Capital punishment in Iceland

The medieval Icelandic Commonwealth (930–1262), characterized by its lack of central executive powers, abstained from employing capital punishment.

[3] Icelanders were compelled to adopt the Danish legal code, which prescribed the death penalty for offenses such as murder, infanticide, theft, sorcery, and bearing children out of wedlock.

While men were predominantly subjected to beheading or hanging, women were typically lowered into the river adjacent to the Law Rock itself using ropes, either leading to freezing or drowning.

Iceland's most recent instance of capital punishment occurred on January 12, 1830, when farm servants Agnes Magnúsdóttir (33) and Friðrik Sigurdsson (19) were beheaded in Vatnsdalshólar, Húnavatnssýsla.

[7] This historic case served as the inspiration for the 1995 Icelandic film Agnes directed by Egill Eðvarðsson, and the 2013 novel Burial Rites penned by Australian author Hannah Kent.

The majority of these cases involved infanticides, in which women, unable to provide for their newborn illegitimate children, resorted to killing them.