As reported by mbl.is, the Icelandic government has approved state funding for the statue of Hans Jónatan, believed to be the first black man to settle in Iceland.
Múlaþing County has been allocated ISK 3 million ($ 24,000 / € 20,000) to purchase the work of Frelsi, i.e. “Freedom” by Sigurður Guðmundsson. The monument will be erected in Djúpivogur, in the eastern fjords, where Hans Jónatan lived.
He was born in captivity in 1784 on the island of St Croix in the Caribbean, which at that time was a Danish colony and part of the Danish West Indies. His mother, Emilia Regina, was a black slave, and his alleged father, the Danish Hans Gram, worked as secretary to the von Schimmelmann family who owned the plantations. In 1789, the Schimmelmann family moved to Copenhagen. They took Emilia Regina with them, and later Hans Jónathan. When Hans was seventeen, he escaped from captivity and joined the Danish Navy. He took part in the naval battle of Copenhagen in 1801 and for his achievements was granted freedom from the Danish heir to the throne – Friðrik.
However, the wife of the plantation owner, Henrietta, had him arrested, claiming that it was her property and that she intended to sell it in the West Indies. Hans Jónatan and his lawyer wanted to prove to a court that while slavery is legal in the Danish West Indies, not in Denmark itself. After losing the case, Hans Jónatan was sentenced to exile to the West Indies, but he did not get there because he fled to Iceland. And in Denmark, until the end of the 20th century, no one knew what happened to him.
In 1802 he came to Djúpivogur. One of the first available sources about Hans Jónathan in Iceland is an entry in the diary of the Norwegian cartographer Hans Frisaks on August 4, 1812:
“The seller at the shop here is from the West Indies, he has no surname… but he calls himself Hans Jónatan. He is dark skinned and has jet black curly hair. His father is European, but his mother is African […]”.
Hans Jónatan married Icelandic Katrín Antoníusdóttir from Háls farm, who was the daughter of a district clerk. They had three children, two of whom survived.
In the years 1818–1827 he worked as the manager of the Ørum og Wulff shop in Djúpivogur. He was a popular man in the eastern fjords and apparently very likeable.
In 2018, scientists recreated the genome of Hans Jónathan using only tissue samples from his descendants, not his remains. This was the first time that the human genome had been reconstructed without the use of tissue. The study identified 788 descendants of Hans Jonathan and sampled 182 of his relatives. The research was facilitated due to the rarity of African origin in Iceland, as well as the homogeneity of Icelandic genetic material and detailed genealogical records.
All the descendants of this couple today constitute a group of about 900 people.
A documentary film about his life, made by Hjónin Valdimar Leifsson and Bryndís Kristjánsdóttir, entitled: “Maðurinn sem stal sjálfum sér” (freely translated – The Man Who Stole Himself) premiered in 2017. The film was based on a book by the anthropologist Gísli Pálsson of the same title.
Source: Yle