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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Recently, we had an episode about the trials

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Speaker 1: of non human animals that were carried out in parts

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Speaker 1: of medieval and early modern Europe, and we talked about

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Speaker 1: some parallels with the witch trials that were taking place

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Speaker 1: in some of the same places during some of the

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Speaker 1: same times. We thought we would have one of our

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Speaker 1: episodes on some of those witch trials as a Saturday

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Speaker 1: Classic today. This episode is about the witch trials that

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Speaker 1: took place in Varda in northern Norway in the seventeenth century.

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Speaker 1: It originally came out on October ninth, twenty sixteen. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fryme and I'm

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Speaker 1: Tracy B. Wilson, and we are still in the Halloween season,

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Speaker 1: which makes me happy. In my dark little Heart and

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Speaker 1: I accident started a witch theme, but that's not going

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Speaker 1: to last. Just the two witch episodes this one and

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Speaker 1: the Bell Witch, and the Bell Witch really doesn't even

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Speaker 1: count in that regard. But today's episode is legitimately about

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Speaker 1: witch trials and actual accusations of witchcraft, and Europe's witchcraft

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Speaker 1: trials spanned three centuries from roughly fourteen fifty to seventeen fifty,

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Speaker 1: but it was really during the late sixteenth and seventeenth

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Speaker 1: centuries that the practice of trying people as witches was

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Speaker 1: most fervent, and from about fifteen seventy to sixteen eighty.

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Speaker 1: It's estimated, and this is a pretty wide gap of

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Speaker 1: where the estimate falls, that between forty thousand and sixty

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Speaker 1: thousand people across Europe were tried for sorcery of some form,

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Speaker 1: and most of them were found guilty and put to death.

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Speaker 1: I've seen the fraction of like approximately two thirds, but

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Speaker 1: it's hard because there wasn't great record keeping to identify

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Speaker 1: exactly how many lost their lives because of this and

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Speaker 1: one particular town. This is an episode heavy in Norwegian words,

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Speaker 1: which I have no doubt I will butcher. Yeah, even

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Speaker 1: even having looked at pronunciations for them, a lot of

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Speaker 1: the phonemes are not used in English, and so replicating them, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's a stretch. So no upfront that we will probably

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Speaker 1: butcher it, and we mean no disrespect to the Norwegian language.

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Speaker 1: Our mouths just will not do it. So we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about Varda, which is a fishing village. It

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Speaker 1: was known as Norway's witch capital, and it was the

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Speaker 1: site of a long series of quite brutal inquests, and

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Speaker 1: there were generally two different kinds of witchcraft trials in

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Speaker 1: Norway through this time period. There were isolated trials where

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Speaker 1: one person was brought before the court and tried for sorcery,

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Speaker 1: like just one person at a time would pop up

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Speaker 1: and seem suspicious, and then there were panics, groups of

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Speaker 1: people were tried in rapid succession in a very short

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Speaker 1: period of time. And whereas the isolated trials had more

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Speaker 1: to do with an individual person practicing witchcraft or some

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Speaker 1: sort of sorcery, these panics were driven by the idea

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Speaker 1: that demons were involved, usually and that groups of witches

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Speaker 1: were consorting with the devil. So today we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about two of the panics that took place in Varda, Norway,

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Speaker 1: And first we're going to give you a little bit

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Speaker 1: of geographical context about the area. So Varda sits in

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Speaker 1: Finnmark County, is Norway's only town that's in the Arctic

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Speaker 1: climate zone and offers views of the Norwegian Russian Arctic.

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Speaker 1: It's a really small coastal village. There are fewer than

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Speaker 1: twenty five hundred inhabitants. It's Northern Norway's oldest town, with

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Speaker 1: settlements dating back as far as nine thousand years and

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Speaker 1: in the thirteen hundreds both a church and varda fortress

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Speaker 1: were built there and the town sort of grew up

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Speaker 1: around primarily the fortress. And despite the brutal weather, the

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Speaker 1: fishing along the coast of Finmark was plentiful and the

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Speaker 1: location offered really really lucrative trade opportunities even today. I mean,

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Speaker 1: this is remote. Its relative isolation is one of the

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Speaker 1: reasons that Finmark's witch trials were so expedient. Copenhagen, which

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Speaker 1: under Danish rule was Norway's capital, was far enough away

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Speaker 1: that the local authorities of Finmark basically got to act independently.

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Speaker 1: There was such a big geographical distance from any higher

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Speaker 1: authority that the decisions to execute witches were basically made

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Speaker 1: with total conviction, and then the sentences were carried out

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Speaker 1: without hesitation. There was no like Norwegian version of the

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Speaker 1: Department of Justice overseeing the witch trial situation in Finnmark correct,

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Speaker 1: but the directives to abecute witches came from very high

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Speaker 1: because during some of this time from fifteen eighty eight

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Speaker 1: to sixteen forty eight, the ruler of the Danish Norwegian

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Speaker 1: Kingdom was King Christian Force, and he had an agenda

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Speaker 1: when it came to witches. Yeah, I should say there

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Speaker 1: that like, even if there had been an equivalent of

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Speaker 1: the Justice department overseeing the witch trial situation, it would

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Speaker 1: not have had the effect of preventing the execution of witches.

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Speaker 1: And the officials of the crown at this time, who

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Speaker 1: served under Christian the Force, were basically charged with the

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Speaker 1: task of ridding the country of witches, and they were

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Speaker 1: very committed to this job. So it's not surprising that

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Speaker 1: there was a level of comfort in acting with this

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Speaker 1: complete authority. In cases of witchcraft at the local level.

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Speaker 1: From the late sixteenth century into the seventeenth century, Vardo,

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Speaker 1: which is a small village, as we said, stage one

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Speaker 1: hundred and forty different trials and in ninety one documented

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Speaker 1: cases the accused was found guilty and put to death

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Speaker 1: either by burning or by torture. Most of these happened

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Speaker 1: in clusters where many people were prosecuted over very short

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Speaker 1: periods of time, and the numbers here get really interesting

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Speaker 1: because during the time of these witch hunts, less than

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Speaker 1: one percent of Norway's population lived in the Finmark area

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Speaker 1: where these trials took place, but this remote fishing community

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Speaker 1: was home to thirty one percent of the witch executions

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Speaker 1: in Norway, so disproportionately large numbers of people were being

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Speaker 1: charged and punished by death for being witches. In Finmark,

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Speaker 1: there were one hundred eleven women and twenty four men

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Speaker 1: accused of sorcery. Of the ninety one put to death,

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Speaker 1: seventy seven where women and fourteen were men. And the

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Speaker 1: Sami people, which is an indigenous Scandinavian culture which still

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Speaker 1: exists today, were some of the first to be targeted

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Speaker 1: in this witch panic. They had been the first known

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Speaker 1: people to live in Finmark, but as that area colonized,

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Speaker 1: they became the minority. Approximately eighty percent of those accused

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Speaker 1: of which craft and Fenmark were in Norwegian, twenty percent

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Speaker 1: were Sami. When considering gender, though these numbers skew in

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Speaker 1: a totally different way. Of the twenty four men who

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Speaker 1: were accused of witchcraft in the area, sixteen were from

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Speaker 1: the Sami people. At least thirteen of those sixteen were

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Speaker 1: found guilty and executed, and that disparity in proportions is

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Speaker 1: likely due, according to historian live Helene Willielmson, who is

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Speaker 1: kind of an expert on this area of study, to

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Speaker 1: the fact that Sami men in particular had a reputation

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Speaker 1: for sorcery throughout Europe, and this is linked probably to

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Speaker 1: some of their cultural practices. For example, they used this

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Speaker 1: they would do this ritual where they used rune drums

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Speaker 1: where they were basically kind of doing chants, and people went, oh,

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Speaker 1: that must be evil. It wasn't, It's just part of

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Speaker 1: their culture. And in sixteen oh nine, King Christian the

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Speaker 1: Force wrote a letter to his district governors that they

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Speaker 1: should persecute Sami sorcerers without mercy, and that really catalyzed

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Speaker 1: fin Mark's witch hunting phase. So while the trials of

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Speaker 1: the seventeenth century might have primarily affected Norwegian women, it

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Speaker 1: does appear that bias against the Sami people really started things.

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Speaker 1: In the early sixteen hundreds, Sami were targeted more frequently,

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Speaker 1: and then the trials transitioned to focus on the women

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Speaker 1: of Fenmark. And part of the mindset that led to

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Speaker 1: this witch panic was the idea common in the sixteenth

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Speaker 1: and seventeenth centuries that the far north of the European continent,

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Speaker 1: including the coast of Norway, was sort of home to

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Speaker 1: the devil. This idea appears to have been born of

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Speaker 1: a tangle of ideologies and fears. For one, although Christianity

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Speaker 1: had spread throughout Europe, there were still people, including those

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Speaker 1: in the northern fringes, who didn't practice it, which drew

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Speaker 1: a lot of suspicion from the Church. Additionally, this was

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Speaker 1: and still is a place where the climate can be

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Speaker 1: incredibly punishing, and that stormy nature was attributed to sorcery.

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Speaker 1: The icy, cold winds from the north were believed to

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Speaker 1: originate at the devil's home and to be a conveyance

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Speaker 1: of the devil's will of sorcery and of evil spirits,

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Speaker 1: and these spirits, of course, specialized in nautical dark magic.

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Speaker 1: These were not just locally held ideas. Many areas of Europe,

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Speaker 1: including France, England, Sweden, Germany and Scotland, were homes of

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Speaker 1: people who believed that Norway was virtually riddled with witches,

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Speaker 1: and the Mountain of Dolmen, which sat between two fishing villages,

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Speaker 1: was believed to be the site of the entrance to

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Speaker 1: a tunnel that went directly to Hell, and a cave

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Speaker 1: within that mountain was reportedly the genesis point for various

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Speaker 1: demons who then spread from there throughout the European continent.

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Speaker 1: So we're about to get into these panics, but first

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Speaker 1: we're going to pause for a quick word from one

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Speaker 1: of our sponsors. So to Finnmark in the sixteen twenties,

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Speaker 1: As with any of history's witchcraft persecution episodes, sorcery was

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Speaker 1: often the scapegoat for difficult or tragic events that happened

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Speaker 1: in any community, and Finnmark experienced a really terrible storm

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Speaker 1: one Christmas early on in the seventeenth century. So the

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Speaker 1: unexpected sixteen seventeen Christmas Eve storm hit when sixteen boats

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Speaker 1: from Varda and seven boats from Kyburg. I'm sure I'm

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Speaker 1: saying that terribly wrong, so I apologize. We're all at

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Speaker 1: sea and ten of those boats capsized and forty fishermen

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Speaker 1: were drowned. Struggling to cope with the loss of so

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Speaker 1: many of the village's men, at one time, members of

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Speaker 1: the community started to point to witchcraft is the cause

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Speaker 1: of this tragedy. The population of both villages combined was

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Speaker 1: less than three hundred people, so forty deaths really did

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Speaker 1: have a massive impact on the community, and this incident

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Speaker 1: eventually catalyzed a piece of legist that allowed for mass prosecutions,

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Speaker 1: specifically in the charge of witchcraft. And it actually took

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Speaker 1: a long time to enact that law and get it

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Speaker 1: up and running. While it was first introduced in October

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Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen, it really wasn't enforced until sixteen twenty. This

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Speaker 1: ability meant that there was one of those instances where

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Speaker 1: a lot of people, both men and women, faced charges

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Speaker 1: of witchcraft and were found guilty. So in January of

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Speaker 1: sixteen twenty one, during the anti sorcery proceedings, a woman

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Speaker 1: appeared at the trials and claimed that witches had indeed

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Speaker 1: tied knots in the fishing nets and cast spells on them.

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Speaker 1: Her name was Elson Knute's daughter, and she detailed how

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Speaker 1: a group of witches had tied three knots in a

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Speaker 1: piece of string, They had cursed the knots and then

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Speaker 1: spit on them, and then as those knots were untied,

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Speaker 1: that curse was activated and the sea consequently claimed the

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Speaker 1: lives of those fishermen. She herself was accused of witchcraft

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Speaker 1: and was thrown into the sea to see if she floated.

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Speaker 1: This is all too common and pretty foolish practice. The

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Speaker 1: thinking was that the water, which was believed to be

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Speaker 1: a sacred element, would repel evil, which was why witches floated.

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Speaker 1: Elsa floated, dooming herself to a guilty verdict, and then

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Speaker 1: she was put to death. In February of sixteen twenty one,

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Speaker 1: another woman, on Lar's daughter testified before the court, and

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Speaker 1: initially she refused to speak, and she was, like Elsa,

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Speaker 1: thrown into the sea for the water test. But after

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Speaker 1: this test began, she readily confessed, and this was framed

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Speaker 1: at the time as the water test having released her

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Speaker 1: from the devil's spell. She claimed that when she had

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Speaker 1: been questioned earlier, the devil had silenced her tongue, and

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Speaker 1: when she did speak, she said that she had met

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Speaker 1: with the devil on Christmas Eve of sixteen seventeen. She

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Speaker 1: went on to say that she had that evening flown

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Speaker 1: through the air alongside the devil, and that he had

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Speaker 1: taken her from one village to another where a total

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Speaker 1: of forty witches had gathered to celebrate the Sabbath. After

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Speaker 1: these events, she went back to her home. Mari Jorgan's

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Speaker 1: daughter also testified, and she said that the devil had

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Speaker 1: visited her on Christmas Eve and asked if she would

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Speaker 1: serve him, and then took her to the home of

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Speaker 1: Kirsty Soren's daughter. Kirsty, according to Mary's testimony, cast a

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Speaker 1: spell on her that transformed her into a raven, enabling

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Speaker 1: her to quickly make the journey to the gathering where

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Speaker 1: the not curse was performed. Marie gave added information that

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Speaker 1: a similar Christmas Eve sabbath had happened in the time

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Speaker 1: between the sixteen seventeen tragedy and the sixteen twenty one trials.

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Speaker 1: On Christmas Eve, sixteen twenty and Kirsty Soren's daughter figured

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Speaker 1: prominently in a lot of the testimony. She was characterized

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Speaker 1: by others on trial as the leader of the group,

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Speaker 1: and she was also one of the last women who

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Speaker 1: testified in the sixteen twenty one trials, and she had

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Speaker 1: witnessed how things had played out for those that had

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Speaker 1: faced the court before her. Under threat of torture, she

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Speaker 1: confirmed what the other women had said about their rituals,

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Speaker 1: dooming herself to be burned at the stake. During her

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Speaker 1: court appearance, Kirsty named two men who had also participated

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Speaker 1: in the rituals while men were tried for witchcraft in

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Speaker 1: Norway during all this time, neither of the men that

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Speaker 1: she named were formally accused. But if legal records of

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Speaker 1: later trials are taken at face value, because there are

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Speaker 1: records of all of these proceedings that are apparently pretty

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Speaker 1: well maintained, they're in pretty good shape. But they are

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Speaker 1: they're literally like on file there in Norway, so they're

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Speaker 1: not online or anything, but they basically lay out as

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Speaker 1: though this is a legal document. These are legal proceedings

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Speaker 1: all of these things that we're talking about today. So

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Speaker 1: there is a record of all of these trials, and

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Speaker 1: if they are taken at face value, there were still

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Speaker 1: practicing witches in Finnmark for decades after the many deaths

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Speaker 1: of the sixteen twenty one trials, and while more than

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Speaker 1: ten women were put to death in sixteen twenty one,

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Speaker 1: a series of trials and sixteen sixties would claim even

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Speaker 1: more lives. In late sixteen sixty two, more than thirty

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Speaker 1: were accused of sorcery in a series of trials that

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Speaker 1: played out into sixteen sixty three. Among the accused were

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Speaker 1: not just adult women, but also young girls under the

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Speaker 1: age of twelve, and most of the testimonies in this

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Speaker 1: case were confessions that were tortured out of women and

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Speaker 1: threatened out of children who said that they had met

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Speaker 1: and celebrated with the devil at Domen, which we mentioned earlier.

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Speaker 1: During the trials, several of the accused said that they

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Speaker 1: had traveled Doman's pathway to Hell and that it was

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Speaker 1: a long black valley with a boiling lake at the bottom.

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Speaker 1: And one of the children victimized in these trials was

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Speaker 1: Ingeborg Iver's daughter, who was found guilty of sorcery because

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Speaker 1: of her association with two women and another girl. And

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Speaker 1: there Christmas Eve sixteen sixty two activities, so that day

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Speaker 1: Iver's daughter and a woman named Solvi, Nil's daughter were

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Speaker 1: actually in custody for suspected witchcraft. They were in prison

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Speaker 1: at Vardahu's fortress, but according to testimony given before the court,

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Speaker 1: they turned into cats, escaped the fortress and met with

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Speaker 1: the devil outside the gates, and then the devil took

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Speaker 1: them to one of these witch meetings, and it's there

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Speaker 1: that they met the other woman and girl that were

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Speaker 1: involved in this particular accusation in the testimony, and after

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Speaker 1: much carousing and celebrating, the devil then returned them to

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Speaker 1: the fortress. Ingeborg had the unhappy distinction of being the

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Speaker 1: first child accused of witchcraft and fenmark when she appeared

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Speaker 1: at her trial on January twenty sixth, sixteen sixty three.

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Speaker 1: Her exact age is unknown, but she was described in

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Speaker 1: court records as a little girl. Her mother had already

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Speaker 1: been burned for witchcraft, and she had said that her

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Speaker 1: mother taught her witchcraft by giving her a tainted bowl

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Speaker 1: of milk. There was this perception at the time that

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Speaker 1: witchcraft was conveyed often through tainted food or drink, and

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Speaker 1: that's how you passed it on from one generation to

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Speaker 1: the next. And then the devil, after she had had

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Speaker 1: this tainted milk, the devil was conjured by her mother

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Speaker 1: in the form of a black dog, and that dog

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Speaker 1: bit her repeatedly. And this same sort of narrative was

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Speaker 1: described by the other five girls as well, being given

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Speaker 1: like a tainted usually milk, and then this black dog

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Speaker 1: devil coming and sort of attacking them as a form

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Speaker 1: of trial. And while to the court at the time

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Speaker 1: this may have indicated truthfulness, each girl's testimony validated what

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Speaker 1: had come before because they were pretty consistent, but it

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Speaker 1: also suggests that perhaps they had simply heard the same

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Speaker 1: tail over and over from somewhere, and we're going to

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Speaker 1: get to a possible source of that tale in just

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Speaker 1: a moment. We're also going to go into a bit

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Speaker 1: more detail about the Vardajas Fortress than some of the

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Speaker 1: people who were held there as captives. But before we do,

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Speaker 1: we are going to stop one more time for a

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Speaker 1: very brief sponsor break. So that holding situation that we

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Speaker 1: mentioned before, the break in Vardahus Fortress, which you will

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Speaker 1: also sometimes see translated as Vardajus Castle, was where most

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Speaker 1: of the torture used to illicit confessions took place, and

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Speaker 1: there was this single room called the Witch's Hole where

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Speaker 1: sort of these torturous events happened. And while the use

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Speaker 1: of torture was technically illegal before a sentence was passed

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Speaker 1: on a prisoner, it was still used both before the

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Speaker 1: sentence to gain confessions and then after sentencing there would

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Speaker 1: be more torture to produce names of accomplices. One of

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Speaker 1: the interesting factors in this panic is the influence of

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Speaker 1: two people, a husband and a wife, on the confessions

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Speaker 1: of the accused. This pair, Ambrosius Rhodius and Frieder's daughter Rosius,

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Speaker 1: had been imprisoned near modern day Oslo before being moved

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Speaker 1: to Vardajus Fortress. Ambrosius was an astrologer and a physician

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Speaker 1: who was considered politically dangerous after having made some accurate

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Speaker 1: predictions about military conflicts, and his wife Anne, who was

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Speaker 1: the granddaughter of King Frederick the second, had some sort

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Speaker 1: of serious argument with political figures in their hometown. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: they were moved to Vardijas because they were considered basically

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Speaker 1: enemies of the state at that point, and because the

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Speaker 1: fortress was kind of crowded in the sixteen sixties panic.

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Speaker 1: At least one of the children imprisoned there shared quarters

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Speaker 1: with the Rodeus couple, and additionally, Anne had a key

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Speaker 1: to the witch's whole, and it's documented that Anne spoke

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Speaker 1: with both the women and girls who were being held

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Speaker 1: in the fortress awaiting trial, and that she talked at

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Speaker 1: length with them about demonology and that she encouraged their confessions.

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Speaker 1: On the up side, all six of the little girls

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Speaker 1: involved in the sixteen sixty two to sixteen sixty three

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Speaker 1: panic were acquitted on the grounds that they were too

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Speaker 1: young to be held accountable. For their actions and that

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Speaker 1: they had undoubtedly been influenced by the adult witches around them.

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Speaker 1: And over the course of the sixteen sixty series of

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Speaker 1: accusation and trials, we mentioned that thirty people had been accused,

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Speaker 1: two women died while being tortured for information before they

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Speaker 1: could be sentenced, and twenty others were sentenced, found guilty

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Speaker 1: and burned at the stake. In twenty eleven, the country

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Speaker 1: of Norway made a significant gesture of apology and recognition

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Speaker 1: of the ninety one people known to have been executed

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Speaker 1: for witchcraft. Peter Zumthor, an architect from Switzerland, and Louis Bourgeois,

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Speaker 1: a French American artist, works together to design a memorial

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Speaker 1: for the lives that were lost. So this stunesset memorial

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Speaker 1: sits on a piece of remote coastline on the Barren Sea,

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Speaker 1: believed to be the site of many of the executions

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Speaker 1: and the architect's contribution to the work, which is titled

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Speaker 1: Memory Hall, looks like one hundred and fifty eight yard

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Speaker 1: or one hundred and forty five meter long corridors built

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Speaker 1: at the edge of the sea, but instead of exterior walls,

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Speaker 1: it has an open crosshatched frame. That frame, which is

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Speaker 1: made of pine, supports a tunnel like silk cocoon, and

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Speaker 1: within the fabric tunnel is a hallway with oak floors.

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Speaker 1: Within the interior are ninety one lamps, and each of

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Speaker 1: them illuminates a window that represents one of the executed

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Speaker 1: and an engraving dedicated to one of the people killed

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Speaker 1: for witchcraft, including the testimony that was used against them.

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Speaker 1: The second part of the memorial, which can be entered

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Speaker 1: by visitors once they have passed through that long type

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Speaker 1: memorial corridor, is Bourgeoise creation, and it's entitled The Damn,

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Speaker 1: the Possessed and the Beloved. And this element is a

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Speaker 1: black glass room and inside there is a chair in

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Speaker 1: the center that burns continuously and there are three mirrors

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Speaker 1: mounted above it to create the illusion of the space

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Speaker 1: being consumed in fire. So it's kind of a unique thing.

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Speaker 1: I don't know of many other countries that have done

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Speaker 1: anything like this. It's quite beautiful. There's some really good

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Speaker 1: pictures online and we'll have links to those in the

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Speaker 1: show notes. But it's an interesting testament to how things

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Speaker 1: have changed in their efforts to kind of they obviously

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Speaker 1: cannot fix what has gone before. But to at least

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Speaker 1: acknowledge the wrongs that were done and how misguided the

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Speaker 1: attempts to rid the country of evil through witchcraft trials were.

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Speaker 1: So that's the Varta witch trials. Oh, which trials. Like

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Speaker 1: people have such a fascination with witch trials, but they're depressing.

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Speaker 1: They're so depressing they are It breaks my heart if

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Speaker 1: you read about you know, these little girls, Yeah, children

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Speaker 1: that were being forced to testify, sometimes alongside their mothers

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Speaker 1: and sometimes after their mothers had already been killed. And

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Speaker 1: there's such brutality to it and it's rough. Thanks so

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Speaker 1: much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like

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Speaker 1: to send us a note, our email addresses History Podcast

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Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the

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Speaker 1: show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H