Local Editor

Gone are the days when people from northern Spain had to pretend to be from somewhere else when visiting Iceland.

A law permitting the murder of any Basque visitor to the Westfjords region of Iceland had finally been repealed.

The law, which applies only to Iceland's most northern and most remote region, dates back to 1615, when Basque whalers ran aground in Strandir and local sheriff Ari Magnusson declared that they could be killed on sight.

"The decision to do away with the decree was more symbolic than anything else," said Jonas Gudmundsson, district commissioner of Westfjords, at an event at the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery last month.

The event concluded with Xabier Irujo, a descendant of one of the 32 Basques who were murdered in the years following 1615, making a symbolic gesture of reconciliation with Magnus Rafnsson, a descendant of one of the murderers.

Needless to say, the law had not been put into practice for hundreds of years.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team