ship called the Christopher came back to Hull with 5400 salted fish, 60 stockfish, fish oil, and a type of woven cloth that Iceland traded called vadmal.
There was a new technology to salting fish that became popular in the 15th century, which allowed fresh fish to be salted on board. You would gut the fish, and pack them in salt in layers in sealed barrels while still onboard, which allowed ships to stay away from shore for longer period, and stay in the fishing ground getting more fish before returning home. By 1482 it was mentioned in the law books. And for example, in the 1540’s a ship called the James sailed from Dunwich, it had onboard heading knives, gutting knives, and splitting knives for processing the fish on board. The fishing boats became more productive, coming on shore for fresh water, shelter during storms, and renew their supplies of any fuel.
Medieval temporary villages sprang up along the south coast, in use probably for about 6 months out of the year. The English visitors described these turf-walled houses as “caves”. In England merchants and fishermen would form partnerships to fund English ships to go to Iceland. For example, on the aforementioned James ship in 1545, one of the crew was a merchant called Geoffrey Smith who brought along finished goods he wanted to trade while in Iceland. What probably happened was that the fishing vessels dropped off the merchants at a port, and they stayed there working and exchanging their goods before the ship came back to retrieve them and take them home. Ships like the James carried about 30 people, and the return trip would take about six months, usually leaving in the spring, and coming back in the autumn.
There are place names associated with the English, usually containing the elements Ensk- or Englendinga. Englendingabúdir on Siglufjördur on the north coast of Iceland seems a promising guide to a trading site. Engelskalág, ‘English hollow’ near Grindavík is significant because it is close to the possible 16th-century harbour at Stórabót. Supposedly this is a place where the English were attacked by German merchants in June 1532 and close to which is thought to have been the site of booths belonging to merchants from King’s Lynn in England.
In fact, there were a number of skirmishes in the early 1530’s between the English and the Germans in Iceland. Hansdoc is a database of primary sources pertaining to the trade of North German (Hanseatic) towns with the North Atlantic islands (Iceland, Shetland and the Faroe Islands) in the 15th-17th centuries. And when you go through the database, you see a number of incidents between the English and Germans.
In 1528 there was an incident where the English and Germans fought, and the Hanseatic merchants wrote a letter to Henry VIII complaining about it. Then in 1532 some Germans complained that the English took fish that the Germans had already bought, and they were asking for permission to use violence against the English in order to make them pay. Then in 1532 we have a “Lenghty complaint of Hamburg merchants against the English in Iceland, who misbehave both towards German merchants and the Icelanders, are involved in fishing activities, rob the merchants of their ships and goods, and have attacked them on multiple occasions between 1486 and 1532.”
That same year we have an account from the English: “Johan Browne, William Kenneth and Johan Sowermere, merchants in King’s Lynn, to king Henry VIII of England: complain about the attacks of Lutke Schmidt and his crew on English merchants in the harbour Botsand in Iceland, whereby two English died, and request to capture four Hamburg ships in the Thames, so that the damage can be compensated and the perpetrators punished.”
So there was clearly some difficulty going on between the English and the Geramans in Iceland.
There was also some question about whether the trade was even allowed. Edward IV had an argument in 1475 with King Christian I of Denmark and Norway, and trade with Iceland – annexed by Christian – was deemed illegal. English ships needed either a license to trade, or they needed to go through the port of Bergen in Norway to trade or pay customs dues and taxes on anything they bought or sold in Iceland. Some east coast merchants did obtain licenses and there are records of their visits to Bergen to pay the taxes, but the rules weren’t followed universally. Especially for those on the west coast, who would have had to make a much longer journey around England to Norway, they took the risks to trade directly. But the workaround they found was to go through Galway on Ireland’s west coast. Galway became a sort of stopping off point for wine from Spain, salt and wine from Portugal, which the merchants from Bristol would buy with English wool. In Iceland the Spanish and Portuguese wine would be traded for stockfish and salted fish. The English ships would also carry materials to build barrels to bring back fish they caught. Then they’d go back to Galway and trade for more wine to take back to England. So they could completely go around Bergen.
One interesting aspect of the Icelandic fish trade was that during the Reformation, the fasting days were reduced, and the meals featuring fish began to be reduced. This obviously threatened both the trade with Iceland as well as England’s own fisheries. Elizabeth I brought back weekly fish days to encourage domestic consumption of fish.
But perhaps the most interesting thing about Iceland and England during the early Tudor period is that Henry VIII was offered to buy Iceland three times. In Proposals to Sell, Annex or Evacuate Iceland, 1518–1868, Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson writes
“When Henry VIII ascended the English throne in 1509, the presence of his subjects in Icelandic waters was by no means insignificant. Records show that in one year, 1528, a total of 440 fishing vessels were registered in England, of which 149 sailed to Iceland. One of the new king’s first acts was to abolish a statute from 1429—which had almost always been disregarded— requiring all English subjects wishing to buy stockfish to do so only in Bergen in Norway. The Danish king, Christian II, watched the English presence in Icelandic waters with some concern. But he also saw therein an opportunity. In 1518, he sent an envoy to King Henry VIII, secretly asking for a loan of 100,000 florins, pledging Iceland as collateral. The envoy was instructed to go as far down if necessary as 50,000 florins. Nothing came out of this (Thorsteinsson, 1961). Today, 50,000 florins would be equivalent to around 6.5 million U.S. dollars (Gissurarson, 2015). In 1523, King Christian II was forced to abdicate and leave Denmark. Shortly before he left, he appointed Tyle Petersen from Flensburg as Governor of Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Having previously served in Iceland as Deputy Governor, in 1517–21, Petersen was unpopular with the Icelanders. Seen as an agent of the deposed Danish king and possibly with a mission to bring Iceland under the English king, the Icelanders executed him in the autumn of 1523. When King Henry VIII heard of this, he angrily told King Christian’s emissary that as a consequence he was not interested in acquiring Iceland, not even in accepting it as collateral for a loan. King Christian II tried once again, in 1524, to obtain a loan from King Henry VIII, pledging Iceland as collateral, but without success. In 1535, Danish King Christian III sent an envoy to King Henry VIII, offering to pawn Iceland for a loan, but again, King Henry was not interested. Thus, in the span of only eighteen years, Iceland had thrice been offered to King Henry VIII by Danishkings, and thrice been rejected by him (Thorsteinsson, 1961).”
‘So that’s it for this week. I don’t have one specific book to recommend this week, but there are a ton of papers, blog articles, and sources I used which are all in the show notes at englandcast.com/iceland. Special shoutout to the paper Mark Gariner and Natascha Mehler wrote, ‘Trading and Fishing Sites in Medieval Iceland’, and the aforementioned Gissurarson, Hannes H., ‘Proposals to Sell, Annex or Evacuate Iceland, 1518-1868’. Plus, my dear friend Mike, an American I met while living in London who now lives in Iceland, and helped me with pronunciation. I owe him a beer next time I’m there! Let me know what you thought about this episode -You can get in touch with me through the listener support line at 801 6TEYSKO or join the new Tudor Learning Circle, which is a free social network just for TUdor history nerds. Thanks so much for listening, and I hope you’re having a joyful advent season!
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