Case file · Witch trials
Vardø witch trial of 1621
After a storm on Christmas Eve 1617 drowned some forty fishermen off Finnmark, women in Vardø were accused of raising it; the 1621 trial was the first great witch trial of northern Norway.
1621 CE · 70.37, 31.11 · status: official
The account
It was followed by mass trials in 1651–53 and 1662–63. In all, 91 people were executed in Finnmark; the Steilneset Memorial by Louise Bourgeois and Peter Zumthor (2011) commemorates them.