Axlar-Björn: Iceland’s Only Serial Killer
Iceland almost never produces a murderer. In four centuries it has produced only one serial killer.
Björn Pétursson — Axlar-Björn, the farmer at Öxl — lived on the Snæfellsnes peninsula in the late 1500s. Travellers and farmhands came looking for work. They did not leave. He confessed to nine killings. The ground gave up more. Some accounts say eighteen.
Alexander Lawson tells the case as the record allows it: the axe and the pond, the boy in the dung heap, the wife forced to watch the wheel, and the folklore that grew because Iceland could not let its only monster stay small.
A True Crime…
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