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www.westendermagazine.com | 17
Writer’s Reveal
meets Sally Magnusson
WORDS LORAINE PATRICK
An English translation of an ancient Icelandic memoir provides
the inspiration for the debut novel from writer and broadcaster,
Sally Magnusson. Loraine Patrick discovers how the popular news
presenter unleashed her imagination to tell this remarkable tale of
pirate raids, tragedy, and survival.
‘I
t was a real effort to leap off the tree and
stop hanging onto the branches of truth
or fact,’ says Sally Magnusson, colourfully
describing the challenges she faced in writing
her first novel in snatched bursts away from
her very busy and very public life.
Facts are Sally’s currency as an already
successful non-fiction writer, and as a
broadcaster and journalist – regularly
bringing us the news on Reporting Scotland.
‘It was intensity in bursts,’ she laughs, ‘rather
than a thousand words a day in a steady
and stately fashion! The idea of shutting
yourself away for six weeks to write is an
absolute dream because that liberation of the
imagination was definitely not something that
happened overnight for me,’ she says frankly.
But lets rewind a bit here. I am meeting Sally
to discuss her newly published book The
Sealwoman’s Gift which has been described
as a remarkable feat of the imagination. Sally
has taken an incident in Icelandic history,
little known outside that culture, and created
an incredibly moving story of love, loss,
resilience and redemption.
In 1627 Barbary pirates raided the coast of
Iceland abducting some 400 of its people,
including 250 from a tiny island off the
mainland called the Westman Islands. They
sailed to North Africa and were sold into
slavery in Algiers. Although the raid itself is
historically documented and looms large in
the collective memory, little is historically
known about what actually happened to the
women and children.
‘Growing up I was aware in a vague sort of
way about the raids, in the same way that
here in Scotland we are historically aware of
Culloden and Bannockburn. I didn’t really
have a true understanding of the period until
I read an English translation of memoirs from
a clergyman called Reverend Ólafur Egilsson.
I was staggered by the story he told – his
whole family were abducted and sold into
slavery.’
It was the fleeting mentions of Ásta, the
Reverend’s wife that really got to Sally. ‘I was
so interested in everything that she went
through yet there were only brief glimpses
in the memoir of her. It was a period of time
when women everywhere were largely silent.
Not much was said about the fact she gave
birth on a slave ship, she lost her 11-yearold
son in the slave market (he was the first
one to be picked by the local governor) and
she was left with two little children. We don’t
know historically what happened to her