Book Review: The Corsairs’ Longest Voyage: The Turkish Raid in Iceland 1627 by Þorsteinn Helgason HelgasonÞorsteinn, The Corsairs’ Longest Voyage: The Turkish Raid in Iceland 1627. Leiden: Brill, 2018. xiv + 372 pp., illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. ISBN 978-9-0042-8487-6, €186 (hbk).

In The Corsairs' Longest Voyage, Þorsteinn Helgason presents the most thorough and analytically nuanced account to date of the corsair raids that struck Iceland during the summer of 1627.Undertaken by forces from Algiers and Salécollectively referred to in Icelandic tradition as the Tyrkjaránið ('Turkish abductions')these expeditions saw over 400 individuals captured and forcibly relocated, with a substantial impact on local populations and property.A historian well versed in Icelandic archives and narratives, Helgason brings a considered mix of empirical rigour and interpretative breadth to his study.Originally composed in Icelandic and in this edition published in a careful and accessible English translation, the book integrates local testimonies with Mediterranean and Atlantic contexts, contributing to both regional historiography and wider scholarly conversations on early modern slavery, mobility and memory.The book is structured around a clear tripartite framework: (1) a comprehensive reconstruction of the 1627 events; (2) an analysis of captivity, negotiation and ransom mechanisms; and (3) an exploration of the evolving cultural memory of the raids.Throughout, Helgason employs a wide array of primary sources, such as archival letters, religious texts, oral accounts and artefacts, remaining mindful of the interpretative complexities they entail.The opening chapter places the raids within the geopolitical setting of seventeenthcentury Mediterranean piracy, highlighting the hybrid nature of North African naval forces.Algiers and Salé, while associated with the Ottoman Empire, operated with notable autonomy.Helgason pays particular attention to Murat Reis (Jan Janszoon), a Dutch renegade who embraced Islam and rose to admiral in the Moroccan service.His career serves as a lens through which to explore the mobility and permeability of early modern maritime identities, a subject that has received increasing attention in historiography.Foundational studies such as Bartolomé Bennassar and Lucile Bennassar's Les chrétiens d'Allah and Wolfgang Kaiser's Le commerce des captifs have examined the structural and personal dimensions of