Episode 33 - "Norse Witch Trials"

Sep 25, 2019

Episode 33 - Norse Witch Trials

• Hey. What’s something that no one ever expects? Other than the Spanish Inquisition? Well, how about two callback episodes in a row! We are now on Episode 33, and we’re heading into the Spooky Season, capital "S" Spooky, capital "S" Season, so what better way to usher this momentous and joyous time in than with yet another callback, and another popular Halloween costume of yore? Last week, we covered ghosts with the Urban Legend of Bloody Mary, so this week… we’re revisiting witches! That’s right! This is Witch Trials, Part 2, the Nordic Murders! Now, back in Episode 6, (yes, it was that long ago now…) I mentioned that I wanted to do a whole separate episode on the Witch trials that were done in Scandinavia, Sweden, Denmark, etc. I covered many of the big ones done in the rest of Europe, but I ran out of time in that earlier episode to do a deep dive into the Norse stories of witch murder, so here we are! And yes, this one will be sad too. Sorry. However, in this Episode, I have a little more time in my script to tell the stories of a few specific people who were accused witches, so we can humanize these massive numbers with names, personalities, and histories. And for you True Crime fans out there that are chomping at the bit for something other than history (and I totally acknowledge that we’ve been a bit light on true crime lately) then you’re really going to enjoy next week’s episode… I promise that we can’t wait to take a BITE out of that story…. It’s going to be BIG… and it’s going to be BAD… wink. Also, what was this Monday, September 23rd? Why it was the Autumnal Equinox! Again, if you remember, we did our first witch episode around the Vernal Equinox, and Ally even told us what an Equinox is. So I’m all kinds of consistent, you’re welcome.
  
  
• In similar fashion to the first witch trials episode we did, I’m going to preface this by saying that we, as Americans, specifically ones that live in New England, have been inundated with stories of the Salem Witch Trials, which happened in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. In fact, when someone says witch trial, most people immediately think “Salem” which, frankly, is a disservice to the broad history that was witch hunting and the tens of thousands of real victims who died. About 20-25 lives were taken in Salem for witchcraft, but in Europe, the estimated number is massive, ranging from 40,000 to some as high as in the millions. We have no definite total, but some populations were decimated for literally no reason, sometimes even wiping out a small village of their female populations. A majority of victims were female, and many of them were unmarried or elderly, women who, quite literally, could not defend themselves.
  
  
• We will follow along in the same manner that I organized things in our other witch episode, where I cover the events chronologically, or as best I can. Now, again, I highly recommend listing to Episode 6 for more context, because I go into the history of why and how witchcraft became such a big deal, and I won’t be doing that in this episode. But, for the "Spark Notes" version, the Mallus Maleficarum, aka, the Hammer of Witches, was written in Germany in 1486, and set the tone for the next 200+ years in terms of the persecution of witches. In it, it was determined what should be done to witches, how to put them to trial, and how to execute them. It would become one of the bestselling books for centuries, just behind the Bible. So, with that, and the fact that witchcraft was made illegal by the papacy, the trials began, and the Nordic peoples embraced the murder wholeheartedly. So, let’s travel to the city of Finspang Ostergotland in Sweden, on 1617.
  
  
• Now, this is was not the first witch trial in Scandinavia. In fact, one of the earliest ones recorded was the witch trial of Koge in Denmark, which started in 1608, where 15-20 women were burnt at the stake. But the trial of Finspang Ostergotland was one of the better recorded ones that we still have record of, so we’ll start with a deep dive into this trial. Now, what makes this trial particularly interesting is the time frame. As we will get into in a bit, the real moments of witch mania in Scandinavia were in 1668-1676, so the fact that this trial takes place in 1617 is pretty interesting, as it helps us to follow along the roots of fear and discontent which would eventually culminate in mass killings in the second half of the century. Now, compared to some of the other trials we will cover, the victim count is somewhat small, but still extremely important to note. Between seven and nine women perished during the course of 1617 in Finspang, and this would remain the largest execution for witches in Sweden, outside of the mania of 1668-1676.
  
  
• The trials of Finspang began, not entirely surprisingly, due to a pair of uppity members of the royal family, the Duke of Ostrogothia, which is not as metal as it sounds. The Duke, named John, was married to Princess Maria Elizabeth, a Swedish national, and the pair holds the blame on their shoulders for the death of up to 9 witches in 1617. Almost immediately upon receiving their shiny new crowns as Duke and Duchess in 1610, the couple burned a woman at the stake, claiming she had quote, "enchanted them." After this event, the Duke issued new laws about sorcery and witchcraft, making it easier for bringing witches to death. His vicious hatred for witches would culminate to the trials a few years later. Now, we don’t have a ton of documentation on this trial, and because of that, it had actually been considered to be a myth for much of history. But we do know that at least seven women were judged and found guilty of witchcraft in 1617. One of the women, when forced to confess after hours of what was essentially waterboarding, claimed that she had sex with Satan in a massive orgy with the other women, no doubt providing the investigators the titillating details they craved. Now, here I would like to reference Episode 29, not long ago, where we discussed the uselessness of using torture to extract a confession from your victims, so just gonna leave this here and ask you to remember that when we continue with the episode.
  
  
  [Pictured: Princess Maria Elizabeth of Sweden. Photo Credit: en.wikipedia.org]
  
  
• Assuming that the records we have are historically accurate, the seven women were dragged out to woods, to the face of a cliff. They were then lined up and shoved off the cliff, where, below them, was a pyre alight with flame. Now, the reason that this method of execution has been criticized of being incorrect is that, with the exception of one other witch, who we will talk about in a bit, burning was not used in Sweden as a method of execution for witches, so it’s a bit surprising. Regardless of the how, we do know that at least 9 women died in 1617, punished for being something they were not by an unqualified Duke and Duchess with a symbol to make. Ironically, this trial would be referenced later on, during the great witch hunts, as an example of what not to do, lest the killings get out of hand. Of course, they still did, but we’ll get to that.
  
  
• Next up, we are travelling to Norway, the north of Norway, in fact, to Vardo. In 1621, just a few years after Finspang, the first major witch trial of Norway began. So, this won’t be the only time we travel to Vardo, because we’ll be back in about 40ish years. If there is one thing Vardo liked in the 1600s more than fishing and being cold, it was killing witches. The fear of sorcery began in Vardo, most likely, around 1617, when, during a particularly brutal winter, a terrible storm broke out on the sea, and massively effected the male populations of the area, sinking 10 ships and drowning over 40 men. Now, the concept of weather patterns and the like was not really a thing back then, so naturally, the remaining citizens and royalty pointed their fingers at the only thing they could possibly imagine could have caused such mayhem… witches. There would be rumblings and grumblings from the people of northern Norway, but the spark of paranoia would not turn to a roaring fire until the spring of 1621, when a woman named Mari Jorgensdatter would be tortured and interrogated for witchcraft. According to her confession, Satan approached her Christmas of 1620 with a charming proposition. Would she serve him? Mari agreed, and he then bit her hand, leaving her witches mark. He introduced her to a neighbor named Kirsti, who was already an agent of Satan’s will. Kirsti invited Mari to a Christmas party (yeah I don’t know what’s going on in this story either) but before they left for the party, Kirsti threw a fox pelt over Mari, which magically turned her into a fox. Now in her fox form, Kirsti flew through the air to the party, where a large group of witches, mostly female, transformed into various animals, because this is now an episode of Animorphs. Everyone ate, drank, and were merry in their adorable animal forms, then flew home, clearly all super evil.
  
  
• The clincher to Mari’s story, however, was that the menagerie she had met that night all were responsible for the great storm several years earlier. And this was reinforced by the confession of another woman, Else Knutsdatter, who said that the group of witches tied a rope three times, spat on it, and then untied it. This ritual caused the sea to churn, and lead to the deaths of all those men. Several other women were arrested in relation to this crime, and to attempt to discover the coterie of shape-shifters described in Mari’s rendition. However, almost all the women arrested pointed to Kirsti Sorensdatter as the leader of the pack, under Satan of course. Kirsti was arrested, and confessed under torture. She would be burned alive in April, following ten other women who were murdered a few months prior, bringing the total of dead in this trial to 11. That would not be the last witch blood that would be spread in Vardo. But for now, let’s fast forward 3 decades to 1656, in Iceland.
  
  
• So, as I’m sure you can all tell by this point into the script, I’m bad at pronunciations. I’m trying, I promise, but some sounds my English speaking mouth just can’t make. I say this now, as we get into the Kirkjubol Witch trials. In 1656, the trials began in Kirkjubol, which is now known as Isafjordur, Iceland. We don’t know too too much on this one, but it is still regarded as the most famous witch trial in Iceland, and it is the only one we will cover today from there. Also, this trial was a little different, as the victims, two of them, were both male. A pastor, a leader of a congregation in town, had his health steadily fail him for years. His name was Jon Magnusson, and he was stricken with illness, despite his status as a man of god. But, perhaps, due to his holy connections, Magnusson knew for sure what was happening to him, and it had nothing to do with age, way of life, lack of medical care, poor nutrition, etc. No, Magnusson knew that his sickness was supernatural in origin. And not only did he know that forces of evil were at work, but he knew just who was hurting him. It was two members of his church, a father and son demonic duo. The men, both named Jon Jonsson (because, again, as we have learned in these history episodes, there were really only ever 3 names used at one time) once pressed to confess, admitted owning a book about magic that they had used against the pastor. And Jon Jr doubled down on his confessions, admitting that he used magical farting runes against a young girl he knew, which would cause her relentless flagellation to humiliate and cause discomfort. On the plus side, I now know for sure that Taco Bell casts this on me every time I eat there. Also, there you go, everyone, that was a fart joke, enjoy. I’m 30.
  
  
•  Unfortunately, the judges and pastor did not find the whole fart rune thing very funny, and the two men were found guilty of sorcery, and burned at the stake. As punishment for their crimes posthumously, all of their possessions were given to the pastor who accused them in the first place. I’m sure the pastor didn’t lie and do this purposely to get more free stuff, nope, no way. In fact, weirdly enough, after already getting all the material possessions of the two Jonsson men, Magnusson decided, when his health did not improve because duh, that there must have been someone else causing him pain, and pointed the finger at the one last surviving member of the Jonsson family, the daughter whose name I’m not even going to try to pronounce because it doesn’t even use English characters. Thankfully, however, the pastor’s case against her was dismissed and she was released, and eventually went on to get revenge, counter-suing the pastor and winning. She was then awarded with the pastor’s belongings, which consisted of a majority of her father and brother’s things in the first place.
  
  
• So that was the last little trial we’re going to cover. We have arrived to Witch Mania, the "Great Hunt," the era of mass murder in Scandinavia which snuffed out thousands of lives of witches. So first up, let’s head back to Vardo in Norway. I told you we weren’t done yet. So let’s set the scene. It is Christmas, 1662. Everything is white, covered in snow. It’s cold, and dark, and life is bleak. 5 women have already been burned at the stake as witches. And now, according to the stories of two children, accused of being witches, a gathering takes place. According to one of the accused witches, 8 year old Ingeborg Iversatter, she, along with a group of women and children, had transformed themselves into cats, snuck out, and broken into a nearby basement where they drank themselves silly, while Satan himself sat with them, holding the candle for them so they could see. One of the women apparently had become so intoxicated that Satan had to help her to her feet. If this is true, Satan just sounds like the exhausted sober friend at the party who has to babysit their dumb drunk friends.
  
  
• Now again, with the benefit of distance of time and hindsight, we can hear these stories and roll our eyes, brushing it off as the fanciful story telling of an 8 year old girl. But during the witch hunts, this was a death sentence. Using this story, twelve year old Maren Olsdatter was arrested. Mind you, Maren had already lost her mother and aunt to the pyre, both murdered for witchcraft. Maren, under interrogation, confessed to have visited hell with Satan. Other women were brought in, and would turn on one another, on the children, on their family members. One woman, who refused to admit to witchcraft, was tortured to death and her corpse left out for scavengers. Over all, thirty women would be put on trial, and 20 of them would be murdered. Luckily, however, this would be the last large scale witch trial which would occur in Norway, and only two more would be killed after these trials ended in 1663. But that would not stop the rest of Scandinavia from adding their own numbers to the total.
  
  
• Now, we’re back in Sweden, and this is where the shit literally hits the fan, to put it bluntly. Sweden did not have a separation of church and state at this point, so priests of the time had full legal ability to serve out executions, which, obviously, they did with glee. With religious backing, the idea that the world was under attack by vicious demonic force spread like wildfire, no pun intended. Priests would hold long sermons preaching to their flock about the horrors of witches, that it could be anyone, your family, your children, your neighbor, even you. Fear and paranoia fueled the people, and accusations would fly at the slightest provocation, whispered rumors turned into death sentences and cold corpses. The mania began in 1668, when a woman accused Maret Jonsdotter of consorting with the devil, and the witch hunt spread through Sweden, and laws were placed against witches, opening the doors for murder. In 1669, the Mora witch trial began.
  
  
• One of the recurring themes in the Witch mania was the belief that witches were staling children and bringing them to Satan’s Sabbaths which would take place in Blockula, which is not to be confused with the 1972 Blaxploitation film Blacula, which is something totally different. Blockula was an island of Swedish lore where Satan would hold court, summoning his follower for massive Sabbaths. This fear of Blockula was massive, and parents all over Sweden lost their collective minds, terrified that their children would be next to be abducted and brought to Satan’s lair. And again, due to the fact that children were most likely the victims affected by the alleged witchcraft, it was from the mouth of babes that most of the accusations would come. Spurred on by terrified parents, the king created a commission be sent to Mora, and they arrived in August. Over the course of five days, 60 adults and children were accused and interrogated, many confessing out of fear. Some would claim that they would fly to Blockula and attend Satan’s sabbats, or others would say that they signed their name in the devils book, pledging their allegiance to him. Some of the children would claim that they were abducted and flew to Blockula, some in the arms of witches, others claiming they rode on flying goats. Some of the accused spoke of banquets thrown by Satan, complete with bread, butters, milk, and various cheeses. Also, by the way, that’s literally what I eat for dinner most weeks so that’s pretty cool. At these Sabbat’s, Satan would also provide music for dancing, and there would be orgies performed by some. Honestly, all this says to me is Satan throws an awesome party.
  
  
  [Pictured: Artist rendition of Blockula. Photo Credit: en.wikipedia.org]
  
  
• But to the commission of priests and judges, this was a full blown epidemic of biblical proportions. The Devil was here, and he was thriving. After collecting all the various confessions, the commission executed 23 adults on August 24th. The commission also found 71 children guilty, and had 15 of them executed. The remaining 56 were sentenced to other forms of corporal punishment, such as severe beatings or being forced to run until they dropped of exhaustion. The total estimate of children believed to have been seduced by the devil was over 300. Of the 23 adult’s executed, the ages ranged from 26 to 79 years old, with most of the victims over the age of 50. These were elderly women, with few people if any, in their lives to defend them. The condemned were paraded to several stakes built in full view of the church, where they were then decapitated, and then thrown on the pyre, and burnt, the crowd watching and roaring its approval.
  
  
• This brings us to the final witch trial we’re going to cover today, and this one is the big boy. To once more reference episode 6, I stated that I wanted to cover the Nordic witch hunts in an episode all their own, and as an example, I referenced that one had over 70 witches killed in a single day. Well, welcome to Torsaker, Sweden. The largest witch trial in Swedish history, and one of the largest mass killings of witches in general, began in October of 1674. And it started, of course, in a church. Minister Laurentius Christophori Hornaeus was given instructions to hunt down witches that may be loose in his parish, and he did so with glee, turning on his flock. Knowing that children were more able to see demonic forces (and not at all because they are easy to influence and possess more vivid imaginations than adults) Hornaeus told two young boys to stand at the entrance to the church, where they were instructed to point out witches as they entered the church, as it was believed the boys could see the witches mark on them. They would point out witches as they went, but of course, this was bull. As a prime example of the corruption of the church, one of the boys pointed at a woman, and the congregation gasped. It was the priests wife, Britta Rufina. However, she simply smacked the boy who accused her, and he recanted, saying that he had apparently been blinded by the son and picked the wrong person once he realized just who he had accused. The priest made sure to cover that little oopsie under the rug, but overall, the boys, and Hornaeus, would lead to accusations of around 100 people. To get confessions out of them, specifically, out of children, Hornaeus would whip them, bathe them in ice water, or threaten to burn them alive in the oven.
  
  
• Of the 100 accused, we don’t know how many were executed in total, but we do know about the last day of the mania in Torsaker. 71 people, 65 women, and 6 men, where marched to their deaths. Some cried for forgiveness, others cried for revenge. They marched half a mile from their respective churches, convening at a location called the “Mountain of the Stake.” From there, they were decapitated one by one, away from the wooden pyres, to ensure that the blood did not make the wood hard to light. Once dead, all 71 were stripped and burned until all that remained was a pile of ash and bone. On that day, roughly one fifth of all women in the region were killed. This would be the last major trial in Torsaker, and in fact, would lead to the end of all trials in general in Scandinavian countries. It was determined that, once the actions of the Torsaker trial reached the capital, that what was done was actually illegal (because, duh) and the final witch was executed in 1676, before the capital shut the whole hunt down. In Sweden alone, around 300 people were executed during the great Swedish hunts of 1668-1676. In 1677, priests all over the country of Sweden were told that they must tell their congregations that witches were all expelled from the country, huzzah, we got em. Also, in a morbid twist, remember the boys who had acted on the Priests behalf and pointed out the witches? Well, they were found dead, their throats slit. From there began a pretty heavy cover-up period, which would extend until the story of Torsaker was written down, dictated by Hornaeus’s own wife, Britta Rufina, 60 years later.
  
  
  [Pictured: The Torsaker Witch Memorial. Photo Credit: en.wikipedia.org]
  
  
• Now I mentioned that the last witch in Sweden was killed just before the Witch hunts were made illegal. We actually have a little information on her, so I thought, to end this, let’s learn about the difficult and unfair lives these women lived before being accused, and how things progressed after, and how ridiculous and stupid these trials really were. Malin Matsdotter was executed by burning for witchcraft, which was surprising, as in Sweden at least, burning was not the typical method of execution for witches. As she was born over 400 years ago, we don’t have a ton about her early life, but we do know that it was not easy. When she was 55 years old, in 1668, her long time husband was executed for having intercourse with a cow. Their daughter, Anna, who was 13 years old at the time, had accused her father of copulating with their livestock, her word was accepted, and her father killed. This would be a common occurrence with Malin’s daughters, as they would turn on their parents at a moment’s notice if they believed it would benefit them. Now, we don’t know what kind of work Malin had done in her life, potentially working as a midwife, but by 1676, she owned her own house and had remarried, but we know pretty much nothing about her new husband. Potentially, as she was tired of having to obey her mother, or perhaps, coveting her mother’s home for herself, one of Malin’s other daughters, Maria, accused her mother of witchcraft at the peak of the trials, in 1676. Malin was 63 years old. Maria claimed that her mother had begun taking her to Blockula, where she was forced by her mother to commune with Satan. This was all the proof that the church needed, so Malin was arrested and interrogated. She was asked to recite holy scripture, but could not, much to the horror of the priests. She would hesitate when reading them, and seemed to have difficulty reading them. This, to me, might have had something to do with the fact that she was an elderly woman in a terrible time, may have had poor vision, and Swedish was actually not her first language. She preferred to read Finnish. Not to mention she most likely was terrified and outraged that her daughters, of her own flesh, had done this to her. But this fact, tied with Maria and Anna’s testimonies, and that of several other children, sealed her fate. On July 16th, 1676, the jury found her unanimously guilty, and she was sentenced to be burned alive, as they wanted her to, quote, “be given a taste of what was awaiting her in Hell.” Her execution was performed in Stockholm, right in the center of the city square. She was led up to the pyre, alone. She was asked to take the hand of her daughter Maria, to make peace with her before her death, but Malin refused, turning away from her daughter who had condemned her, and mounted the stake with dignity. A bag of gunpowder was wrapped around her neck to speed her death along, and as the flames took her away, she was silent, and did not scream or plead for her life.
  
  
• I have already made it clear that these were terrible times, and dark times. The fact that so many people were killed for no reason is frustrating and terrifying, and what makes it worst is this has happened in the modern world. In the 1980s, we had the Satanic panic, which effected such murder trials as the West Memphis Three, who were partially convicted for murder due to black t shirts and listening to Metallica, due in part to the testimony of a child. We still see this fear to this day, fear of the other, of the ones who are different from us. Also, since our first witch episode, I’ve been reading a lot on the history of witches and witchcraft, and I highly recommend doing more digging if you’re interested. These women’s stories are fascinating, heartbreaking, and enlightening. And if witch trials interest you, but you only know about the ones in Salem, Massachusetts, you need to look more into the ones in Europe as well, because there is so much more out there than you know.
  
  Sources for the Story Portion: 
  
  
• https://www.witchcraftandwitches.com › trials_koge_huskors
• Liv Helene Willumsen, The Witchcraft Trials in Finnmark Northern Norway (In English & Norwegian)
• Liv Helene Willumsen, Witches of the North, Scotland and Finnmark
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_witch_trial
• http://anthrobum.blogspot.com/2011/03/sweden-mora-witch-trials.html
• http://www.witches.net
• https://www.history.com/news/beyond-salem-6-lesser-known-witch-trials
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malin_Matsdotter
  
  Research Topic - Cremation
  
  
• Source: Funeralwise.com "The Cremation Process" 

• What is  most important?

  • The deceased is properly identified

  • The operator is safe

  • Care and respect are used

Some places let the family view the cremation? We were not given that option and I don’t know if I would be willing to do that. 

Cremation reduces the body to its basic elements by exposing it to flames, intense heat, and evaporation. It is done in a cremation chamber. The crematories require a container for the body (a specialized casket or more likely a very sturdy cardboard box).

Remains are usually referred to as ashes but they are mostly made of bone fragments. They also contain any remains of the container, or any other incidental by-products. Anywhere between three and nine pounds of remains depending on the size of the body. 

Five steps of cremation:

• • The deceased is identified and proper authorization is obtained.
  • The body is prepared and placed into a proper container.
    1. Medical devices are removed and jewelry is recovered if desired 
  • The container with the body is moved to the cremation chamber. 
    1. 1,400-2,000 F for 1.5 to 2 hours 
  • After cremation, the remaining metal is removed and the remains are ground.

The “ashes” are transferred to either a temporary container or in an urn provided by the family. 

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