About when we burned witches in Stavanger – and parallels we see today
CHRONICLE: The witchcraft trials were a dark chapter in the city which will now become a national center for freedom of expression and democracy.
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Anne Tove Austbø
City History Association Stavanger
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Hans Eyvind Næss
City History Association Stavanger
This is a discussion post. The entry was written by an external contributor, and quality assured by Aftenbladet’s debate department. Opinions and analyzer are the writer’s own.
September 30, 1622 – 400 years ago this week – diaper Johanne Pedersdatter (1583–1622) burned in Sandviken, approximately where the Stavanger concert hall is located today. Together with Vardø and Bergen, Stavanger was a main center for sorcery cases that ended in death. In our town, 12 people were executed as sorcerers over the course of 60 years.
The men of the church took the lead, and the victims were primarily women. This is also part of the cultural heritage that we should take with us when we want Stavanger to be at the forefront of the limits and conditions of expression.
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Why was Johanne judged?
Johanne was married to Simen Jacobsen and had four children. Rumors against her had been circulating for many years. Johanne had been suspected of being able to exercise harmful magic, i.e. the ability to make people and animals sick, or kill them. Any person in the city could go to the city bailiff with his suspicions and have a charge brought against a suspect.
One of many witnesses was Mads Gregersen. He swore that 11 years earlier he had argued with Simen Jakobsen and Johanne Pedersdatter about the inheritance from Mads’ parents-in-law, and “they argued and tied up about it”. After that time, Mads’ wife had «never had a day of health». Whether this was inflicted on the wife by God or men «God must know». But he had suspected that it was Johanne Pedersdatter who had caused the illness.
She had already been sentenced to imprisonment on 10 September, among other things to prevent escape before the verdict was handed down. Until 28 September, she was subjected to torture by order of the sheriff. The details are not known, but the most likely thing is that the confession was tortured out of her on a bench in the Kongsgårdkjelleren. Then she was condemned and burned.
To us, the stories appear somewhat believable, but in those days it was part of the church’s preaching and state legislation that wizards existed and had to be removed.
Religions and society
female oppression see
us today too.
Judgment and punishment
The sentence that fell on Johanne is recorded in Exodus 22.18 in the Bible: «You shall not let a sorceress live.» Burning people alive was the worst of all punishments. But it was practiced in many countries, including Norway.
The beliefs of the time were a result of the Reformation in 1536. The King of God’s grace in Copenhagen ordered his subjects to live according to the Bible in the literal sense. Thus, the death penalty was carried out for a wide range of acts, such as murder, infanticide, sodomy (sexual intercourse with animals), incest and more. In Rogaland alone, nearly 300 people were sentenced to death in the 17th century.
The death penalty was a punishment of intimidation – the population had to be scared from committing similar acts to which the convicted person was sentenced. So the inhabitants near the place of execution had to come forward to witness the barbarity. We can assume that many saw Johanne burning.
The Norwegian macabre criminal laws were slowly abandoned as a fruit of the Enlightenment. They were removed from the legislation in 1842.
Women’s oppression
The witchcraft cases mostly affected women. The women were believed to possess more abilities to perform magic than the men. This was the case in most countries in Europe. In some countries, it was people who were most often given such supernatural abilities.
It is important to be aware that religion’s and society’s oppression of women has not always been something foreign to us, but an active content of our own local culture. It is Norwegian cultural history, and the content is relevant today.
In many countries, the death penalty is practiced against magicians and sorcerers. Other similarly brutal punishments are enforced under sharia law, Islam’s parallel to the penal code of the books of Moses. There, too, women are most exposed to the oppression of the state and religious leaders.
The public brutality that has long characterized our country, right up to fundamentalist beliefs and state governance was replaced by scientific and rational thinking in the Age of Enlightenment, has contributed to secularisation, democracy, freedom of thought and freedom of expression. In many countries, such as Russia and China, the tank is not free. Many are imprisoned for their opinions if they violate the state’s public opinion.
Today’s brutal dictatorships are variants of what Stavanger Johanne Pedersdatter grew up in, a regime with state religion – state ideology – but without freedom of spirit.
Bjergsted–Sandviken as a memorial?
Development of the whole of Bjergsted–Sandviken is now being planned. Those who for various reasons were oppressed, punished and executed in Stavanger belong here. Admittedly, it is a long leap from the time when going and watching the killing of fellow citizens in Sandviken was imposed by the state power, to today’s music offering with festivals and full halls in the Concert House. But actuality is still around us.
The city history association wants to highlight all aspects of this theme, and among other things, plenty of space for the case in the upcoming issue of the member magazine Stavangeren, which deals with the theme “Crime and punishment”.
We also want to make this dark chapter in the city’s history more widely known. The victims of state oppression and persecution should be given their place in museum exhibitions and in other ways. A concrete proposal is to establish a memorial grove in Sandviken, at the place where the execution took place.