In Iceland, it’s no longer legal to kill Basques on sight

You have read correctly:

“In late April, one of the world’s strangest laws was quietly revoked. Authorities in Iceland’s Westfjords district, the scenic northwestern corner of the island nation, repealed a 400-year-old decree ordering the death on sight of any Basque person found in the region.”

–May 27, 2015 Washington Post

This goes back to the history of whaling.

From Wikipedia:

“The year 1615 was a difficult year in Iceland with ice up to shores until late summer and considerable loss of livestock. In mid-summer three Basque whaling vessels put into Reykjarfjörður in Westfjords. Icelanders and the Basques had a mutual agreement at the beginning as they both had benefited from the enterprise. When the ships were ready for departure in late September a terrible gale arose and the ships were driven on the rocks and crushed. Most of the crew members survived (approx. 80). The captains Pedro de Aguirre and Esteban de Telleria wintered at Vatneyri (Patreksfjörður) and left for home the following year. The crew of Martin de Villafranca’s ship split into two groups; one entered Ísafjarðardjúp, the other went to Bolungarvík and later to Þingeyri.

The first conflict arose when one group entered the empty house of a merchant of Þingeyri and stole some dried fish. As retaliation, on 5 October, at night, a group of Icelanders entered the hut where the Basques were sleeping and killed 14 of them, only one young man called García, escaped. Captain Martín de Villafranca of San Sebastián, whose father and grandfather had both been involved in Terra Nova whaling was among those who were killed. The bodies were mutilated and sunken into water. Jón Guðmundsson the Learned wrote about the unjust and cruel deaths “dishonored and sunken into sea, as if they were the worst pagans and not innocent Christians”. Three days after the first slaying, Ari Magnússon summoned a council at Súðavík and twelve judges agreed to declare as outlaws all the Basques.

On 13 October Martin and the other 17 of his group were killed at Æðey and Sandeyri in Ísafjarðardjúp, while they were fishing, by the troops commanded by Ari Magnússon. According to Jón Guðmundsson, the victims were stabbed in the eyes, their ears, noses and had their genitals mutilated. The captain, Martín de Villafranca, was injured in the shoulder and chest with an axe, but he managed to escape into the sea however he was stoned in the water and dragged to the shore where he was tortured to death.

Two verdicts were instigated by sheriff Ari Magnússon of Ögur, Ísafjarðardjúp in October 1615 and January 1616. The Basques were considered criminals after their ships were wrecked and in accordance with the Icelandic law book of 1281 it was decided that the only right thing to do was to kill as many of them as possible.”

Better late than never. As of 2015, this law is no longer in place.

See also:

More than half of the ancient Basque population was Rh Negative