The Man Who Stole Himself by Gisli Palsson;

Author:Gisli Palsson; [Palsson, Gisli]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780226313313
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

EBENEZER HENDERSON

The Scottish minister Ebenezer Henderson (1784–1858) met Hans Jonathan in 1814. Henderson spent much of his career with the British and Foreign Bible Society, traveling widely and distributing Bibles in many languages. He had intended to go to India as a missionary, but as the East India Company refused to transport missionaries he went to Copenhagen, hoping to sail from there. In 1812 he was appointed to handle the publication of a new Bible translation into Icelandic, which was well received although the translation was not perfect. Henderson made three journeys to Iceland, writing about them in Iceland, or The Journal of a Residence in That Island. He was an observant visitor who was keen to learn about the places he visited. A talented linguist, he learned Icelandic and wrote extensively about Icelandic society and nature, especially its geology. He traveled more widely than had any visitor to Iceland before that time.

Henderson reached an agreement with merchants to distribute his large stock of Bibles all over Iceland. “The natural formation of that island rendering it impossible to convey any quantity of Bibles from one place to another, it was requisite to forward a proportionate number to each harbour,” he writes.12 But when Henderson arrived in Iceland, intending to get to work, he found that local conditions forced him to compromise: summer transport by trains of packhorses had come to an end for the year. Undeterred, Henderson set off himself with his Bibles, riding from one community to another.

Arriving in Eskifjordur in the east, Henderson handed over to the district commissioner three cases of books: 430 copies of the New Testament and 110 complete Bibles. At the end of August 1814 Henderson arrived in Djupivogur, where he stayed for two days. The hamlet, he wrote, consisted of one mercantile house, a shop, and some warehouses, but because of its location “it possessed great local importance relative to the object of my mission.”13 Henderson had heard of Jon Stefansson as an Icelandic patriot with a keen interest in literature. Ellen Katrin showed Henderson the library of her husband’s Reading Association.

Before leaving Djupivogur, Henderson went for a walk. He wrote, “I made a short excursion along the southern shore of Berufjord[ur], accompanied by Jonathan, Mr. Stephensen’s assistant, who is native of the West Indies, and has spent several years at this place.”14 Like Frisak, Henderson has little to say about Hans Jonathan. Perhaps Hans was simply reticent about his origins and his history.

It is equally likely that Henderson may have been reluctant to get into a discussion of the controversial issues of the time, such as slavery and the sugar trade in the West Indies. At the beginning of his journey to Iceland, Henderson had declared that he was pleased to be making this expedition independently, not “on any predatory or murderous expedition”—only to come across a mulatto who had thrown off the shackles of slavery, a man from one of the worst slaveholding societies in the sugar trade, where a human being could be bought and sold like a lawyer’s robe, or a dog.

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