Jealousy, Betrayal, and Death: The Tragedy at Illugastaðir

Part 1 of 2 · Continue to Part 2: After the Fire

On a remote farm on Iceland’s Vatnsnes peninsula, two men were murdered during the night of March 13–14, 1828. The farmhouse was set ablaze, apparently to hide what had happened. The crime would lead to the last executions carried out in Iceland.

But there are two stories of Illugastaðir: the dramatic tale handed down through generations, and the less familiar account preserved in court records. They are not always the same. To understand why, we must begin with the people whose lives converged at the farm.

A Name Born from a Dream

Natan Ketilsson was born in 1792. According to a story told about his birth, his mother, Guðrún Hallsdóttir, dreamed that a stranger demanded she name her child after him. The stranger’s name was Satan.

Alarmed, she reportedly sought advice from the Reverend Auðun. The minister dismissed the dream, but when her son was born, she chose a name that echoed it: Natan. It is a striking beginning to a life later surrounded by warnings, prophecies and stories of impending doom. It is also folklore, not a detail established by the murder investigation.

Natan was remembered as intelligent, widely read and gifted with words. He was drawn to medicine rather than farm work. A traditional account says that a German physician offered to help him study in Copenhagen, only for Natan to arrive and discover that the promised arrangements had fallen through.

The same story tells of a pharmacist who helped him, the loss of that support, and Icelandic students collecting money for his return home. These vivid details deserve to be understood as biographical tradition unless corroborated independently.

Back in Iceland, Natan practiced healing without a formal medical degree. His reputation was complicated: accounts praised his skill and generosity to poorer patients while accusing him of charging wealthier people heavily. He was also associated with legal troubles. Whatever the truth of every anecdote, he became a memorable and controversial figure.

The Healer and His Ominous Dreams

Natan’s reputation extended beyond medicine. According to local folklore, people sometimes sought his help finding lost objects through a mysterious practice involving numbers and chalk. This story is another example of the supernatural abilities later attributed to him, not a documented fact.

One of the most haunting traditions places Natan at Brimnes, where he dreamed of an open grave at Hólar in Hjaltadalur. In the grave lay his body and his soul. The dream brought to mind a hymn by Bishop Steinn Jónsson, warning that worldly power offers no protection when the time comes to answer for one’s actions.

Another dream was darker still. Natan reportedly saw a charred corpse being eaten by three red creatures. When he asked a stranger whose body it was, the answer came: Do you not recognize your own?

Such dreams give the story its eerie power. Yet we cannot know whether Natan truly dreamed them, whether they were reshaped after his death, or whether they were invented by later storytellers. Their place here is in Icelandic folklore, not the evidentiary record of the murders.

Love and Life at Illugastaðir

Natan’s name was closely linked with Rósa Guðmundsdóttir, the poet known as Vatnsenda-Rósa. He lived in the household of Rósa and her husband, Ólafur Ásmundsson, during the 1820s. The historical record identifies Natan as the father of Rósa’s daughter Súsanna, born in July 1826. The child died only weeks later. Claims that he fathered other children should not be presented as certain without further evidence.

Rósa’s verses have endured in Icelandic cultural memory. Her connection with Natan is part of the story, but it should not be confused with the romance later writers invented between Natan and another woman: Agnes Magnúsdóttir.

Agnes, born in 1795, came to work at Illugastaðir in 1827. Some later accounts portray her as Natan’s lover, promised a future as his wife and devastated when he turned his attention to Sigríður Guðmundsdóttir. This love triangle became one of the most familiar explanations for the murders.

There is a problem with that version. Historian Eggert Þór Bernharðsson, comparing the influential later accounts with the original interrogations, found no contemporary evidence that Agnes and Natan had a romantic or sexual relationship. The court testimony instead associates Agnes with Daníel Guðmundsson, who shared her bed during visits to the farm.

Sigríður was younger, born in 1811. She had worked at Illugastaðir since 1826 and became its housekeeper in 1827. In her testimony, she said that she slept in Natan’s bed at his instruction and that he had promised to marry her. She was only sixteen when the murders occurred.

Agnes’s anger toward Natan, however, is not simply a later invention. The court records describe his harsh words, accusations that she stole sheep, and a period when she left the farm. Resentment arising from that treatment is better supported than the popular explanation that love had turned to jealousy.

A Dangerous Alliance

Friðrik Sigurðsson lived at nearby Katadalur. He was seventeen in March 1828 and wanted to marry Sigríður. Later writers portrayed him as violent and impulsive; some even attributed to Natan a prophecy that Friðrik would commit murder before turning twenty. Such predictions belong to the story’s folklore.

The court testimony gives us a more concrete, if still contested, picture. Friðrik initially proposed killing Natan to Sigríður when Agnes was not present. Agnes later became involved in the planning. The defendants subsequently disagreed about who urged the others onward and who tried to withdraw.

Money also figured in the plan. Friðrik wanted to know where Natan kept his valuables. The evidence does not support reducing the crime to a simple contest for Natan’s affection.

Another traditional warning came in the form of a verse attributed to Natan’s brother, cautioning him against danger and the threat of fire. Whether the warning preceded the murders in precisely the form later reported remains uncertain. After the tragedy, its words seemed chillingly prophetic.

The Night of March 13, 1828

The plot was directed at Natan, but another man was at Illugastaðir: Pétur Jónsson, sometimes called Fjárdráps-Pétur, or Pétur the Sheep Killer, because of an earlier criminal case. He was not an unexpected arrival on the night of the murders. According to the testimony, he had already been staying at the farm for almost two weeks.

Natan had returned from a journey to treat patients on March 12. As the fatal night approached, the conspirators had to reckon with the fact that Pétur was there too. The testimony describes a proposal that Agnes and Sigríður poison Pétur with nitric acid. They did not carry it out.

There was also a young child at the farm, Þóranna Rósa, a daughter of Rósa Guðmundsdóttir. Natan’s paternity was suspected, but it is not established by the evidence Bernharðsson examines. She was about two years old, not three. The later story that she heard the struggle and asked about her father cannot be treated as verified testimony.

By bedtime, Natan and Pétur were sleeping in separate beds on opposite sides of the room. The image of the two men sharing a bed, so often repeated in retellings, does not match the interrogations.

Friðrik later said that Pétur’s presence made him want to abandon the plan, but that Agnes and Sigríður pressed him to continue. Sigríður gave a different account: she said Friðrik announced that he would kill both men whether the women agreed or not. Their statements cannot simply be merged into one seamless conversation.

Sigríður fetched a large hammer and handed it to Friðrik. Agnes had argued that striking Natan with a hammer would be less painful than cutting him. Friðrik also suggested binding Natan and forcing him to reveal where his money was hidden; the women refused.

The Hammer Falls

Inside the sleeping room, Friðrik attacked Pétur with the hammer. He then turned on Natan. Neither man died from the first blow.

Natan struggled. He called out, apparently believing Pétur was his attacker. As the violence continued, the farmhouse that had sheltered them became the scene of a desperate fight for survival.

What happened next would be disputed, embellished and retold for nearly two centuries. The court records describe Friðrik drawing a knife and Agnes fleeing the room. By the end of the night, both men were dead, and the farmhouse had been set ablaze.

But the fire did not erase the truth. In Part 2: After the Fire — Investigation and Judgment, we follow the testimony, the arrests, the trial and the last executions in Iceland.

Historical note: This article distinguishes later storytelling and folklore from contemporary testimony. The principal historical comparison is Eggert Þór Bernharðsson, “Friðrik, Agnes, Sigríður og Natan: Heimildagrunnur morðbrennunnar á Illugastöðum árið 1828,” Saga 51:2 (2013), pp. 9–56. His study compares four influential later narratives with the 1828 court records. Details outside that analysis, especially dreams, private conversations and predictions, should be read as tradition unless independently verified.