Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Inside the Witch Trials: Iceland | The Men Who Burned As Witches

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

When we think of the witch trials, we often think of women being charged.Whilst misogyny was at the heart of many of the witch trials, this isn't the full story.In this second episode of a limited series, Inside the Witch Trials, we go back to the the Westfjords of Iceland, to find out why it was mostly men, not women, who were burned at the stake for witchcraft.How did society differ to the rest of Europe at this time? How did Iceland's history of magic impact ideas around witchcraft? And what hope did you have if you were accused of being a witch?Kate is joined by Dr. Ólína Kjerulf Þorvarðardóttir, Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Bifröst.This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code BETWIXTYou can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. How are you doing? Well, I'm doing just fine. Thank you very much for asking. I'm glad that we're all fine and here together.

But to make sure that you stay fine and I stay fine and everyone else stays fine, I have to give you the fair do's warning, so here it is. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way covering a range of adults subjects and you should be an adult too. And actually in all seriousness, we are getting quite tasty today. We are discussing the witch trials. And if that is not your cup of tea, then this is your opportunity to get out now while you still can. For the rest of you, on with the show.

The early modern period was a time of huge upheaval. Radical ideas were spreading like wildfire. People were led to believe they were at spiritual war with the devil. The stakes couldn't have been higher. As fear and paranoia grew, a violent breaking point was inevitable. What became known as the witch trials soon followed. Over the course of this limited series, I'll be taking you directly into the isolated communities

where this fear was felt the most. Further still, we'll enter into the courtrooms at the heart of three significant witch trials to find out what it was like to be caught up in the middle of all this mayhem. From Pendle in Lancashire, where a nine-year-old sent her whole family to their deaths after accusing them of being witches. It's Janet who really signs the death warrant for her own people.

To the West Fords of Iceland, where it was mostly men, not women, who were burnt at the stake. All of a sudden, the devil was all around, and this caused a hysterical fear. And to Salem, Massachusetts, where colonialism, racism, and fear in an unknown land, created a perfect storm that is still felt today. The sailing witch trials, they have this really long legacy, and it's a legacy of persecution and mistrust. Join me, Kate Lister, as we go inside the witch trials. Part 2, West Fjords, Iceland.

It's New Year's Day in the remote town of Celetal, 1669. Here in the West Fjord region of Iceland, a thick mist descends onto the houses from the nearby mountains. In one of them lives Helga Halstor Dothier, and her husband, the priest, Paul Bjornson, whose influential book on witchcraft and the devil has caused a stir among the locals. Helga has fallen ill with a strange disease.

She appears to be possessed by an evil spirit. Her fits are uncontrollable. The noises she makes seem unnatural, otherworldly. By summer they haven't let up. If anything, they've intensified, and both her and pal flee their house believing it to be haunted. Their minds turned to witches, and before long, men in the local community will burn at the stake.

Why were over 90% of the people killed for witchcraft in Iceland, men? And how did events get so out of hand in this remote town at the edge of Europe? Joining me today is Dr. Oralina Karelof Thor Vathar Dottier to take us back to this world and tell us what Iceland was like at this period. In the 17th century, we belonged to the Danish kingdom. We were a part of the Danish kingdom until 1918. Iceland was a rural society at the time. We had just recently reformed to Lutheran.

from Catholic beliefs. And we were a farming agricultural society. And people were not, how can we say? People were not educated at the time. Only 50,000 people inhabited Iceland at the time. And there was no urbanization, so to speak. And there was no general education besides from what people heard from the Bible. and also, of course, the oral tradition that people had, the old folk tales and the old rhymes and the old sagas.

But there was no general education, no formal education. And the very few who got some forms of education at the time were officials and civil servants, such as priests, magistrates and lawmen who acquired education abroad, mostly in Denmark or else. were in North Europe. And those officials, they were influenced by the ideological currents on the mainland, bringing that impact with them to Iceland. So the conduct of those individuals determined how high the wave of which persecutions rose in the individual areas of Iceland. And one must also bear in mind that geographically, Iceland is not centrally located. So therefore, it took a while for the currents of ideas that were the reasons for the witch persecutions in Europe to reach Iceland.

It's also remarkable that the witch trials bursted out much stronger in some areas than others. Most of the trials took place in the Westfjords, whereas no people. was executed in the south and the east of Iceland. While Christianity had a grip on Icelandic society at this time, the country had a deep and rich tradition of folk magic that predated the witch trials. Something we've seen throughout medieval Europe and something the Christian church in Iceland did not take kindly to.

We explored this culture of folk magic in England in the first episode of this limited series. But what was the culture for magic like in Iceland leading up to this period. Magic has been practiced in Iceland since the beginning of roads. The oldest forms of magic are runic inscriptions and the ancient sorcery ritual saithers sometimes mentioned in the Icelandic sagas. And there is a prophecy ceremony performed by the Sible Vulva,

by the assistance of those present. And we can read in old law books since the age of the Commonwealth. The age of the Commonwealth is from 930 to 1262. We can read from that time that there were penalties for witchcraft, even a death penalty for the darkest forms of witchcraft, which we called fortaiduskaper, means black magic. And so magic is deeply rooted in religious, practices since long before the year of 1000 when Icelanders reformed to Christianity.

And that has to do, I think, with our connection to nature and pagan ideas of divine domination of the seasons of the year and the forces of nature. So people believed in magic. They believed in magical forces of nature and divinity. Everything in daily, life was linked to the dominance of divine forces as well as forces of nature. So healing, for example, was very much associated with witchcraft. And then, of course, the Christianity in the year of 1,000 in Iceland, that of course had its impact on this mindset. But folk beliefs and folk traditions lived on for quite a while.

And as time passed, those folk rituals became a contradiction to the message of the church because the church tried to demonise old traditions and folk beliefs. By the 17th century, there were significant conflicts inside the Christian church on how its own message should be delivered. Lutheranism and a wave of other Protestant reformations known as the Reformation was sweeping across Europe, in some cases clashing violently with Catholicism. The evils of witchcraft and how it should be dealt with were at the centre of it all,

and Iceland felt the effects of it. In Europe, it all began with the persecution of heretics in the 12th and 13th centuries. We know that. And we have a trace of heretic persecutions in Iceland. In one case that came up in 1343, when a nun was burned for having made a pact with the devil, but not least for fornicating with several laymen, as it was stated.

So that execution is a heretic one, but that is the only example of an execution by burning that we know of in Iceland from the Catholic time, that is, from the year of 1000 to the Reformation of 150. But shortly after the Reformation, the persecutions of heretics start to develop into persecutions of witchcraft in Europe in the late 16th century, culminating in the 17th century. So it seems that the tradition, or she has said the culture of the Lutheran Church has brought about some socio-psychological changes in our own. Iceland. And the mass form of the church was different, also the manner of preaching with great emphasis on the devil and the devil's work in the world. All magic and witchcraft was suddenly claimed to be rooted in the cunning of the devil. Priests preached about these threats of the devil, and they did so with such fervor that women fell into a day's during,

masses and were carried out of the churches moaning and groaning and half-uncious as happened, for example, in Trikidlisvik, in Strandir, in the west side of Iceland, for example. So it's safe to say that in general there was a great fear of witchcraft. You know, all of a sudden the devil was all around and this caused a hysterical common fear and atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion towards your fellow and your neighbour, resulting in a witch craze in certain areas such as the Westchurch. Leading the charge on this ideology of witchcraft and its threat of evil were two men, whose impact and influence in the region cannot be underestimated.

As with Pendle, it's an ambitious man with an agenda at the heart of these witch trials. One as a spiritual leader, Reverend Paul Biasson in Selarthalur, and the other a secular leader Thurleivur Kortson, the magistrate and a lawman of North and West. Thorlevur Kortson, he was a man of German descent who had spent his years of youth in Germany and presumably soaked up the currents of the magic fanatics in Europe. And as a magistrate and a lawman of North and West District of Iceland, he had great influence on the witch persecutions. And Reverend Patlbjusson was considered to be the most educated man in Iceland at the time,

besides from Bishop Brinilver Svensson in the south. And when those two forces combined together, the spiritual one and the secular one, we have the fact that of those 23 people that were burnt at the stake in the 17th century, all were in the jurisdiction of those two men, either living or working in the north or west, and 16 from the Westwards in particular. And we can see, we can compare this to the south side of Iceland, where the main influential figures of spiritual and secular, authorities were peaceful men, Bishop Brinjolussein Sonat Skowrhold, and the magistrate of South

Iceland, Gisley Magnuson, who was called Gisle the Wise. And those two men had little interest in the ideology of witchcraft. They were not keen on persecuting their neighbors as witches. So nobody was executed for witchcraft in their jurisdiction. And the number of witch trials in the South were much less than in the Westfields. So there is seeing how individuals can affect the world. Yes. Why do you think that those two men were really crazy about the witch trials when nobody else was?

Well, it can be seen from the writings of Reverend Paul Piotl Pioson that he knew the witch's hammer, Maléficaum Malifikas, a famous book that was written in the late 15th century by two monks, Springer and Kramer, were the giving the ideology of the devilish witchcraft and instructions about how to investigate witches. And this is a terrible book that was nevertheless, in most universities and most parts of Europe. And our officials that took their education in Denmark or in North Europe, they knew this. book and they had read it. And it is very obvious from the writings of Reverend Paul Piersson that he knew the content of the Witch's Hammer. And in his own writings such as Character

Bestie, which is one book he wrote, you can see long chapters verbally the same as the Witch's Hammer. So he was obviously influenced by the ideology of mid-Europe. And Thorlover Kortsson, as I mentioned before, the magistrate, he had been staying in Germany for quite a while. So he was influenced as well. He obviously had read this book and understood it. It's like fan fiction, but just mad fan fiction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, they are said to the witches are claimed to be child murderers.

Yep. murdering child, boiling them, melting their flesh into remedies and medicine. The fundamental idea behind this, of course, is the fear of women's knowledge, the folk knowledge of women. They took care of sick people. They practiced healing. They had most likely some methods to prevent birth child. Controception. Yeah, contraceptions.

All of this was a threat to the church. It contradicted the ideology of the church. And the purpose of the propaganda of the church was, of course, to get power over people's minds. This was a power conflict, you know, full traditions versus the message of the church. So the whole thing was rooted in ideological contradicts and a power game, so to speak. What's strange is that the Malius Malifacarum hates women. It says women are going to be witches. And Beerson, if he was a big fan, I'm not sure if he hated women too.

But the people that are accused of witchcraft in Iceland are mostly men. So who was the first person to be accused? Was that a man or a woman? Well, the first person to be accused in the 17th century was a man. But we have oral tales about a woman being executed in the year of 1580 as a witch. But the first witch trial is in 1625, and that is a man that is being executed then. So we have three women being executed before the actual era of witch trials.

after 1625, until it all was over in 1683, only one woman was burnt at the stake. Fascinating. But, you know, why didn't the ideology of the female witch, the devilish female witch, why didn't that not get rooted in Icelandic witch trials? That has to do with the status of women, I think, in Icelandic society. They were bound to the household. They were taking care of children and the older ones, taking care of births and taking care of dying people. They were serving the fishermen when they came from sea, etc.

Cooking, making remedies for the whole household, mending clothes, etc. But they did not have a social status, so to speak, no formal social status. And they did not own properties. And many of the witch trials were raised around, you know, disputes about properties and influence. And women were not so much involved in that kind of thing in the 17th century. So that can be one reason as well. Despite this being the case, there was, however, one woman who played a huge part in the Icelandic witch trials for all the wrong reasons. Enter Helga Hal Dorse Dotya, wife of the Reverend Powell Bjornson.

She was a very paranoid woman. Reverend Paul seems to have been very much in love with her though and very keen on how she felt and how she was doing from one day to another. But Helga seems to have suffered from some mental illness and emotional disturbance. and her illness and complaints about suffering and distress, they obviously have impact on Reverend Pout's mental state as well. And, you know, we do not know what was bothering Helga. She struggled with a strange illness that began in the 1660s,

but intensified in the decades that followed. and her distress seemed to come in fits, causing both her and the rest of the household troubles. By the summer of 1669, Helga's illness hasn't shifted. Her condition is deteriorating as PAL's fervour for witchcraft is peaking. Looking for reason, Helga believes local man, John Leifson, has cursed her. She knows him because she was vehemently against him marrying one of her maids. Believing he's responsible, Helga's husband, Reverend Powell Bjornson, formally charges John with witchcraft and he's brought to trial soon after.

On the day of his trial, John Leifson stands before the district magistrate, a man called Egert Bjornson, who just so happens to be Powell's half-brother. The two have spent time in Denmark and Germany and are well aware of the witch trials. After rigorous interrogation and solitary confinement, John Leifson confesses to the crime of sorcery. Egott doesn't hesitate and sentences him to be burnt for witchcraft, which will take place in the nearby valley just before the Assembly of Parliament. But the case isn't done. Before he's killed, John confesses that local man, Ilenda Ayolfson, taught him everything he knew when it came to witchcraft. the master for all the evil he was capable of.

This case was far from closed. I'll be back after this short break. With John Leifson, sentenced to be burned as a witch, he moves district magistrate Egert's attention to Erlender Ayolfson, the man who supposedly taught him everything he knew about sorcery, a master in the evil arts of witchcraft. Egert and Paul are now compelled to snuff out this evil at his evil.

its source. In a letter to two lawyers, Powell describes Erlender as the devil's cesspool, from which everything evil that people might lust for flows. His influence is huge and it's only a matter of time before Erlender too is tied to the stake and the fires are lit. Before his death in 1669, Erlender admits to witchcraft and to teaching others. How far had this evil spread in such a small community. Paul's work to rid Celadal of witches is far from over. Now things started to get wild, like a devilish march with strange phenomena and discomfort and illness and bad dreams of not only Helga, but the whole household. So finally, Poutl and his wife fled the place with their three children, and they did not

return until all of the farmhouses had been burnt down to cleans the place of evil spirits. Wow. Yeah. So this was quite a situation. However, this was only the beginning of the misfortune of the individuals who were eventually burnt at the stake for the charges of the people of Selertalur. What was the law around witchcraft at this time? How would you be accused?

did they prove a charge of witchcraft? What was it under the law at this time? Well, at this time, so-called oaths were the usual practice. The oaths were comparable to today's jury, such as in the United States. But the difference, however, was that in a small society like Iceland, it was impossible to choose neutral oath takers. But the arrangement was such that in which craft cases, 12 or seven people had to swear guilt or innocence of the defendant. And as a result, people were dependent on their neighbor's mercy. Their case was obviously influenced by slander and rumors. And it seems to be. seems that there has not been much burden of proof in witchcraft cases and rarely any use of actual

evidence. However, there seems to have been a lot of pressure put on the defendants to confess. And so it often happened that people confessed to witchcraft. However, the confessions did not always match the charges. And sometimes confessions came after the verdict had been made. That had to do with religious reasons, I think, because people thought they should show repentance before the death. But legal knowledge among Icelanders seems to have been limited at the time. They judged more often by the word of God than by the current law. And the word of God, that is to say, the word of God in the Old Testament, which they most often expounded. The provincial burnings, that is the execution of people in the district where they lived, without being tried by the Althinke.

Althinke was not only a legislative assembly at the time, but also a court. But executing people in the district without taking them to Althinki, that was in fact illegal for the entire time the executions for witchcraft took place. because the Danish king, who was our king at the time, he had in the early 17th century issued a decree that no death sentences should be given in cases of life and honor by a lower court level, but only by the superior court. And this decree was not respected in Iceland for almost the entire 17th century. and people were sentenced and executed by provincial court, a lower court level, without any right of appeal until the year of 1883 when the last district burning took place.

Why were they doing that? Why were they not following the law? Or why did the king not intervene and say, excuse me, I do have a law about this, that you are all ignoring? Well, the king intervened as late as 1683. I suppose that the king was not, you know, he had many other things to do than to look and take care of Icelanders somewhere in the north, you know, a nation of 50,000 people. I suspect also that the Icelandic lawman and those that were making those sentences,

their knowledge was not as it should have been in law. their legal knowledge was not as good as it should have been. These are small communities, small rural communities, and they're burning people to death. In Britain, they hanged witches. They let them hang. But in Iceland, they burnt them to death. And I'm trying to imagine what that must have been like for a small community

to go and watch your neighbour being burnt to death. You know, the common people were supposed to witness it. and we have descriptions of people kicking and moving from the fire, falling off the fire and being put on it again. And the writers of the annals, the old newsletters of old times we call the annals, some of them describe their inner feelings while witnessing this, saying that it was a horrendous thing to watch, etc. We do not see any legal ground for this. method of execution there is to burn up people to death. In some countries, people were executed before they were burnt. But in Iceland, they were burnt alive. But we have no legal phrase claiming that that is what you should do until the period of the witch trials was over.

Then we first see it in some decree from the king that the convicted are supposed to be burned to death. So there was no legal ground for this. It was just some kind of a tradition rooted in the burning of the heretics in the 12th and 13th and 14th centuries in Europe. How many people were burnt to death for witchcraft in Iceland in total? Well, in total, 25 people were burnt to death, but we can say that 23 of them were burnt as witches. The embers from 1669's witch burnings have long died down. Helga's health has appeared to improve, but the threat of witchcraft hasn't gone away. Now in 1675, Helga's mysterious illness has returned, and with her husband pallet aside, thoughts once again quickly turn to witches. Who could be responsible? Who

needs to pay the ultimate price? Head's turn to Magnus Bian Arson. and Lassie Didrickson, who are accused of causing her and others in the household to fall ill. The court moved fast in their prosecutions, with Helga ensuring that they were hit with the full force of the law. Lassie protested vehemently, but without the 12 men to vouch for his character, his fate was sealed. When the moment came and the kindling was lit and Lassie felt the first lick of flames, rain dampened the wood and the fire went out. It was relit a further two times before the district magistrate's justice was delivered. Walking home from the court, he fell and broke his foot,

a sign that many thought meant that Lassie was innocent. Despite this, a further two men were killed in 1678 for using witchcraft to cause Helga's ill health. And of the 22 executed for witchcraft in Iceland, 20 were men. In the third and final part of Inside the Witch Trials, we head across the Atlantic Ocean to a community where settlers in a new and unfamiliar world are cast into disarray by an enslaved woman. She starts confessing that she's had this traffic with the devil,

you know, the devil has come to her and tempted her, and she's become a witch. And we explore how the effects of Salem and all these witch trials are still being felt today. people in the society around me, they're working with the demons, they're representatives of the demons, I miss killed them.

It is absolutely a pure conspiracy theory. Thank you for listening, and thank you to Dr. Alina Kerloof, Thor Varthardotiaf, for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts.

If you like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixtaththyhit.com. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckworth, the senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, the history of sex scandal in society,

a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.