Part 2 of 2 · Read Part 1: Jealousy, Betrayal, and Death
By the end of the night of March 13–14, 1828, Natan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson lay dead, and the farmhouse at Illugastaðir had been set on fire. Part 1 followed the people, conflicting motives and folklore surrounding the attack. Here, the story turns to what investigators uncovered, what the accused said, and the judgments that led to Iceland’s last executions.
After the Fire
At first, the flames might have appeared to explain the destruction at Illugastaðir. But the bodies bore injuries that fire alone could not account for. The authorities began investigating the deaths of Natan and Pétur, and questions soon turned to three people connected with the household: Agnes Magnúsdóttir, Sigríður Guðmundsdóttir and Friðrik Sigurðsson.
An examination of the burned remains on March 19 documented evidence of violence. Formal proceedings and questioning continued from March 22. It had to establish not only how the two men died, but also who had planned the attack, what had been taken from the farm and why the house had burned.
The fire was part of an effort to conceal the killings. Property was also taken from the household. These acts mattered because they tied the deaths to a wider sequence of decisions, rather than to an isolated outburst of violence.
Three Suspects, Three Stories
Agnes was thirty-two when the murders occurred; Friðrik was seventeen, and Sigríður sixteen. The suspects were held separately while the inquiry proceeded. Accounts place Friðrik at Þingeyri, Sigríður at Miðhóp in Vesturhóp, and Agnes at Stóra-Borg. Their separation limited opportunities to coordinate explanations, but it did not make any single account automatically reliable.
The confession sequence is revealing. According to historian Eggert Þór Bernharðsson’s examination of the interrogations, Sigríður confessed first, Agnes later, and Friðrik only after a priest urged him to tell the truth. Their accounts agreed on important elements of the crime while diverging sharply over who initiated and pressed forward with the plan.
Friðrik maintained that he considered abandoning the attack because Pétur was present and that the women persuaded him to proceed. Sigríður said instead that Friðrik insisted on killing both men. These are competing statements from people facing grave consequences. They should be presented as testimony, not blended into an imagined conversation.
The three also disagreed about responsibility for the planning. Friðrik blamed the women for encouraging him; they attributed the decisive violence to Friðrik. The court had to weigh those claims alongside the physical evidence and the defendants’ admissions.
Reconstructing the Night of the Murders
As Part 1 established, Pétur was not a surprise visitor: he had been staying at Illugastaðir for nearly two weeks. Natan and Pétur slept in separate beds, on opposite sides of the room. The accused had discussed poisoning Pétur with nitric acid, but that plan was never carried out.
The testimony identifies Friðrik as the man who attacked Pétur with a hammer and then turned on Natan. Neither man died from the first blow. Natan struggled, grasped the hammer shaft and called out, apparently mistaking Pétur for his attacker. He later appealed to Vorm Beck and offered money to be spared.
The post-mortem examination recorded eight stab wounds to Natan and at least four to Pétur. Friðrik admitted using a knife against the men. The three accused agreed that Agnes did not stab Natan, contrary to a claim repeated in later retellings. According to the testimony, Agnes fled the room when Friðrik drew his pocketknife.
That distinction matters. It corrects an enduring legend, but it does not erase Agnes’s admitted involvement in the planning and aftermath. Accounts also describe stolen belongings and money taken from the farm. Understanding the case requires distinguishing the person who inflicted the fatal wounds from the roles of those who helped plan or conceal the crime.
Beyond Jealousy
The best-known version of the tragedy casts Agnes as Natan’s rejected lover, driven to murder by jealousy of Sigríður. But Bernharðsson found no contemporary testimony establishing a romantic or sexual relationship between Agnes and Natan. During visits to Illugastaðir, Daníel Guðmundsson shared Agnes’s bed, a detail that sits uneasily with the familiar love-triangle narrative.
The evidence does describe conflict. Natan scolded Agnes and accused her of stealing sheep; she left the farm for a period. The testimony provides evidence of hostility arising from Natan’s treatment of Agnes, whereas the popular account of romantic jealousy lacks contemporary corroboration. Sigríður, meanwhile, testified that she slept with Natan at his instruction and that he had promised to marry her. Friðrik wanted to marry Sigríður and was interested in Natan’s money.
These circumstances point toward overlapping grievances, relationships and financial motives, not one simple explanation. Later examinations of the case have also raised questions about allegations of mistreatment and violence. Such allegations deserve to be reported as allegations, without treating them as proven facts or using them to erase the defendants’ own actions.
Life as a servant in nineteenth-century Iceland offered limited independence. That social context helps explain why the household’s relationships and power imbalances matter, even though it cannot tell us precisely what any one person intended on the fatal night.
Judgment and a Royal Reprieve
On July 21, 1828, the district court sentenced Agnes, Friðrik and Sigríður to death. The case proceeded through higher judicial review, and the Danish Supreme Court upheld the death sentences on June 25, 1829.
For a time, all three faced execution. But on August 26, 1829, King Frederick VI commuted Sigríður’s death sentence to lifelong imprisonment. She was sent to Copenhagen, where she died on April 5, 1839.
The royal decision spared Sigríður’s life, but not her freedom. Agnes and Friðrik received no such reprieve. Their sentences would be carried out in northern Iceland the following winter.
The Last Executions in Iceland
On January 12, 1830, Agnes and Friðrik were brought to Þrístapar in Húnavatn County to be beheaded. They became the last people executed in Iceland.
The executioner was Guðmundur Ketilsson, Natan’s brother. The man who carried out the court’s final sentence was therefore the brother of one of the murder victims—a detail that gives the historical event a particularly unsettling closeness.
Accounts of the execution describe Friðrik being brought forward first. A priest addressed him before Guðmundur beheaded him. Agnes was kept apart and out of sight of Friðrik’s execution; afterward, she was brought forward and executed by the same man. These details are drawn from historical descriptions, not imagined dialogue.
Local farmers were required to witness the punishment, which was intended as a public warning. Afterward, the heads of Agnes and Friðrik were displayed on poles, and their bodies were buried at the execution site. The heads reportedly disappeared from the poles not long afterward.
Agnes was thirty-four when she died, and Friðrik nineteen. Sigríður survived the sentence of death but remained imprisoned. The executions ended two lives without resolving every question about motive, responsibility and the reliability of the accounts that followed.
What Remains at Þrístapar
The bodies of Agnes and Friðrik were later exhumed and reburied at Tjörn on Vatnsnes. A memorial marks the execution site at Þrístapar. The execution axe and block are preserved at the National Museum of Iceland, tangible reminders of a punishment that has not been carried out in the country since.
On the windswept slopes around Þrístapar, the landscape still carries the memory of a winter morning in 1830. The records tell us who was condemned, how the sentences were carried out and much of what the accused said. They cannot tell us every private thought or settle every contradiction.
Over generations, stories of ominous dreams, broken promises and betrayal gathered around the murders. Those traditions are part of Iceland’s folklore, but they are not proof that Natan foresaw his death or that jealousy caused the crime. The surviving testimony sometimes points in a different direction.
The stone at Þrístapar stands in a landscape that has outlasted both the witnesses and the storytellers. What remains is not one certain tale, but a history in which documented events and enduring legend must be heard without being mistaken for one another.
Sources and further reading
- National Archives historical account of Iceland’s last execution
- Historical research on the Illugastaðir case — Saga
- RÚV: Morðin á Illugastöðum (radio documentary series)
- Húnabyggð: Þrístapar and the executions
- Archival records and court documents — Heimildir
- 2017 mock trial report — Vísir
Historical note: The reconstruction of the murders and court proceedings draws primarily on Eggert Þór Bernharðsson, “Friðrik, Agnes, Sigríður og Natan: Heimildagrunnur morðbrennunnar á Illugastöðum árið 1828,” Saga 51:2 (2013), pp. 9–56. His research distinguishes the original 1828 interrogations from later narratives. Details of the executions are also drawn from historical and regional accounts cited above. Where defendants disagreed, their statements remain attributed rather than treated as settled fact.
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