WEBVTT - Vardø Witch Trials 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.560 Today's podcast is brought to you by Tracker. Listeners to 0:00:03.640 --> 0:00:06.720 this show get a special discount of thirty off your 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:11.200 entire order. Go to the spelled t h E Tracker 0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:14.480 dot com and intercode history. The hardest thing you'll ever 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:17.520 have to find is their website. Go to the Tracker 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:21.280 dot com right now in a promo code history for 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:24.800 thirty percent off your entire order. Again, that's the Tracker 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:29.440 dot com promo code history. Are you looking for brand 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:32.239 new episodes of a short how Stuff Works podcast that 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:35.800 explains the everyday world around us, Then check out brain 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:39.680 Stuff with me Christian Sager. New episodes hit every Monday 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:43.520 and Wednesday on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, or anywhere else 0:00:43.640 --> 0:00:48.800 you get your podcasts. Welcome to Steph you missed in 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:58.040 history class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:00.600 welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly from and I'm tra 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:04.680 and we are still in the Halloween season, which makes 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:09.040 me happy in my dark little heart, and I accidentally 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:13.680 started a witch theme, but that's not gonna last. Just 0:01:13.720 --> 0:01:16.320 the two witch episodes of this one and the Bell Witch, 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:18.640 and the Bell Witch really doesn't even count in that regard. 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:23.360 But today's episode is legitimately about which trials uh and 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:30.160 actual accusations of witchcraft and Europe's witchcraft trials spanned three centuries, 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:33.679 from roughly fourteen fifty to seventeen fifty, but it was 0:01:33.720 --> 0:01:36.679 really during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:40.679 practice of trying people as witches was most fervent, and 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:44.640 from about fifteen seventy to sixteen eighty. It's estimated, and 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:48.080 this is a pretty wide uh gap of where the 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:51.520 estimate falls, that between forty thousand and sixty thousand people 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:55.520 across Europe were tried for sorcery of some form and 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:58.000 most of them were found guilty and put to death. 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:02.120 I've seen the fraction of like approximately two thirds, but 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:05.360 it's hard because there wasn't great record keeping to identify 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:10.240 exactly how many lost their lives because of this in 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:14.600 one particular town. Uh. This is an episode heavy in 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:19.280 Norwegian words, which I have no doubt I will butcher. Uh. Yeah, 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:23.959 even even having looked at pronunciations for them, a lot 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:28.200 of the phonemes are not used in English, and so 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:33.200 replicating them, yeah, it's a stretch. So no upfront that 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:35.560 we will probably butcher it, and we mean no disrespect 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:39.160 to the Norwegian language. Our mouths just will not do it. 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:44.120 So we're going to talk about Varda, which is a 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:48.720 fishing village. It was known as Norway's witch capital, and 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:50.720 it was the site of a long series of quite 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:54.480 brutal inquests. And there were generally two different kinds of 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:57.880 witchcraft trials in Norway through this time period. There were 0:02:57.880 --> 0:03:00.880 isolated trials where one person was brought before the court 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:04.919 and tried for sorcery, uh, like, just one person at 0:03:04.919 --> 0:03:07.639 a time would pop up and seem suspicious. And then 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:10.200 there were panics where groups of people were tried in 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:13.400 rapid succession in a very short period of time. And 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:16.280 whereas the isolated trials had more to do with an 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:20.519 individual person practicing witchcraft or some sort of sorcery, these 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:23.480 panics were driven by the idea that demons were involved 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:26.520 usually and that groups of which is we're consorting with 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:29.720 the devil. So today we're going to talk about two 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.640 of the panics that took place in Varda, Norway. Uh. 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:35.440 And first we're going to give you a little bit 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:40.000 of geographical context about the area. So Varda sits in 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:44.400 Finnmark County, is Norway's only town that's in the Arctic 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:48.480 climate zone and offers views of the Norwegian Russian Arctic. 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:51.680 It's a really small coastal village. There are fewer than 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:57.920 d inhabitants. It's Northern Norway's oldest town, with settlements dating 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:01.240 back as far as nine thousand years and in the 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:05.920 hundreds both a church and Varta fortress were built there 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:09.360 and the town sort of grew up around primarily the fortress. 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:12.640 And despite the brutal weather, the fishing along the coast 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:16.120 of finn Mark was plentiful and the location offered really 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:21.040 really um lucrative trade opportunities even today. I mean, this 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.320 is remote. Its relative isolation is one of the reasons 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:29.000 that finn Mark's witch trials were so expedient. Copenhagen, which 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:32.880 under Danish rule was Norway's capital, was far enough away 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:36.240 that the local authorities of finn Mark basically got to 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:40.680 act independently. There was such a big geographical distance from 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:44.800 any higher authority that the decisions to execute witches were 0:04:44.839 --> 0:04:48.120 basically made with total conviction, and then the sentences were 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:54.400 carried out without hesitation. There was no like Norwegian h 0:04:55.080 --> 0:05:00.320 version of of like the Department of Justice over seeing 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:06.640 the witch trial situation in Finnmark correct, But the directives 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:11.280 to to prosecute, which is came from very high because 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:15.680 during some of this time from sixty the ruler of 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:18.800 the Danish Norwegian Kingdom was King Christian the fourth, and 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.800 he had an agenda when it came to witches. Yeah, 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:24.240 I should say they're that like even if there had 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:29.159 been an equivalent of the Justice department overseeing the witch 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:32.520 trial situation, it would not have had the effect of 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:35.440 preventing the execution of witches. And the officials of the 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:38.000 crown at this time, who served under Christian the fourth, 0:05:38.800 --> 0:05:41.520 we're basically charged with the task of ridding the country 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:44.400 of witches, and they were very committed to this job. 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:47.520 So it's not surprising that there was a level of 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:51.120 comfort in acting with this complete authority. In cases of 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:54.640 witchcraft at the local level. From the late sixteenth century 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:57.599 into the seventeenth century, Varda, which is a small village, 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:01.279 as we said, stage a hundred and four different trials 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:04.720 and in nine documented cases the accused was found guilty 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:07.279 and put to death either by burning or by torture. 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:11.039 Most of these happened in clusters where many people were 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:16.039 prosecuted over very short periods of time, and the numbers 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:18.560 here get really interesting because during the time of these 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:22.239 witch hunts, less than one percent of Norway's population lived 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:25.520 in the Finnmark area where these trials took place, but 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:29.240 this remote fishing community was home to thirty one of 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:33.320 the witch executions in Norway, so disproportionately large numbers of 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:37.919 people were being charged and punished by death for being witches. 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:41.279 In finn Mark there were one d eleven women and 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:45.400 twenty four men accused of sorcery. Of thee put to 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:49.400 death seventy seven where women in fourteen were men and 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:52.960 the Sami people, which is an indigenous Scandinavian culture which 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:55.800 still exists today, were some of the first to be 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:59.800 targeted in this witch panic. They had been the for 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:03.280 known people to live in Finnmark, but as that area colonized, 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:08.480 they became the minority. Approximately eighty percent of those accused 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:13.200 of witchcraft and finn Mark were Norwegian were Sami. When 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:16.960 considering gender, though these numbers skew in a totally different way. 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:19.840 Of the twenty four men who were accused of witchcraft 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:24.520 in the area, sixteen were from the Sami people. At 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.720 least thirteen of those, sixteen were found guilty and executed, 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:32.240 and that disparity in proportions is likely do according to 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:35.480 historian live Helene Williamson, who is kind of an expert 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:39.440 on this area of study, to the fact that Sami 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:43.400 men in particular had a reputation for sorcery throughout Europe, 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:46.320 and this is linked probably to some of their cultural practices. 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:51.480 For example, uh, they used this, uh they would do 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:54.080 this ritual where they used run drums where they were 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:56.720 basically kind of doing chance and people went, oh, that 0:07:56.840 --> 0:07:59.880 must be evil. It wasn't. It's just part of their culture. 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.760 And in sixteen o nine, King Christian the fourth wrote 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:06.680 a letter to his district governors that they should persecute 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:10.960 Sami sorcerers without mercy, and that really catalyzed finn Mark's 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:14.640 witch hunting phase. So while the trials of the seventeenth 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:18.760 century might have primarily affected Norwegian women, it does appear 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:22.240 that bias against the Sami people really started things. In 0:08:22.320 --> 0:08:26.240 the early sixteen hundreds, Sami were targeted more frequently, and 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:28.800 then the trials transitioned to focus on the women of 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:32.920 finn Mark, and part of the mindset that led to 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:36.640 this witch panic was the idea common in the sixteenth 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:40.319 and seventeen centuries that the far north of the European continent, 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:43.400 including the coast of Norway, was sort of home to 0:08:43.400 --> 0:08:46.160 the devil. This idea appears to have been born of 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:51.319 a tangle of ideologies and fears. For one, although Christianity 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:54.520 had spread throughout Europe, there were still people, including those 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:57.440 in the northern fringes, who didn't practice it, which drew 0:08:57.480 --> 0:09:00.800 a lot of suspicion from the Church did sationally. This 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:02.959 was and still is a place where the climate can 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:07.840 be incredibly punishing, and that stormy nature was attributed to sorcery. 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:11.400 The icy cold winds from the north were believed to 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:14.480 originate at the devil's home and to be a conveyance 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:18.000 of the devil's will of sorcery and of evil spirits. 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:21.920 And these spirits, of course, specialized in nautical dark magic. 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:25.319 And these were not just locally held ideas. Many areas 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:29.040 of Europe, including France, England, Sweden, Germany and Scotland, were 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:32.880 homes of people who believed that Norway was virtually riddled 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:37.240 with witches, and the Mountain of Dolmen, which sat between 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:40.400 two fishing villages, was believed to be the site of 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:43.040 the entrance to a tunnel that went directly to Hell, 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:46.640 and a cave within that mountain was reportedly the genesis 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:50.040 point for various demons who then spread from there throughout 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:53.800 the European continent. So we're about to get into these panics, 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:55.920 but first we're going to pause for a quick word 0:09:55.920 --> 0:10:02.280 from one of our sponsors. 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As with any of history's witchcraft persecution episodes, 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:43.960 sorcery was often the scapegoat for difficult or tragic events 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:47.440 that happened in any community, and finn Mark experienced a 0:11:47.480 --> 0:11:52.160 really terrible storm one Christmas early on in the seventeenth century. 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:56.600 So the unexpected sixteen seventeen Christmas Eve storm hit when 0:11:56.720 --> 0:12:00.959 sixteen boats from Varda and seven boats from uh Kaiberg. 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:03.920 I'm sure I'm saying that terribly wrong, so I apologize. 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:07.480 We're all at sea and ten of those boats capsized 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:10.560 and forty fishermen were drowned. Struggling to cope with the 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.880 loss of so many of the villages men, at one time, 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:17.079 members of the community started to point to witchcraft is 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:20.560 the cause of this tragedy. The population of both villages 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:24.280 combined was less than three hundred people, so forty deaths 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:28.760 really did have a massive impact on the community. And 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:33.160 this incident eventually catalyzed a piece of legislation that allowed 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:37.280 for mass prosecution, specifically in the charge of witchcraft. And 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:40.280 it actually took a long time to enact that law 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:42.520 and get it up and running. While it was first 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:46.480 introduced in October sixteen seventeen, it really wasn't enforced until 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:49.360 sixteen twenty. This ability meant that there was one of 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:52.200 those instances where a lot of people, both men and women, 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:56.400 faced charges of witchcraft and were found guilty. So in 0:12:56.520 --> 0:13:00.360 January of sixty one, during the anti sorcery proceed dings, 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:03.280 a woman appeared at the trials and claimed that witches 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:06.400 had indeed tied knots in the fishing nets and cast 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:10.680 spells on them. Her name was Elsa Knutes daughter, and 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:14.080 she detailed how a group of witches had tied three 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.719 knots in a piece of string. They had cursed the 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:18.839 knots and then spit on them, and then as those 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:21.679 knots were untied, that curse was activated and the sea 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:26.040 consequently claimed the lives of those fishermen. She herself was 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:28.800 accused of witchcraft and was thrown into the sea to 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:31.760 see if she floated. This is all too common and 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:36.000 pretty foolish practice. The thinking was that the water, which 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:38.880 was believed to be a sacred element, would repel evil, 0:13:38.920 --> 0:13:43.560 which was why which is floated. Elsa floated, dooming herself 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:45.720 to a guilty verdict, and then she was put to death. 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:52.560 In February of one another woman on Lar's daughter, testified 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:56.160 before the court, and initially she refused to speak, and 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:59.040 she was, like Elsa, thrown into the sea for the 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:02.920 water test. But after this test began, she readily confessed, 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:05.360 and this was framed at the time as the water 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:09.600 test having released her from the devil's spell. She claimed 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:11.720 that when she had been questioned earlier, the devil had 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:15.120 silenced her tongue, and when she did speak, she said 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:17.360 that she had met with the devil on Christmas Eve 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:20.280 of sixteen seventeen. She went on to say that she 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:23.920 had that evening flown through the air alongside the devil, 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:25.880 and that he had taken her from one village to 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:29.040 another where a total of forty witches had gathered to 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:32.440 celebrate the Sabbath. After these events, she went back to 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:38.200 her home. Mari Jorgan's daughter also testified, and she said 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:40.800 that the devil had visited her on Christmas Eve and 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:43.360 asked if she would serve him, and then took her 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:47.240 to the home of Kirsty Soren's daughter. Kirsty, according to 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:50.360 Marie's testimony, cast a spell on her that transformed her 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:53.600 into a raven, enabling her to quickly make the journey 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:57.200 to the gathering where the not curse was performed. Marie 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:00.600 gave added information that a similar Christmas Eve Sabbath had 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:03.720 happened in the time between the sixteen seventeen tragedy in 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:08.840 the sixty one trials on Christmas Eve sixteen twenty and 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:12.680 Kirsty Soren's daughter figured prominently in a lot of the testimony. 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:16.120 She was characters characterized by others on trial as the 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:18.680 leader of the group, and she was also one of 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:22.080 the last women who testified in the sixty one trials, 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:24.240 and she had witnessed how things had played out for 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:27.560 those that had faced the court before her. Under threat 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:30.120 of torture, she confirmed what the other women had said 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:33.720 about their rituals, dooming herself to be burned at the stake. 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:38.200 During her court appearance, Kristie names two men who had 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:41.880 also participated in the rituals while men were tried for 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:45.520 witchcraft in Norway during all this time. Neither of the 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:50.600 men that she named were formally accused. But if legal 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:53.840 records of later trials are taken at face value, because 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:57.280 there there are records of all of these proceedings that 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:01.880 are apparently pretty well um maintained, they're in pretty good shape. 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:06.760 But they are they're literally like on file. Uh they're 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:09.600 in Norway, so they're not online or anything, but they 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.440 basically like lay out as though this this is a 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:15.520 legal document. These are legal proceedings all of these things 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:17.840 that we're talking about today, So there is a record 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:19.920 of all of these trials uh and if they are 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:22.880 taking at face value, there were still practicing, which is 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:25.440 in finn Mark for decades after the many deaths of 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:28.680 the sixty one trials, and while more than ten women 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.520 were put to death in sixteen twenty one, a series 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:34.640 of trials in the sixteen sixties would claim even more lives. 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:38.400 In late sixteen sixty two, more than thirty were accused 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:41.280 of sorcery in a series of trials that played out 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:44.440 into sixteen sixty three. Among the accused were not just 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:47.680 adult women, but also young girls under the age of twelve, 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:52.080 and most of the testimonies in this case were confessions 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:55.520 that were tortured out of women uh and threatened out 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:58.120 of children who said that they had met and celebrated 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:02.880 with the devil at Domain, which we mentioned earlier. During 0:17:02.880 --> 0:17:05.600 the trial, several of the accused of that they had 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:08.479 traveled Doman's pathway to Hell and that it was a 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:12.200 long black valley with a boiling lake at the bottom. 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:15.000 And one of the children victimized in these trials was 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.720 Ingeborg Iver's daughter, who was found guilty of sorcery because 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:21.760 of her association with two women and another girl and 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:25.960 their Christmas Eve sixteen sixty two activities. So that day 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:29.520 Iver's daughter and a woman named Solvinil's daughter were actually 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:33.600 in custody for suspected witchcraft. They were imprisoned at Vardahoo's fortress, 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:37.439 but according to testimony given before the court, they turned 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:40.520 into cats, escaped the fortress and met with the devil 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:44.560 outside the gates, and then the devil took them to 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:47.560 one of these witch meetings, and it's there that they 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:49.760 met the other woman and girl that were involved in 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:53.600 this particular accusation in the testimony, and after much carousing 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:57.280 and celebrating, the devil then returned them to the fortress 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:00.720 Ingeborg had the unhappy distinct and of being the first 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:03.520 child accused of witchcraft and fin mark when she appeared 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:08.000 at her trial on January sixty three. Her exact age 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:10.560 is unknown, but she was described in court records as 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:14.199 quote a little girl. Her mother had already been burned 0:18:14.200 --> 0:18:18.159 for witchcraft, and she had said that her mother taught 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:20.720 her witchcraft by giving her a tainted bowl of milk. 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:23.919 There was this perception at the time that witchcraft was 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.560 conveyed often through tainted food or drink, and that's how 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:30.679 you you passed it on from one generation to the next. 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:35.200 And then the devil, after she had had this tainted milk, 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:37.640 the devil was conjured by her mother in the form 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:40.240 of a black dog, and that dog bit her repeatedly. 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:43.919 And this same sort of narrative was described by the 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:47.480 other five girls as well, being given like a tainted 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:52.360 usually milk and then this black dog devil coming and 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:54.479 and sort of attacking them as a form of trial. 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:57.800 And while to the court at the time, uh this 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:01.880 may have indicated truthfulness, each earl's testimony validated what had 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:04.680 come before because they were pretty consistent, but it also 0:19:04.760 --> 0:19:07.520 suggests that perhaps they had simply heard the same tale 0:19:07.600 --> 0:19:09.800 over and over from somewhere, And we're going to get 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:12.600 to a possible source of that tale in just a moment. 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:15.080 We're also going to go into a bit more detail 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:17.560 about the Vardas Fortress and some of the people who 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:20.600 were held there as captives. 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Go to stamps 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:33.600 dot com and before you do anything else, click on 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:35.720 the microphone at the top of the homepage and type 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:47.280 in stuff that's stamps dot com and enter stuff. So 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:50.159 that holding situation that we mentioned before, the break in 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:53.359 Varde Hoo's fortress, which you will also sometimes see translated 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:56.879 as vardehs varde host Castle was where most of the 0:20:56.920 --> 0:21:00.399 torture used to illicit confessions took place. And there was 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:04.920 this single room called the witches Hole uh where sort 0:21:04.960 --> 0:21:07.600 of these torturous events happened. And while the use of 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:11.119 torture was technically illegal before a sentence was passed on 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:14.840 a prisoner, it was still used both before the sentence 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:18.040 to gain confessions and then after sentencing there would be 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:22.240 more torture to produce names of accomplices. One of the 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:25.439 interesting factors in this panic is the influence of two people, 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.639 a husband and a wife, on the confessions of the accused. 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:33.680 This pair, Ambrosius Rhodius and and Frieder's daughter Rosas, had 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:36.920 been imprisoned near modern day Oslo before being moved to 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:41.240 vardahos Flortress. Ambrosius was an astrologer and a physician who 0:21:41.280 --> 0:21:45.120 was considered politically dangerous after having made some accurate predictions 0:21:45.160 --> 0:21:48.480 about military conflicts and his wife, Anne, who was the 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:51.480 granddaughter of King Frederick the Second, had some sort of 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:57.760 serious argument with political figures in their hometown. So yeah, 0:21:57.760 --> 0:22:00.920 they were moved to Vardejus because they were considered basically 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:04.120 enemies of the state at that point. Because the fortress 0:22:04.200 --> 0:22:06.879 was kind of crowded in the sixteen sixties panic, at 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:10.240 least one of the children imprisoned there shared quarters with 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:13.639 the Rhodeus couple, and additionally, Anne had a key to 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:17.240 the witch's whole, and it's documented that Anne spoke with 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:19.560 both the women and girls who were being held in 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:22.720 the fortress awaiting trial, and that she talked at length 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:26.640 with them about demonology and that she encouraged their confessions. 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:29.119 On the up side, all six of the little girls 0:22:29.160 --> 0:22:31.760 involved in the sixteen sixty two to sixteen sixty three 0:22:31.760 --> 0:22:34.280 panic were acquitted on the grounds that they were too 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:37.240 young to be held accountable for their actions and that 0:22:37.320 --> 0:22:40.359 they had undoubtedly been influenced by the adult which is 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:44.680 around them. And over the course of the sixteen sixties 0:22:44.680 --> 0:22:48.040 series of accusations and trials, we mentioned that thirty people 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:52.000 had been accused. Two women died while being tortured for 0:22:52.040 --> 0:22:55.639 information before they could be sentenced and twenty others were sentenced, 0:22:55.640 --> 0:22:59.280 found guilty and burned at the stake. In twenty eleven, 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:02.680 the country of Norway made a significant gesture of apology 0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:06.200 and recognition of the people known to have been executed 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:11.919 for witchcraft. Peter Zumthor, an architect from Switzerland, and Louise Bourgeois, 0:23:12.000 --> 0:23:15.200 a French American artist, worked together to design a memorial 0:23:15.320 --> 0:23:18.680 for the lives that were lost. So this student set 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:21.720 memorial sits on a piece of remote coastline on the 0:23:21.760 --> 0:23:23.840 Barren Sea, believed to be the site of many of 0:23:23.880 --> 0:23:27.400 the executions and the architect's contribution to the work, which 0:23:27.440 --> 0:23:30.560 is titled Memory Hall, looks like a hundred and fifty 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:33.120 eight yard or a hundred and forty five meter long 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:36.760