Axlar-Björn: The Tale Of Iceland’s First Serial Murder

Folktales did true crime long before podcasts

Despite the current global obsession with gritty crime dramas and true crime documentaries, I find myself generally disinterested. Don’t get me wrong: I love crime. I personally live my life by the 21st-century meme-turned-adage “be gay, do crime,” but I admittedly tend to go hard on the former and keep it fairly light on the latter. You know, just your basic civil disobedience, frequent sedition, and casual encouragement to steal from corporate grocery stores. Stuff like that. Preferably no murder. I mean, come on! A normal person killing another normal person for some petty reason, or worse, for no reason at all? Boring. Tedious. Uninspired. That said, I am nothing if not a man of the people, so I will put aside my personal opinions to introduce you to Iceland’s first serial killer.

Thirst for blood

The Tale of Axlar-Björn is recorded in the collection of Jón Árnason, who is kinda like the Brothers Grimm of Iceland. Björn of Öxl (or Axlar-Björn as he is known in Icelandic, which sounds like “Axe-Björn” and perfectly fits the sensational serial–killer vibe) is not only considered Iceland’s first serial killer, but also the only one! I’m a bit sceptical of this, and not only because the Icelandic sagas written 300 years prior to this guy are rife with murder, but we’ll let them have this one. Lack of crime is part of Iceland’s brand, after all, and Iceland would be nothing if not for its misinformation-laden internet persona.
“A normal person killing another normal person for some petty reason, or worse, for no reason at all? Boring. Tedious. Uninspired.”

The tale starts out spooky as hell. There is a woman, whose name is of course not given, who is pregnant with her third child when she begins to crave human blood. She tries to resist and keeps it secret until she can’t any longer and confides in her husband. It turns out he’s a pretty good dude and can’t deny his wife anything within his power to give her, so he cuts open his foot and lets her drink his blood. Why the foot I have no idea, but let’s just assume that was her fetish. We don’t kink-shame around here! Then she has nightmares so terrible that the narrator of the story won’t even get into them.

Eventually, Björn is born and turns out to be a fairly normal kid, if a bit of a little shithead. (This is, unfortunately, normal for a kid.) He is sent to live at the farm of some rich dude nearby to straighten him out. He becomes friends with the other cowherd there as well as the rich dude’s son, Guðmundur. One day, he decides to skip church and sleep in. (Cue ominous music). He has a dream that he’s offered meat by a stranger, of which he eats 18 pieces and suddenly becomes sick. The meat-stranger also gives him directions to a buried treasure that will make him famous. Björn wakes up, follows the instructions and finds an axe. (Cue dramatic dun-dun-dun.)

Murder most foul

This is where the story turns from supernatural horror into a classic slasher. That’s a downgrade if you ask me, but hey, this isn’t about me! Björn’s cowherd colleague goes missing and is never found. He marries a servant girl named Steinunn, and they move onto their own farm in Snæfellsnes. They have a pretty flashy amount of horses, like the 16th-century equivalent of a six-car garage full of Porsches, and rumours begin to swirl that these mysteriously wealthy country bumpkins are not only robbers, but murderers.
“Don’t sleep at Murder-Björn’s if you’re nicely dressed / he’ll chop you up and sink the rest / now go to sleep, you little pest.”

It was extremely common in those days for folks to seek shelter and hospitality at random farms as they travelled around Iceland. Some dude reports that he stayed there once and found a body under his bed. Realising something sus was going on, he swapped places with the corpse and when Björn sneaked in to axe him in his sleep, the visitor was able to get away. A pair of siblings also stopped there and discovered a creepy old woman whispering a hilariously not-cryptic lullaby to rock a baby to sleep. It goes something like, “Don’t sleep at Murder-Björn’s if you’re nicely dressed / he’ll chop you up and sink the rest / now go to sleep, you little pest.” The brother runs out, leaving his sister to get axed. (Not cool, bro.) The murders continue for years because Björn is besties with the powerful Guðmundur, and no one will accuse him.

From the axe to the chopping block

One day, Björn even tries to axe Guðmundur himself. He misses, killing Guðmundur’s horse instead. He escapes, and Steinunn goes to ask Guðmundur to just forget about that whole my-husband-trying-to-murder-you thing. Guðmundur is basically like, “Aight, aight, he’s my bro, so it’s chill. We’re cool.” I’m sorry, but what the actual fuck? The reports eventually reach the sheriff, who confronts Björn at church on Easter Sunday. He asks where the hell he got such fancy clothes, to which Björn is like, “No comment.” However, the onlookers are able to prove the clothes were stolen from a man who’d disappeared years before, and the murderer is basically cooked.

So Björn confesses to having axed 18 people and sunk their bodies in the pond. He’s sentenced to have all his bones broken and then be beheaded. He accepts this stoically, and in the midst of the brutal punishment, his wife shouts something like, “Oh no, all my husband’s limbs have been smashed!” Björn replies, “All but one, which would be better cut off.” Then he gets the chop. His wife is pregnant, so they let her give birth to their son before they kill her as an accomplice. The son grows up to be a thief and also ends up being unalived for his crimes. I dunno if you can call that a happy ending, but at least there’s some poetic justice?