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The Vardø Witch Trials

von Lisa Williams

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Everyone knows Salem. Almost nobody knows Vardø.

At the very edge of Europe, above the Arctic Circle, there was a place people believed stood on the boundary between this world… and something else. A place where the Devil could enter the world.

In February 1692, the same month the Salem accusations began, the last victim of the Vardø witch trials was being brought to court. Salem was over in little more than a year. This had already been going on for 70 years.

91 people died, most of them women, in Norway's deadliest witch hunt.

It began in 1619, when a Scottish sea captain arrived in this isolated community, a coast full of widows. Soon, a terrifying belief took hold, that witches were living among them.

Join me as I travel to the remotest parts of Norway, to the places where the women lived, were imprisoned and put to death. And I've been given rare access to the 17th century witch trial court books, with one of the few people alive who can still read them.

Whose words were really in those confessions?
And why did they kill so many women?

A 6-part documentary series from Lisa Williams.
Sound design by Craig Edmondson.

Folgen

  1. No More Names | EP 6

    It’s spring 1663, and we’re in what Professor Liv Helene Willumsen calls "the most cruel of the panics in Finnmark". An intricate web of denunciations threatens to engulf the women of Vardø and the neighbouring villages. In this episode, I

  2. The Witches’ Hole | EP 5

    When a new governor, Christoffer Orning, and a well-born Danish exile, Anna Rhodius, arrive in Vardø, a darker idea takes hold: once the Devil has a foothold in a family, he will not let them go. Now the young daughters of accused women are

  3. What Could a Witch Do? | EP 4

    In the winter of 1654, a young woman called Karen Jonsdatter is a long way from home, in a fishing village near Vardø. As well as working as a maid, she has a little business on the side, selling potions and charms to the men in the communi

  4. Their Master and Admiral | EP 3

    In 1621, eleven women were brought before the court in Vardø, one after another, in the first great chain of witch trials in Finnmark. In this episode, we go straight into the courtroom. The records describe women turning into ravens and wo

  5. Exporting the Devil | EP 2

    Who brought the Devil to Vardø? I follow a trail Professor Liv Helene Willumsen calls the witchcraft triangle. It runs from Germany to Scotland, through a royal wedding, storms at sea, and women who confessed to sending devils after a Danis

  6. The Wind and the Paper | EP 1

    I go to the edge of the Arctic to find out why 91 people, most of them women, died in Norway’s deadliest witch hunt, which lasted more than 70 years. Vardø is a small island town closer to Russia than to Oslo, a place long shadowed by fears

  7. Introducing: The Vardø Witch Trials

    Inside the Arctic witch hunt that lasted 70 years. Everyone knows Salem. Almost nobody knows Vardø. On an island at the very top of Norway, 91 people died in the country's deadliest witch hunt, most of them women. The Vardø Witch Trials. A

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