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Hans Jonatan (12 April 1784 – 18 December 1827; also known as Hans Jónatan and Hans Jonathan) was an escaped slave, soldier, farmer and trader. His father may have been a white Dane; his mother was a black slave. Following his participation in the Battle of Copenhagen, after which he was initially given his freedom, he became the subject of a test case in Danish law on slavery. Fleeing to Iceland, he became the first known person of African descent to settle in the country. Later, he became the subject of a DNA study.

Parents

Hans Jonatan was born enslaved on the plantation of Constitution Hill on the island of St Croix in the Caribbean, which had become a Danish colony in 1733 when purchased by the Danish West India Company from France. His paternity is uncertain, but Pálsson argues in his biography that his father was a white Dane, Hans Gram, who was the secretary of his owners for three years; his mother was Emilia Regina, a black 'house slave' who is first recorded in 1773 at the St Croix plantation of La Reine, where she was presumably born. In 1788, Emilia had a daughter, Anna Maria, this time by a black man, Andreas, who at the time was a house slave too; but their fates are not recorded. The details of the West African ancestry of Hans's mother were unknown prior to a genetic study.

Hans Jonatan was enslaved by Heinrich Ludvig Ernst von Schimmelmann and his wife Henriette Catharina.

Life in Denmark

In 1789 the Schimmelmann family moved to Copenhagen as the plantation business took a downturn, bringing Emilia Regina and, later, Hans Jonatan with them. Not long afterwards, Heinrich died, bequeathing Hans to his widow Henriette Catharine. In 1801, at the age of seventeen, Hans Jonatan escaped and joined the Danish Navy. He participated in the Battle of Copenhagen, for which he received recognition. Danish crown prince Frederick gave him his freedom as a reward.

Subsequently, Henriette had Jonatan arrested, claiming that he was her property and that she had intended to sell him in the West Indies. Jonatan and his lawyer argued before a Copenhagen court under judge Anders Sandøe Ørsted (who would later become Prime Minister of Denmark) that although slavery was still legal in the Danish West Indies, it was illegal in Denmark and Hans Jonatan could not be kept as a slave. However, in the case Generalmajorinde Henriette de Schimmelmann contra mulatten Hans Jonatan 1802, Ørsted sentenced him on March 31, 1802, to be returned to the West Indies.

Life in Iceland

Hans Jonatan escaped again, and his fate remained unknown to the Danish administration. It was only around the 1990s that the rest of his story was pieced together and started to become generally known. In 1802, he arrived in Djúpivogur in Iceland. One of the first records of Hans Jonatan after 1802 is in the diary of the Norwegian cartographer Hans Frisak for August 4, 1812:

The agent at the trading post here is from the West Indies, and has no surname ... but calls himself Hans Jonatan. He is very dark-skinned and has coal-black, curly hair. His father is European but his mother a negro.

Frisak hired Hans Jonatan as a guide. Hans lived as a peasant farmer at Borgargarður working at the Danish trading station in Djúpivogur. He took over the running of the trading post in 1819. By February 1820, Hans had married Katrín Antoníusdóttir from Háls on the Eyjafjörður. They had three children; two survived childhood, and their living descendants now number nearly nine hundred. Hans Jonatan died on 18 December 1827.

Genetic study

In 2018, scientists achieved a genetic breakthrough when they reconstructed a part of his genome solely using samples from his descendants and none from his remains. This was the first time that a human genome had been reconstructed without using physical remains. For the study, 788 of his descendants were identified, and DNA samples from 182 family members were taken. The study was aided by the extreme rarity of African heritage in Iceland, the homogeneity of the country's population, and its comprehensive genealogical database. The samples were analyzed against known signs of African DNA, recreating about 38% of his mother's DNA profile and thus 19% of his own. It was determined that his mother's ancestral origins were from a region now encompassing Nigeria, Benin, and Cameroon.

Despite the popular tale of former prime minister Davíð Oddsson being Jonatan's descendant, no sources back up that claim.

Biographies

A biography of Jonatan by Gísli Pálsson was published in Icelandic in 2014. An English edition titled The Man Who Stole Himself: The Slave Odyssey of Hans Jonathan was published in 2016.

A documentary based on the book was premiered in 2017, where he is depicted by George Leite and Yiori Moorhead.

Legacy

In 2023, Danish community theatre company Hammermøllens Teatergruppe performed the musical En fri mand (English: A Free Man) about the life of Hans Jonatan. The musical was written by Rasmus Mark Pedersen and Ulrik Trolle Schwartz, and Hans Jonatan was portrayed by Haile Grangaard Bach.

References

Citations

1. Elín Pálmadóttir (9 January 1994). "Þrælaeyjar". Morgunblaðið (in Icelandic). pp. 1B – 2B, 4B – 5B. Retrieved 29 December 2022 – via Tímarit.is.
2. Júlía Margrét Einarsdóttir; Anna Marsibil Clausen (25 June 2020). "Vilja reisa minnisvarða um fyrsta svarta íbúa landsins". RÚV (in Icelandic). Retrieved 30 December 2020.
3. ^ Martin Selsoe Sorensen (14 April 2018). "Iceland's 1st Black Citizen? An Ex-Slave and War Hero Denmark Now Disregards". New York Times. Retrieved 30 December 2020.
4. Óðinn Jónsson (20 July 2017). "Erfðasýni gætu skýrt faðerni Hans Jónatans". RÚV (in Icelandic). Retrieved 30 December 2020.
5. Loftsdóttir & Pálsson 2013, pp. 41–44
6. Jagadeesan, Anuradha. "Project 11: Computational reconstruction of Hans Jonatan's genome'". Retrieved 10 May 2014.
7. ^ Pálsson, Gísli (7 March 2009). "Hans Jónatan: karabískur þræll gerist íslenskur bóndi". Morginblaðið/Lesbók. Retrieved 10 May 2014. (in Icelandic)
8. Loftsdóttir & Pálsson 2013, pp. 45–47
9. Anuradha Jagadeesan and others, 'Reconstructing an African Haploid Genome from the 18th Century', Nature Genetics, 50(2) (2018), 199–205 doi:10.1038/s41588-017-0031-6.
10. "Davíð Oddsson sagður afkomandi "dularfulla kynblendingsins" Hans Jónatans". DV (in Icelandic). 2019-01-17. Retrieved 2019-03-31.
11. Palsson, Gisli (2016). The Man Who Stole Himself: The Slave Odyssey of Hans Jonathan. University of Chicago Press.
12. Rúnar Snær Reynisson (24 April 2017). "Ég var kallaður svertingi". RÚV (in Icelandic). Retrieved 30 December 2020.
13. Davíð Kjartan Gestsson (15 January 2019). "Heimildarmynd um manninn sem stal sjálfum sér". RÚV (in Icelandic). Retrieved 30 December 2020.
14. "Maðurinn sem stal sjálfum sér". Morgunblaðið (in Icelandic). 16 April 2017. Retrieved 30 December 2020.
15. Zedeler, Tine (1 August 2023). "Ulrik er millimeter fra at indfri sin store drøm: Men lige nu kigger han på vejrudsigten - den er nemlig altafgørende" Helsingør Dagblad. Retrieved 15 August 2023.
16. Bjørton, Hanne (12 August 2023). "Stjerneregn til fantastisk forestilling midt ude i skoven: Danmarks dunkle slavefortid udsættes for klaphatte - og det fungerer" Helsingør Dagblad. Retrieved 15 August 2023.

Sources

• Loftsdóttir, Kristín; Pálsson, Gísli (2013). Naum, Magdalena; Nordin, Jonas M. (eds.). "Black on White: Danish Colonialism, Iceland and the Caribbean". Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena. Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology. 37. New York: Springer: 37–52. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-6202-6_3. ISBN 978-1-4614-6201-9.

• People from Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
• People from the Danish West Indies
• 18th-century Danish people
• 19th-century Icelandic people
• Danish slaves
• 1784 births
• 1827 deaths
• Icelandic people of African descent
• 18th-century Danish farmers