"The Sealwoman's Gift" by Sally Magnusson is a captivating historical novel based on the Barbary corsair raid on Iceland. It follows Ásta, a woman captured and enslaved in Algiers, exploring themes of cultural clash and resilience. Magnusson's vivid prose brings to life the emotional journey of Ásta and her fellow captives, making it a compelling read for fans of historical fiction.

The Sealwoman’s Gift is about the eternal power of storytelling to help us survive. Here are Icelandic sagas to fend off a slave-master’s advances, Arabian nights to help an old man die. Here, too, the stories we tell ourselves to protect our minds from what cannot otherwise be borne, the stories we need to make us happy.

The opening sentence in this book is very powerful -

“There is nothing to be said for giving birth in the bowels of a sailing ship with your stomach heaving and hundreds of people listening.”

However, whilst this first line was gripping I found this book a little hard to get into. However, I think that may just have been due to the unfamiliarity of the time and culture as it is well worth hanging in there as this is an outstanding novel.

This should not be any surprise coming from the pen of such a well respected journalist. Ms. Magnusson has written an intelligent literary novel based on actual events in a little known period of Icelandic history. I really enjoyed this mix of fiction and fact. As well as this being an enjoyable novel to read, at the back the author distinguishes between the real events and her own imaginings and was fascinating to read.

Asta was a wonderful character to engage with. I loved not only her story but her own art of storytelling which plays a significant part in the book. The author herself clearly has tremendous storytelling skills which bring to life the characters, their environments and their individual stories.

Although a well known writer this is the authors debut novel. I am sincerely hoping that there will be further novels as this one had all the ingredients that a first class historical novel should have. This is a book about love, loss and hope and also about the role that stories have on our life

An interesting snippet of Icelandic history. Beautifully tells the story of piracy, slavery and their clash with Christianity as told through the eyes of a Lutheran Pastor's wife.

A bit of a slow start, but to be expected given that most people know little about this period of history. Worth carrying on with though, an excellent debut novel.

Phenomenal book. I just found the story so sad and brutal but at the same time I was completely gripped by it. I couldn't believe that this historical event had happened and is barely mentioned. I found the main character to be so wonderful and her story heart breaking. I know which choice I was hoping she would make but at the same time I can't ever imagine being in the position she was in.

Sally Magnusson is a wonderful writer. Her writing is descriptive and beautiful at the same time and she really conveys the characters and emotions not just of her characters but of the settings as well. You really could feel the despair on the slave ship or smell the flower on the breeze in Algiers.

I eagerly await any new novel by this author.

I know that this has split opinions but I loved it! Asta is a great character and I loved how fairytales, sagas and folklore was woven in with historical fact and speculation. I liked the depth of exploration into Asta and Olafur's marriage and how it changes as they grow together, then apart. At times the magical realism left me a little confused, but I still think that it worked really well and truly evoked a sense of place in both the frozen Icelandic islands and the hot, perfumed city of Algiers. Lovely!

I knew nothing about the Icelandic slaves taken by Barbary pirates and sold to Arabs in the seventeenth century – although I was well aware that many pirates captured slaves and sold them around world – so this was an eye opening novel. Beautifully written, well researched and lyrical, this is a literary imagining of one woman’s life (and her family’s) as she is forced to leave her own culture and adapt to an alien new one in which she is considered property. It has a sort of biographical feel which largely comes from the book’s basis in historical fact. At its heart however this is a story about the redemptive, transformative power of storytelling as a means of emotional escape and survival. Fascinating and heart wrenching.

I absolutely loved this book! I knew nothing about the Barbary pirates, and it was eye-opening to read Asta’s story. This novel is a moving Icelandic saga about how storytelling is linked to what it is to be human, and how it helps aid us in survival in both telling stories to ourselves and others.

This book was unexpectedly perfect. It's a captivating historical fiction novel that talks about an era and events that we didn't hear about much. It is based on a true event in the 17th century where Barbary pirates captured 400 of Icelandic people and sold them into slavery. Among these, there was a priest, his wife and their children. His part is well documented, but we don't know much about his wife, Asta. So, Sally Magnusson wanted to tell her story trying to complete the picture, although there's no historical record of it. Her writing is so beautiful and arresting. I loved how descriptive it was of the atmosphere in Icelandic islands and Tangiers. Asta was an astonishing character that pulled me in the story.
All in all, it was a magnificent book about unknown events and historical period with beautiful writing. I would definitely recommend it.

Great for fans of historical Icelandic folklore. A unique and fascinating historical tale woven around many myths and legends of Iceland. Told by a woman who, together with her family are captured by Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers to be sold into slavery, she tries to remain sane during her lengthy period of captivity by reliving the myths and folk stories from her homeland which are ingrained in her memory.

A complex and inventive piece of storytelling sure to delight enthusiasts of Icelandic legends.

Heimay is a small island off the coast of Iceland, populated by a few hundred people who live off the land and the sea. Asta moved to Heimay and became the second wife of Olafur, the priest. In the mid-17th century life is hard but Asta survives, knowing that she is loved and through the words of her beloved sagas. However everything changes the day the corsairs arrive and most of the population of Heimay is either captured or killed. Asta and her family are taken to Algiers and sold into slavery. Over the next decade or so Asta learns to survive in captivity, deprived of her children, and Olafur tries to get the Danish King to ransom the people Heimay.

This book is based on a true story, Olafur wrote his adventures down and they form the basis of this book. In the 17th century around 1% of the population of Iceland was sold into slavery and very few returned after ransoming. Although the character of Asta is mainly fictitious, her story reads true as it is based on several other accounts. I loved the way that Asta took solace in the Icelandic Sagas and also the difficult choices she had to make during and after captivity. The stoical nature of the Icelandic people is represented well here in a lyrical novel of loss and home.

This is a special book - well researched, unusual and about a time and events I knew absolutely nothing about. I can't imagine the impact on such a small country as Iceland being raided and so many of a small population being stolen into slavery. The descriptions were very detailed and evocative and the story compelling, though I have dropped one star as there were points where I felt the novel would have been improved by some editing to keep the narrative sharper.

This is a beautiful, moving novel based on a little known historical event: the 1627 raid by Barbary pirates on Iceland’s Westman Islands. Around four hundred Icelanders were taken in captivity to Algiers to be sold at the slave markets, among them the priest Ólafur Egilsson, his pregnant wife Ásta Thórsteinsdottir, and two of their children. We know from historical records that Ólafur was released and sent to Denmark to petition the Danish king (Iceland’s ruler in those days) in the hope that he would provide the ransom to free his subjects. His story was preserved in a memoir describing his capture and the voyage there and back, but the story of Ásta, who was not allowed to accompany him on the journey home, has been lost to history.

In The Sealwoman’s Gift, Sally Magnusson has given a voice to Ásta, a woman who, like so many others in centuries gone by, has been ignored and forgotten by history. As we know little or nothing about what happened to Ásta and the other women and children after their arrival on the shores of Algeria, this gives the author the freedom to create an interesting, realistic and believable story to fill in the gaps. She writes with sensitivity and understanding as she describes Ásta’s pain at being separated from her husband and children, her changing feelings for the man who buys her – Ali Pitterling Cilleby – and the agonising decision she eventually has to make.

There’s a lot for Ásta to adjust to in her new life; Algeria and Iceland couldn’t be more different, with very different climates, customs, foods, languages and religions. The religious difference is one of the most difficult for Ásta to accept – as the wife of a Lutheran minister, the possibility of her children having to convert to Islam is not easy for her to come to terms with. We also follow Ólafur on his return to Heimaey in the Westman Islands and see both the short-term and long-term effects the raids have had on the community. With such a small population to begin with, the loss of several hundred of their people has a big impact; it seems that almost everyone has lost a husband or wife, a child or a parent or a friend.

Iceland has a strong tradition of storytelling and some of these myths, legends and sagas are woven into the novel as Ásta finds some solace in remembering the stories of her homeland and narrating them to her master and his wives. This is another aspect of the book that I liked; you can learn a lot about a country from its stories and its folklore.

Sally Magnusson (who is the daughter of the television presenter Magnus Magnusson) has previously written several non-fiction books, but this seems to be her first novel. I liked her writing, apart from the fact that she chose to write in the present tense. I’m really not a fan of present tense and in this case I found it distracting and distancing, which I’m sure is not what the author intended. It’s down to personal taste, I suppose – you either have a problem with it or you don’t. I also thought that, while Ásta, Ólafur and the other Icelandic people are strong, interesting characters, the characters they meet in Algiers feel less well developed. If I’d had a stronger feeling for Cilleby, for example, as a person, I think I would have found the later stages of the story even more emotional.

These are just small criticisms and, as I’ve said, are probably just due to my tastes as a reader rather than the book itself, which is getting great reviews and really is a fascinating read.

I really enjoyed this. Beautifully written novel on a subject I not only knew nothing about, but was surprised that it happened. Pirates taking slaves from Iceland, and selling them in Algiers. The story is told from the viewpoint of a preacher's wife, who spends years in captivity. It is very realistic, even the references to elves and seal-people. An immersive experience I would highly recommend.

Historical fiction at its finest, The Sealwoman’s Gift is based on the true story of Ásta and her family, who were kidnapped by pirates in Iceland in 1627. Along with hundreds of other Europeans, Ásta was shipped across the globe and sold into slavery in Algiers. In this fictionalised account, Magnusson imagines how Ásta, a pastor’s wife, would have coped in a culture that was completely alien to her. In the end, Ásta has to choose between her freedom and the only child who hasn’t yet been ripped away from her. Save this book for a long train journey, because you won’t want to put it down.

It is 1627 and hundreds of Icelandic people are torn from their homeland to become slaves in Algiers. We follow the fate of Asta, the minister's wife, and her family as they struggle for survival. Will Asta ever return to her homeland and what of little Jon born in the hold of the slave ship? He knows no life other than that of a slave boy.

The detail in this book is fantastic. The whole book is three dimensional and stands out from the page rich in the Icelandic mythology and the colours of the African city. I could feel the cold wind almost ready to blow people from the cliff's edge and the grinding and difficult poverty on the Icelandic island. I loved the stories from the Icelandic mythology that date back far beyond the 1600s. I also enjoyed the sights, sounds and smells of the vibrant city created in Algiers. There is no doubt that the author has the ability to bring her writing to life. I also applaud the lengthy research which must have gone into this book especially as so much of it is based on fact - many of the people in this book really existed. Do take the time to read the notes in the back.

The characters are well written and three dimensional. Each one of the major characters has its own personality which in the case of Asta and her husband are really very complex. Poor old Asta torn between the homeland and husband she once knew and the warm, rich land that she has grown to love and which holds her children.

This book is a slow burner. In fact with the exception of the kidnapping of the Icelanders at the beginning there is little in the way of action. That is fine by me and I am happy to enjoy a book that takes it's time. There are one or two places where the book did start to drag. It never got to the point of me wanting to discard the book but I became hesitant to pick it up again for a day or so. This is all that stopped it being a five star read for me. There were a couple of occasions when I started to feel that we were marking time, particularly during Asta's time in slavery.

I really did enjoy this book and would be keen to read other books by this author. However, I suspect that due to the diligence she puts into her research it may be a while before we see another!

I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.

This is a beautiful story based on real events, the telling of which reads like one of Iceland's own sagas. I like fed the evocative descriptions of both Iceland and Algiers. Wonderful also to read about a woman's' life in this era.

There’s something so wonderful about being wholly drawn into a richly imagined historical novel that both illuminates a somewhat forgotten or not-widely-known period of history and gives voice to people who are only glancingly referred to in the history books. Sally Magnusson does all this in her debut novel “The Sealwoman’s Gift” which recounts the abduction of over four hundred Icelandic citizens from their homes in the year 1627 by pirates from Morocco and Algeria. These prisoners were sold into slavery and a ransom for their release wasn’t obtained until several years later – by which point many of those abducted had either died, been irretrievably lost or converted/integrated into life along the Barbary Coast. Copies still exist of a famous account of these abductions written by a Reverend who was captured himself, but Magnusson focuses her novel more on the journey and inner-struggles of his wife Ásta. It’s noted how “others may have written their own accounts of captivity. Men, of course. Does it matter that nobody will know how it was to be a woman?” In doing so, this novel brilliantly engages with many of the heartrending conflicts a woman in Ásta’s position must have faced while also powerfully illuminating the cultural importance of storytelling and the complicated dynamics of love.

A number of years ago I visited Iceland and took a road trip around the country. It’s such a bizarre alien-like landscape with its flat volcanic-soil and coastal shores dotted with black & white puffins and their colourful beaks. I admired how the stark beauty and bleakness of this striking environment is powerfully evoked in this novel. But the author also brings to life the culture and daily life of its people from the production of Skyr (a yogurt-like foodstuff traditionally made from sheep’s milk) to the use of puffin bones to keep the kitchen fires going or the frequent retelling of Icelandic Sagas which are such a rich part of the country’s oral tradition. I also got such a strong sense of how the country basically operates as one small hardworking community. As Magnusson notes, it’s easy to empathize with how the kidnapping of over 400 citizens back in the 1600s would deeply traumatize the entirety of this sparsely-populated country. The story also conveys what an enormous culture shock it’d be for these very isolated Christian people who were abducted to suddenly be engulfed in the brightly-coloured multi-national predominantly-Muslim community of Algiers.

I’ve always been fascinated by the psychological implications of a diaspora, especially when people are forcibly removed from their native homeland or are forced to leave because of severe problems in their birth country. The real heart of this novel lies in Ásta’s dilemma as she’s suddenly left on her own in Algiers with a daughter and an infant son. Her rambunctious husband Ólafur is swiftly used as a negotiator between the Ottoman Empire that was seeking ransom for these slaves and the king of Denmark (because Iceland was under Danish rule). Throughout the many years of their separation Ásta is torn between maintaining her faith in their rescue and building a new life in this foreign land. This includes conflicted feelings about religion, loyalty to family and maintaining her own sense of cultural identity. There comes a point when the workings of time create a certain psychological distance from her homeland. Her existence beforehand becomes idealized and nostalgia takes on a life of its own: “memory is like that, always so eager to aid you in missing what you can no longer have and forgetting the rest.” Magnusson writes poignantly about how story-telling is a means of psychological escape from the horrors of reality as well as a way of maintaining a connection with one’s own culture and personal genealogical history.

The author also weaves into her story two somewhat fantastical elements and characters who tread the border between myth and reality. One is an eccentric old woman who has visions and believes herself to be a seal that has lost its skin and is consequently stranded on land in the shape of a woman. Another is an elf from the legends Ásta heard in her youth. At first I thought this later character was merely an eccentric quirk within the story or simply a fanciful notion within Ásta’s imagination, but his inclusion comes to powerfully represent her character’s inner conflict, her stymied desires and a representation of her own “otherness” as someone that doesn’t necessarily fit anywhere. These characters also show the way that our daily lives are composed of both the hard fact of reality and our subjective experience of the world.

As I neared the end of reading this tale it became something much more for me than simply a vividly-imagined historical novel, but a personally touching meditation on the choices we’re forced to make in life. Over the years we’re inevitably presented with crossroads where we must choose to take one path or another and it’s difficult not to be consumed with grief for the potential joys we’ve had to sacrifice in making these hard decisions. But Magnusson writes how “we cannot live in two worlds. And in lamenting too long what belongs in the other we bring upon ourselves and others only destruction.” In dramatically bringing to life Ásta’s story she sympathetically presents a fully rounded understanding of this turmoil and the importance of fostering the lives we’ve chosen. “The Sealwoman’s Gift” also powerfully shows the numerous and complicated repercussions of how the evil industry of slavery caused rifts in communities which have never been and can never be repaired.

The Scottish Icelandic Magnusson family are very well known in Scotland and the UK. Sally is a broadcaster and journalist, her father Magnus Magnusson, was chair of Mastermind for many years and an expert on Iceland’s history and sagas. This isn’t Sally’s first book but it is her first novel. It’s based on a raid on Iceland in 1627 by Algerian and Moroccan corsairs (pirates) during the course of which many Icelanders were killed and 400 were captured to be sold as slaves in Algiers. The event is considered one of the most traumatic in Icelandic history.

Asta and Olafur (a Lutheran priest) and two of their three children are amongst those taken. She gives birth to another child at sea. On arrival in Algiers, the couple are bought by a wealthy man, Cilleby, who also buys the two smallest children. Egill, their older son, is purchased by the pasha, who was known for his taste in young boys so what remained of Egill’s childhood was probably very difficult. Asta and the children are taken to Cilleby’s main residence. Olafur is kept separately and after a while is sent to Copenhagen to ask the Danish king (Iceland was under Danish rule) for a ransom to free the captives. It would be many years before this was achieved and few were ever to return home to Iceland.

This is a book about stories and their role in our lives. The Icelandic sagas were a source of comfort to Asta and were to prove useful in her relationship with Cilleby, just as the other women of the household enjoyed listening to the tales of Scheherazade in the evenings. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves and each other to keep our spirits up during difficult times. Asta was able to transport herself back to Iceland by imagining what she would be seeing and feeling, smelling and touching. It’s about love and separation - ‘Is it by the wanting that we measure love or is it something else?’ It’s about the choices people make when their lives are changed forever and they have to find a way to survive. It’s about the judgements of others who cannot imagine what they would have done in the same situation but are quick to condemn.

This is a very well researched historical novel as the Author’s Note at the end explains but it never gets bogged down by detail. It is first and foremost a story and it’s very well told. I was frustrated when I had to stop reading it and took every opportunity to get back to it. The pace is perfect and I found it a real page turner.

4.5-5 stars and I’m really looking forward to her second novel. With thanks to NetGalley and Two Roads/John Murray Publishers for a review copy.

Aside: when I was living in London in the early 80s, Sally Magnusson was a newsreader on, I think, LWT. One night, she was finishing with a piece on the Edinburgh Festival. Sally, who grew up in Glasgow, read the piece and then went off script to say, “Why is there such a fuss over a piddling little festival in Edinburgh that only lasts three weeks? Glasgow is home to both national orchestras (the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra), to the national opera company (Scottish Opera) and ballet (Scottish Ballet), The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now Royal Conservatoire), one of the most esteemed art schools (Glasgow Art School) and one of the most admired theatre companies in the UK (the Citizens Theatre). Edinburgh has three short weeks. Pfffff!” She then smiled to the camera and said ‘Have a good evening’, cool as you like. I loved her for that. She made my day! Everyone knows the best thing to come out of Edinburgh is the Glasgow train! ;-)

First of all, I'd like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Sealwoman’s Gift is an absolute gem of an historical novel, and evokes the atmosphere, struggles and joys of a bygone era with rare elegance and authenticity. It is clearly a labour of painstakingly researched love - in fact, I was astounded to realise just how much of the novel was based on pure historical fact when reading the author’s note at the end - which makes the fact that this novel deliberately sets out to give a voice to those who have been almost entirely erased from history even more poignant. This is always one of my absolute favourite kinds of fiction, and this novel pulls it off beautifully. It tells the story of Ásta, an Icelandic woman who really was kidnapped from her remote island and sold into slavery in Algiers in the early 17th century - but of whom almost nothing else is known, even though her husband Ólafur’s book about the raid is the most comprehensive surviving historical account of the event. This novel takes it upon itself to fill in the gaps in the historical narrative, painting a vivid picture of some of the women and children that male authors throughout history never thought worth mentioning in detail.

One of the novel’s great strengths is the life it breathes into everything. Ásta is a marvellous protagonist, brimming with life, wit and heart, and I was surprised by how much I came to care about Ólafur, too. He’s not the kind of character I usually warm to, but his compassion, curiosity, gentleness, and the gradual softening of his stern principles eventually won me over. I also found the relationship between them very compelling, as were Ásta’s relationships with all of her children, all of which were beautifully nuanced and different. Honestly, that’s a particularly impressive feat, because I tend to find it very difficult to relate to fictional depictions of motherhood.

However, I really felt that most of the other characters who appeared in the chapters set in Algiers could have been fleshed out a bit more - even the ones who were focused on most heavily never felt particularly compelling to me. This section - which takes up a considerable chunk of the novel - does a wonderful job of conveying the culture shock Ásta is experiencing, and there is a lot to be said for the way it portrays the agony of loss and the turmoil of doubt and guilt. However, the narrative always seemed a little bit more detached in these chapters, which I think was maybe a deliberate choice on the author’s part to reflect the feeling of alienation that comes with being uprooted from one’s home so violently (or I may have been imagining it, because I admittedly didn’t have as much free time while I was reading that section, so I mostly got through it in tiny bursts when I had a few moments to spare). Whatever the reason, I just didn’t feel as emotionally connected to those chapters and the characters they focused on, which is the main reason I knocked a star off this review (as well as the way the narrative often switched perspective from one paragraph to the next, which is a style I’m REALLY not fond of).

However, that’s my only major criticism! For the most part, I found the characters and their relationships highly compelling, the plot well-paced, and the setting gorgeously rendered. It almost feels as though you could step into 17th-century Iceland or Algiers at any moment - I absolutely adored how much this novel felt like a window into the past. Plus, I was tremendously moved by the last few chapters of the novel, which more than made up for any emotional distance in the earlier chapters.

Also, I’m not usually a fan of novels which feature religion as a major theme, but the way it was explored here was nothing short of wonderful, focusing on the little concessions and doubts that creep into everyone’s mind over the course of their lives and showing all the ways that different belief systems can be alike, compatible, overlapping, and yet distinct, and what that means for the people who find themselves caught between two or even three worlds (or who simply care about other people whose beliefs don’t quite match up with their own). It could maybe be best summed up as an unpretentious exploration of what personal faith means, and I found it surprisingly lovely.

Of course, that goes hand in hand with one of my all-time favourite themes - the power and importance of stories (and, in this case, the extent to which they can coexist with religious doctrine). Folklore and memory are the cornerstone of this novel, which revolves around the ways that all of our lives are built on stories and draw on our own histories, while also reminding us just how many people have been erased from those narratives.

And finally, I just want to say that I was utterly charmed by the way the story incorporated elements of fantasy; normally I find it immensely irritating when they’re used sparingly, because it often feels like the author is afraid of committing to the story they really want to tell (and, sidenote, the main criterion I use when rating a book is “how close I think it comes to being the book it’s trying to be”), but in this case, the little touches of magic around the edges felt perfect. In the end, this isn’t a story about magic: it’s a story about finding your own understanding of the world, and it just so happens that this novel’s understanding of the world includes a sprinkling of myth and magic.