Pirates Of The North Sea

Pirates are usually associated with the Caribbean Sea. Men like Henry Morgan and William Kidd left behind a legacy of adventure and great battles; but piracy is something that’s been going on for as long as men have traveled the seas. And it happened (and still does) all over the globe. The pirates of the North Sea were not much different from the ones we are used to hearing about. They mostly lived by a set of codes, they were just as brutal, and they had little to no respect for the government. The Scandinavian countries Norway and Denmark became a union at the end of the 1300’s, and a wave of lawlessness arose from the wars between this new union and the monarchs of the neighboring nations, among them: England, Germany and Sweden. These pirates remain almost forgotten in history, despite their fascinating lives.

Kristoffer Trondsson & Otto Stigsson

Erlend Eindridesson

In the fall of 1445, a German sailor named Steffen Smit and his crew, were caught in bad weather, and had no other option but to steer towards the port of Jæren in Rogaland, Norway. They waited for weeks, without the weather giving any sign of calming down. But one day, they had some unexpected visitors. Erlend Eindridesson was one of the most respected men in Norway, and with him he had two ships and sixty men. He was known for his dislike of Germans.

Martin Pechlin

Martin Pechlin was one of the most notorious pirates in the 1500’s. He was brutal and without mercy, and it is said that he once hijacked twelve ships in one day! But in 1526, he met his match. Three ships coming from Germany were caught in a storm and ended up somewhere by the Norwegian coastline. There they docked in a fjord, hoping to trade with the farmers living nearby. But because of the heavy mist, neither they, nor the pirates, could see each other as they docked on each their side of the fjord.

Klaus Størtebecker

Bartholomeus Voet
Voet was the next leader of “Fataljebrødrene”, after Størtebecker. He was his equal in fighting skills, but this guy didn’t show any mercy whether people were poor or rich. At one point, he went to the Norwegian city of Bergen, and after robbing it of everything worth taking, he burnt the whole city down. The citizens fought back, but even though they outnumbered the pirates, they were defeated. Voet escaped from Bergen with all of the stolen goods he could carry with him.

Rinaldini

Tønnes Kaade Samuelsen

Captain Johannes Jacobsen Røscher

If there was one thing a pirate roaming around in the North Sea would want to avoid at all costs, it was being arrested outside the coastline of England. If that was to happen, they would be imprisoned for years. Captain Røscher, and old Danish-Norwegian pirate, almost met this fate. It happened in 1810; Captain Røscher and the crew of his ship “Tak for sidst” were in a poor state due to the fatal weather of the season. But despite this setback they managed to take the command of an English ship, led by Captain William Dimond. The crew of the ship claimed to be Americans, but Røscher knew better. He split the captured crew so that they could be organized in two smaller groups on each their ship, and left his first mate in command of his old ship.

Knut Ellingsen

Jan Mendoza and Captain Daa