The Mora witch trial, which took place in Mora, Sweden, in 1669, is the most internationally famous Swedish witch trial. Reports of the trial spread throughout Europe, and a provocative German illustration of the execution is considered to have had some influence on the Salem witch trials. It was the first mass execution during the great Swedish witch hunt of 1668–1676.
After the trial against Märet Jonsdotter in Härjedalen in 1668, rumours began to spread throughout Sweden that witches abducted children to the Witches' Sabbath of Satan in Blockula. This caused a hysteria among parents and a series of witch trials around the country, where children pointed out adults for having abducted them to take to Satan riding on cattle taken from the barns of wealthy farmers.
In Älvdalen, thirty people were put on trial and eighteen sentenced to death. The national court revoked eleven death sentences and executed six women and one man on 19 May 1669. These people were executed on the testimonies of children, which was to be common during this witch hunt.
In March 1669, the hysteria reached Mora. The bailiff informed the governor: In Älvdalen and Mora, children and teenagers are being seduced by old witches unto the Devil. In June, distressed parents forced the governor to send a list of 35 children, claimed to have been abducted to Satan, to the capital with an appeal to send a commission to Mora to deal with the problem, because if: the old is not dealt with as it should, there is a risk that will become much worse than anyone can imagine. In May 1669, King Charles XI created a commission with instructions to use prayer to redeem the accused, rather than torture or imprisonment.
The commission, half of whose members consisted of priests, arrived at Mora on August 12, 1669 and, in front of three thousand spectators, convened a hearing on August 13. Over five days, 60 accused adults and numerous children were interrogated. The suffering children were examined and questioned one by one apart and it is said they all gave the same story. The witches claimed a devil called Locyta stopped them from confessing, but he left and allowed the witches to confess. [1]
The witches confessed to many things and declared they used Enchanted Tools. When the judges asked to see some of their tricks, the witches could no longer do any magic. The judges declared that since the witches had confessed they could no longer practice witchcraft. The witches said the Devil was threatening them with an iron fork, and was going to throw them into a burning pit if they continued with their confessions. [1] The official responsible for recording their statements openly admitted he did not bother writing down many of them, as they were all so similar. There were so many accused that the trials were conducted at two different locations in the village.
The evidence fell against the accused fell into three categories:
Based only on this testimony from children, on August 23 the commission identified seventy adult witches, twenty-three of whom confessed and were executed on August 25 with the remaining forty-seven sent to Falun for later execution. In addition, fifteen children were executed with fifty six children sentenced to various other corporal punishments such as "running the gauntlet" or being lashed with rods. The number of seduced children was about 300. [1]
Six other death sentences were suspended because of unclarity, a good reputation and the hope of improvement—among them also a man, Sven Maas from Selja.
The execution took place on 24 August 1669. The condemned were to be decapitated, after which their corpses were to be burnt at the stake. The report of the execution describes the event: The sinners walked quickly, except the two last ones, who began to sigh and moan, although not such as to delay the procession. The stakes had been built opposite the church on a sandy peninsula on the other side of the river. On the place of execution, the fourteen women and the man were decapitated with an axe, and their corpses were lifted up unto the stakes: first seven on the first stake, five at the second and three at the third, a terrifying spectacle, and burnt.
A boy was sentenced to running the gauntlet between the other village boys and 148 children were whipped. Thereafter, the commission left Mora. Additionally six women were subsequently executed.
The vicar continued to send complaints to the governor about witches. In December 1669, another 60 stood accused of sorcery in Mora, but the local authorities were no longer willing to conduct any witch trials: the harder you conduct these things, the more dangerous it becomes, wrote the governor, and the more difficult it seems to me to be able to separate the guilty from the innocent. Therefore, no one was sentenced to a punishment harsher than a whipping.
In February 1670, the governor complained that there was suddenly talk of witches everywhere, and that this hysteria was spreading like fire in dry grass. Vicars were constantly writing to him asking for more witch trials, but he refused and advised them to preach to the suspected witches instead. The government gave the order that a special prayer, the witch prayer, was to be held in the churches of the kingdom: that prayer was said from 1670 to 1677.
The Mora witch trial was the first mass witch trial in the great Swedish witch hunt and, in the following years, it grew until it reached its peak in the Torsåker witch trials of 1675, and stopped after the execution of Malin Matsdotter in the capital. Descriptions of the trials appeared in Balthasar Bekker's De Betoverde Weereld (1691) (translated into English as The World Bewitched, (1695)) as well as Joseph Glanvill's Saducismus Triumphatus (1683). The famous German illustration of the execution depicts the event incorrectly, as it depicts the condemned being executed by burning alive, as they were in Germany, rather than decapitated, as they were in Sweden.
A Witches' Sabbath is a purported gathering of those believed to practice witchcraft and other rituals. The phrase became popular in the 20th century.
The Torsåker witch trials took place in 1675 in Torsåker parish in Sweden and were the largest witch trials in Swedish history. In a single day 71 people were beheaded and then burned.
The Aix-en-Provence possessions were a series of alleged cases of demonic possession occurring among the Ursuline nuns of Aix-en-Provence in 1611. Father Louis Gaufridi was accused and convicted of causing the possession by a pact with the devil, and he was tortured by strappado and his bones dislocated. He was then executed on April 1611 by strangulation and his body burned. This case provided the legal precedent for the conviction and execution of Urbain Grandier at Loudun more than 20 years later. This event led to possessions spreading to other convents and a witch burning in 1611.
Malin Matsdotter or Mattsdotter, also known as Rumpare-Malin was an alleged Swedish witch. She is known as one of few people in Sweden confirmed to have been executed by burning for witchcraft, and the only one to be executed by this method during the famous witch hunt Det Stora oväsendet in Sweden during 1668–1676, which ended with her execution.
Geske, also known as Horgeske was the central figure of a witch trial in Stockholm. Her trial belonged to the first of the witch trials in Sweden in which the Sabbath of Satan in Blockula, the Devils pact and the Devil's mark were mentioned.
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Elin i Horsnäs was an alleged Swedish witch, the most famous witch in Sweden before the great witch-mania of 1668–1676, and one of few witches in Sweden to be executed before 1668. Her trial is also the most documented trial of sorcery in Sweden before 1668.
Johan Johansson, usually known as the Gävle Boy, was a young Swedish boy remembered for being a witness in witch trials and for bearing substantial responsibility for the Katarina witch trials in 1676.
Brita Zippel, also called Britta Sippel was an alleged Swedish witch, known as "Näslösan", one of the victims of the Katarina witch trials during the great witch hunt known as "Det Stora oväsendet" in Sweden between 1668-1676. Together with her sister Anna Zippel.
Anna Zippel, also spelled as Sippel or Sippela, was an alleged Swedish witch, one of the most famous ones of the Katarina witch trials in Stockholm during the Swedish witch mania "Det stora Oväsendet" of 1668–1676; She was called "The Queen of Blockula", and together with her sister Brita Zippel the most famous witch in Swedish history, famed for her proud defense.
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Märet Jonsdotter was an alleged Swedish witch. She is one of the most known victims of the persecutions of sorcery in her country; she was the first person accused of this in the great witch hysteria called "Det Stora Oväsendet" of 1668–1676, and her trial unleashed the beginning of the real witch hunt in Sweden, which was to cause the death of around 280 people in those eight years. She was known by the name "Big Märet" because she had a younger sister with the same name called "Small Märet" Jonsdotter.
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The Finspång witch trial was a witch trial which took place in Finspång Östergötland in Sweden in 1617. Between seven and nine women died as a result. It has a special place in Sweden's history as one of the very few larger witch trials in Sweden outside the period of 1668–1676, which was otherwise the time of the real witch hunt in Sweden. Also because it seems that the condemned were executed by burning, which was not the common way of execution for witch craft in Sweden. It was the biggest witch trial in Sweden before 1668, and resulted in the biggest execution for sorcery in Sweden outside of the 1668–76 witch hunt.
Gertrud Svensdotter (1656–1675) was a Swedish shepherdess. She was the witness and accuser in the witch trial against Märet Jonsdotter in 1668, the trial that unleashed the great witch hysteria in Sweden called Stora oväsendet, involving a series of witch trials in many parts of the nation and lasting until 1676.
The Connecticut Witch Trials, also sometimes referred to as the Hartford witch trials, occurred from 1647 to 1663. They were the first large-scale witch trials in the American colonies, predating the Salem Witch Trials by nearly thirty years. John M. Taylor lists a total of 37 cases, 11 of which resulted in executions. The execution of Alse Young of Windsor in the spring of 1647 was the beginning of the witch panic in the area, which would not come to an end until 1670 with the release of Katherine Harrison.
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