Rauðisandur is a coastal area in

Westfjords The Westfjords or West Fjords (, ) is a large peninsula in northwestern Iceland and an administrative region, the least populous in the country. It lies on the Denmark Strait, facing the east coast of Greenland. It is connected to the rest of I ...

, Iceland. Historically it was located in the historic

Vestur-Barðastrandarsýsla Iceland was historically divided into 23 County, counties known as ''sýslur'' (), and 23 independent towns known as ''kaupstaðir'' (). Iceland is now split up between 24 sýslumaður, sýslumenn (magistrates) that are the highest authority ov ...

county.

Sjöundá murder

Sjöundá is a secluded

deserted farm A deserted farm (, , ) in Norway, and other Nordic countries, is a farm that was left abandoned or unused for various reasons. Terminology In Norway, this term applies primarily to farms deserted due to the Black Death in 1349 and 1350. In many cas ...

, at the easternmost point of Rauðasandur. In 1802 the farm was the location of a murder, when a man and a woman were murdered by

Bjarni Bjarnason Bjarni Bjarnason (born 9 November 1965) is an Icelandic writer. He started writing poetry in his teens and by twenty had a play. He has received the Tómas Guðmundsson Award, Halldór Laxness Literature Award, Founder of or.is, the Clarence Bi ...

and Steinunn Sveinsdóttir. In 1803 King

Christian VII Christian VII (29 January 1749 – 13 March 1808) was King of Denmark and Norway and Duke of Schleswig and Holstein from 1766 until his death in 1808. He was affected by mental illness and was only nominally king for most of his reign. His roya ...

sentenced the pair to death, with the execution taking place in 1805. The author

Gunnar Gunnarsson Gunnar Gunnarsson (18 May 1889 – 21 November 1975) was an Icelandic author who wrote mainly in Danish. He grew up, in considerable poverty, on Valþjófsstaður in Fljótsdalur valley and on Ljótsstaðir in Vopnafjörður. During t ...

wrote a novel about the events in 1929 called ''Svartfugl''. A play based on the book was staged in the

National Theatre of Iceland The National Theatre of Iceland (NTI) (, pronounced ) in Reykjavík, is the national theatre of Iceland. The theater, designed by Guðjón Samúelsson, was formally opened on 20 April 1950. Since 2020, the artistic director of The National Thea ...

in 1971.

References

Populated places in Westfjords Iceland geography stubs {{Iceland-geo-stub