01x05 - Sweden: The Legend of Blåkulla

[bunniefuu]

[♪ eerie music playing]

[narrator] Sweden,
the mid 1600s.

A simple argument
between two children

sparks a horrific
series of witch trials

known as the Great Noise.

- It was a girl, Gertrud,
who was 11 years old,

and a boy, Mats.

- They're both goat herds.

It's a summer's day and
some goats have got loose.

And in that ingenious way
goats have of making trouble,

have managed to put
themselves on a small island

in a river, so
they're hard to get.

- They get into an
argument and Gertrud goes

to this little island
and she gets them back.

Mats gets embarrassed
because she is the one

that fetches the goats.

- It's a childish dispute of
which there were probably

hundreds of thousands
in Europe at the time,

but it's what's
made of that story

that makes it much
more sinister.

[Ronald Hutton] Having fallen
out with a younger girl,

he's bent on revenge by
spreading smear stories.

And when they go back home,
Mats Nilsson tells his family

that Gertrud walked on water to
the island to get the goats.

[Goran Malmstedt] He also told
his father that she could walk

on water because she had asked
for help from the devil.

[Ronald Hutton] This would have
meant nothing if the village

hadn't happened to have an
inquisitive religious minister

who is obsessed by Satan.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup] This
argument about herding goats

causes the greatest witch panic
in Northern Europe.

[Goran Malmstedt] The Great
Noise is the name of a major

series of witch trials in
Sweden during the years

from 1668 to 1676.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup] Up
until 1668, Sweden had very few

witch trials and
then this exploded.

And within these seven, eight
years, 300 people were ex*cuted.

[Alison Rowlands] It's a very
kind of unusual anomalous

period of time in relation
to the general history

of witch trials in Sweden.

This is a Lutheran context,
so we're in a Protestant

Lutheran context.

People will always have
believed in magic.

They'll always have
believed in the possibility

that witches could work magic.

What you see in the 17th
century is more of a spread

of those demonological
ideas about witchcraft

as a group activity, witchcraft
as a possible heresy.

[Ronald Hutton] Witch hunting
was dying out in its

traditional heartlands
like Germany and England.

And the Northern periphery of
Sweden was where it broke out

after the big witch hunts
were over in Central Europe.

[Goran Malmstedt] The children,
Gertrud and Mats,

lived in a village called
Asen that was part of the

parish Alvdalen in Darlana.

It was a small village.

I suppose everyone knew
each other very well.

When this story got
known in the village

and the vicar heard of it, he
wanted to interrogate Gertrud

and ask what she had
to do with the devil.

[Alison Rowlands] Some of
these local ministers are

particularly zealous moralists
and they're looking for sin

and looking for the
works of the devil

in what might, first of
all, be fairly innocent

stories and arguments.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
Normally, a pastor would call
in the suspected parishioner

and he would probably
start by questioning her

and also admonishing her that
she should tell the truth

for the sake of
her own salvation.

[Goran Malmstedt] We don't know
about what happened.

But we can be sure
that he was harsh

and he used cruel methods
to frighten Gertrud,

who was 11 years old.

[Ronald Hutton]He spends an
entire winter on and off

trying to get Gertrud to
confess to being a witch.

And she might have
escaped if another boy,

this time a 15-year-old,
hadn't told the minister

that he had had a
vision in the woods

in which he had seen
Gertrud being transported off

to join the witch's
Sabbath at Blåkulla.

[Goran Malmstedt] Blåkulla
is a mythological place

where the witches
met with the devil,

and the place where the
witches took children.

The witches and the abducted
children flew to Blåkulla

sometimes upside down, cows,
but also on broomsticks

or other things.

[Ronald Hutton] The idea
of Blåkulla, which means

blue mountain, is
centuries old, by the 1660s.

The first evidence for it
consists of wall paintings

in late medieval
Scandinavian churches.

And they very clearly
show witches,

on very early broomsticks,
flying off to Blåkulla.

- The idea really
is that witches

have a regular meeting place,
and this is common to a number

of different cultures
of witchcraft.

But in this case, it's a
particular mountaintop

called the Blåkulla,
and it's assumed

that witches from
all over Sweden

can gather on this mountaintop.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup] The
Blåkulla descriptions differ

from other Sabbath stories.

It's the idea that this
is also a bright place.

[Goran Malmstedt] People
danced and they had a
lot of food to eat.

They also often got nice
gifts from the devil.

- Somehow it's more festive,
and when the witches meet the

devil, they have more fun.

So they have the
positive things,

but they also have
the evil things.

[Ronald Hutton]
Worshipping Satan,

promising loyalty to Satan,

eating, drinking,
dancing back to back,

and doing most
things in reverse,

then finding that the food
and drink turns to ashes

or leaves you hungry and
thirstier than before.

[Goran Malmstedt] There were
also orgies of some kinds

where the witches got
laid by the devil.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup] The
Witches Sabbath is a sexually

charged place, and the entire
relationship is always defined

by somewhat the witch showing
her allegiance to the devil.

And then you have that idea of
when witches defy the devil,

and he would comb
off their skin,

and he would put it on
spikes, and he would torment

them forever.

[Julian Goodare] It's a
folkloric idea that children

might be abducted to
the Witches Sabbath,

but the authorities seem to
be willing to go with it.

Somehow it makes the transition
from crazy folk tale

to, "Oh, wait a
minute, this is real.

This is actually happening."

[narrator] Over many months, the
priest interrogates Gertrud,

desperate to force a confession
from the innocent girl.

The minister thinks he's got
a critical mass of evidence

against Gertrud, and Gertrud
breaks and begins to confess.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup] When
Gertrud finally confessed,

she actually confessed that
she had walked on water.

Her feet had been
rubbed with oil,

and that was what made her
able to walk on water.

What happened to her
was what happened

in a lot of witch trials.

They were broken down,
but they were also maybe

starting to believe things.

She would have heard the same
questions over and over again,

and the parish priest would
appeal to her conscience,

telling her that it
would be for the sake

of her own salvation
if she would only make

a full confession.

So she would probably have
thought at some point

that this would be of
her own good to confess,

or maybe she would even
have started to believe it.

[Ronald Hutton] She gives us
her reason for confessing

after denying
everything all winter,

that an angel has appeared
to her at Blåkulla

and told her if she
doesn't fess up,

then a famine's
gonna hit Sweden,

loads of people are
gonna starve to death.

That way, Gertrud
reveals herself

as a kind of patriotic
heroine, and so worthy of

sympathy and reprieve.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup] What
interrogators in witchcraft

trials always wanted to do
was to map the group of people

that were involved in this,
because the interrogators

want to have confirmation
that this is not just

a one-time event.

This is something that
happens regularly.

[Goran Malmstedt] Every time you
got a witch, the court wanted to

know which other witches
she knew were in this area.

She corroborates all the
details of the revels there

and of worshipping Satan,
and of there being lots

of other witches present.

They wouldn't just say, "I've
been taken to a Sabbath."

They would say, "I
have been taken

"by a very specific individual."

[Ronald Hutton] She also
provides a backstory,

which is how years before,

the person who took
her to Blåkulla,

and therefore is really the
most to blame for everything,

is a former maidservant
in her father's household

called Maret Jonsdotter.

And this is where
the match is applied

to the fumes of the
Swedish witch hunt.

[narrator] As the
interrogations continue,

Gertrud gives more
terrifying details

of the Witches'
Sabbath she attended

with her family's former
maidservant, Maret.

[Louise Kallestrup] What
Gertrud is telling during her

interrogations is confirming
their worst fears.

Somebody were taking
the children to the

cult of the devil.

This could not be more horrible
to the early modern dwellers.

[♪ foreboding music]

[Ronald Hutton] There's some
family business involved here

because it turns
out that her father

had tried to marry
Maret, and that another

suitor of the maid
had beaten the father

up and humiliated him.

[Goran Malmstedt] The plans for
a marriage was postponed.

I think Gertrud accusing
Maret has something to do

with this old conflict.

This is now an accusation
against an adult

because the maidservant
concerned is in her late 30s,

and so a prime target
for a proper accusation.

[Goran Malmstedt] When the
people in Maret's village

heard of these accusations,
they immediately

arranged a court session
in Lillhärdal in this

village where Maret lived.

[door slams shut]

♪ ♪

[Ronald Hutton] The father of
Gertrud, presumably both with a

grudge against his ex-employee,
Maret, and also a desire to try

and save his daughter,
actually testifies his own

belief that Maret was a witch.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
He claims that she has
made him sick,

that she rode him across
the sky to Blåkulla.

It's no coincidence that
we have these accusations

from men towards women
where men have lost face.

We very much have to interpret
witchcraft accusations

within the gender hierarchy.

I don't think there
can be any doubt

that he did this
out of vengeance.

♪ ♪

[Ronald Huttdon] All three of
Maret's siblings, who are much

younger than she is, accuse
her of doing everything

that Gertrud said she'd done,
so these youngsters have

clearly taken against
their elder sister

and are out to get her as well.

[muted dialogue]

So all this piles up a
formidable convergence

of evidence against poor
Maret from both Gertrud's

family and her own family.

[Goran Malmstedt] We don't know
if they were forced to do so

or if they got
manipulated in some way

that made them perhaps also
believe that this was true.

♪ ♪

[Diane Purkiss] It's quite
common for girls to get their

own back in these ways.

The society that produced
the witch trials

was viciously hierarchical
and children were completely

at the beck and call of
older relatives, typically.

This led to a situation in
which children were able

to exercise a really
powerful counter-strike

against the older women
who dominated their lives

by accusing those older
women of witchcraft.

[Ronald Hutton] There are some
glorious juvenile details

in the testimony of
poor Maret's siblings,

being made to sign their names
in a special big black book

containing those of
people who'd given their

allegiance to Satan.

[Goran Malmstedt] The most
important thing in Blåkulla,

actually, was that the devil
wanted the visitors

to write their name
in his black book

and he used their
own blood then.

That meant that the visitors,
the children and the witches,

had made a pact with the devil.

[Ronald Hutton] The idea grew
up that on taking somebody

into his service, the
devil put a brand on them,

a special kind of mark.

[Louise Nyhold Kallestrup] The
devil's mark is something that

we see in a number of trials
all over Europe.

It could be a mole, a birthmark.

It could also simply be a
small bump in the skin.

[Goran Malstedt] Maret actually
had a scar on one of her fingers

and the court thought that
that was where the devil

had taken blood from her to
write her name in the book.

Enormous pressure is
put on Maret to confess.

Bullying, threats, sleep
deprivation, et cetera.

♪ ♪

At this stage, Swedish law
will not allow the execution

of somebody who
refuses to confess.

She very bravely
refuses to confess,

but it doesn't
actually rescue Maret.

In April 1669, Maret
was sentenced guilty

despite her denial.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup] She's
in fact put back in prison

and she will be staying
there for four more years

before anything else
happens to her.

[Ronald Hutton] The whole
witch hunt centered upon Maret

didn't die down because
the lurid stories had

spread like wildfire through
the neighboring region.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup] What
happened in "The Great Noise"

is that you determine
that witchcraft

becomes a Crimen Exceptum,
which means it's an

exceptional crime.

You can set aside
normal procedures.

You could bend the laws,
you could change the laws,

because this was a super crime.

♪ ♪

[Goran Malmstedt] In 1672, the
court decided that Maret should

be ex*cuted despite not having
confessed anything.

[♪ dark choral music]

♪ ♪

The authorities realized that
waiting for a confession

didn't always work,
and they thought that

they had to do that.

They couldn't keep those witches
still working with the devil.

♪ ♪

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
Of course, people talked.

People were talking
to their neighbors.

They were talking when
they met at markets.

This was gossip.

It had all of the
bits and pieces

that you find in
present-day tabloid.

The more official channels
were in churches,

and these pastors were clearly
preoccupied with these stories,

basically putting fear
into people's minds.

You can actually
see how the panic

is slowly spreading from
one parish to another

in the province of Dalarna.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
Hundreds of children come
forward and tell the story

that they have also been
abducted to Blåkulla.

[Ronald Hutton] A complete
moral panic begins with parents

tying their children down to the
beds or having blessings put by

the priests on the doorways,
and a whole range of

other remedies like that.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup] After
the witch panic had traveled

through the Älvdalen,
it spread to Mora

in the early 1669.

A parish delegate from
Mora goes to Stockholm

with a list of 35
children's names.

They want a commission
to come to Mora

to help them investigate
these cases.

Usually, a witch trial would
be handled in the local court,

so when you did, in
fact, issue an order

to send out a commission,
something really

extraordinary was at play.

♪ ♪

In August '69, a commission
of eight priests

and eight laymen are sent to
Mora to investigate the trials.

They need to prove
to local society

that they take responsibility
and they are taking the

right measures in this,
but at the same time,

it's in their interest
to calm things down.

♪ ♪

A common trial would be
the person involved,

his or her accuser,
some witnesses,

and you would have a large
audience from local society.

But the commissions and
the way they worked,

everything was enlarged.

[Ronald Hutton] The witch
trials at Mora are

the public entertainment
of two decades.

They are the best show in town.

This is a thinly
populated rural district.

It's said quite credibly
that 3,000 spectators turn

up to the first sitting, but
also when the people leave,

they will fan out across
the entire district,

carrying vivid stories from
the witnesses with them

and stoke suspicion further.

♪ ♪

[Goran Malmstedt] The
accused people were in court

and the witnesses would
tell their stories,

and the interrogation was
done by the members of

the commissions.

After they have made
their interrogation,

they voted on if they
were guilty or not,

and if there was a majority,
they could condemn them

to the death penalty.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup] The
commission finishes its

investigations within two weeks,
and that is incredibly fast.

It's not uncommon for
a witchcraft trial

to drag out in years.

The fact that you can sentence

and interrogate
hundreds of people

is simply impressive.

♪ ♪

[narrator] With so many sons
and daughters ensnared

in the tales of Blåkulla
and the Witches Sabbath,

the court forces children
to take the stand.

[Ronald Hutton] Yes,
child witnesses are not
as reliable as adults,

but you can make them
so by multiples.

The testimony of
two 14-year-olds

equals that of one
adult witness,

so you keep on raising the
number of children needed

the further down you go to
make up a competent witness.

[Alison Rowlands] There's always
the possibility that children

who tell these stories
are labeled as ill,

and there's always
the possibility

that they could be labeled as
play-acting or fraudulent.

[Julian Goodare]
On the other hand,

children are kind of
innocent and pure,

and they haven't
become corrupted

in the way that
adults might become.

[Louise Nyhold Kallestrup] What
they testify about is something

so mystical that only people who
have been there, attended it,

would know what happened.

So they could tell you
all the greasy stories

and still be the victims.

[Goran Malmstedt] I think the
stories are a mixture of

child fantasies, but also people
making the interrogations,

as well as the
children's parents.

♪ ♪

They used to arrange what
they call wake houses,

where all the children that was
suspected to go to Blåkulla

was held awake by some
adults, because they thought

that the abduction
happened when the

children was asleep.

[Allison Rowlands] Once they're
kept in groups, the risk is that

they spread stories and
ideas amongst themselves.

If you're deprived of sleep,
you're more likely to tell

fantastic stories anyway
and want to tell them so

that you can get some rest.

They are being done with
this very misguided,

but probably genuine, belief
that people were trying

to help the children.

♪ ♪

[Ronald Hutton] Within
a few weeks, they have

They sentence 23 to
death, and they end up

putting to death 15, and
that's from Mora alone.

[Goran Malmstedt] Why people
confessed is complex.

There were a lot of
social pressure on them.

Children crying and
begging them to confess.

[Louise Nyhold Kallestrup]
They are promised
salvation if they confess.

Maybe even the suspected
are interrogated so roughly

so they start believing that
they have done these things.

♪ ♪

The executions took place on
the 24th of August, 1669.

sent to the pyres,

but before being
sent to the pyres,

they were all beheaded.

♪ ♪

[Alison Rowlands] The logic
at the time was it was a
very tiny shred of mercy

shown to the condemned
by k*lling them quickly

before their remains
were burned.

[Ronald Hutton] Once they are
beheaded, their heads and their

bodies are tied to stakes
so that the observers

can see them clearly,
and then they're

burned to ashes,
hanging from the stakes

in clumps like grapes.

[Diane Purkiss] The
underlying notion is that
to rid the area of witches,

you have to completely
destroy their bodies as well.

Just k*lling them and depriving
their body of volition

won't do the job.

[fire crackling]

[narrator] These executions
are made possible

by the hundreds of
child witnesses

drawn into Mora's witch trials.

Their testimonies secure
convictions and executions,

but the children have also
incriminated themselves.

Some of the children
were punished

because they had
been in Blåkulla.

They could be flogged, or they
could be shamed in the church.

[Ronald Hutton] Or it can be
made into a running of the

gauntlet whereby a posse of
adults line up,

and the child is made
to run between them

and is thrashed
heavily or lightly

according to the personality
of the adult concerned.

It's possible they're
also regarded

with a certain amount of
esteem in their communities

for having brought really
evil adults to their deaths.

[Alison Rowlands] Because there
had been very few executions

for witchcraft before this time
in Sweden, the impact of the

public executions would
have been immense.

[Ronald Huttdon] Observers,
especially in Stockholm and
the Royal Court,

are beginning to
ask hard questions

about the speed with which
the trials were conducted

and the carelessness with
which evidence was evaluated.

[Goran Malmstedt] One of
the members of the council
is reported to have said

that the more you touch
this, the worse it will get.

But if you acted drastically
in this kind of crisis,

it could only get worse.

At the same time, we have
these demands from the parishes

to send out new commissions,
so even though the government

find them ineffective, they
are still under pressure

from local societies.

[Ronald Huttdon] The Mora
trials are a centrifuge,

with thousands of people
having watched them.

These people then go home
and spread all the stories

they've heard there.

Once the children start
to dish out the stories,

the spreading waves of
accusation become hard to stop.

The spotlight shifts to a
hitherto totally obscure parish

in rural north-central
Sweden called Torsåker,

and that's going to become
the quintessence of horror

in Swedish witch trials.

[multiple distorted sounds]

[sheep bleating]

[Goran Malmstedt] Torsåker is a
small society in Norland,

in the province of Ã…ngermanland,
close to the coastline in

the northern of Sweden.

They were farmers, and
they had crop failures

this year and the
year before also.

It was difficult times for them.

[Ronald Hutton] We now bring a
really interesting character

onto the stage.

He is a proper
villain of the peace.

His name is Laurentius
Horneus, and he is a young,

ambitious Lutheran minister.

Unfortunately,
everything, it seems,

that we know about his
career as a witch hunter

comes from two
generations later,

from his grandson working
on some local records

and also on stories told
to him when he was a child

by his grandmother.

So the evidence in this
case is a little bit dodgy,

but it is the most spectacular
single witch hunt in Sweden.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
Two years after being
installed as a pastor,

he receives a letter from
the central government

that he should investigate
and start trials

against potential witches.

[Goran Malmstedt] And if they
could also get these suspected

witches to confess, that
would be the best.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
Compared to his colleagues,

he was taking this order
very, very seriously.

[Diane Purkiss] This
clergyman was so committed

to the idea that
there were witches

that he was willing
to do almost anything

to ensure that the case
could be properly prosecuted

and the accused convicted.

Witch trial is,
among other things,

an opportunity for
fame and fortune.

If you are a fairly ordinary
justice of the peace

or clergyman, and you
successfully prosecute

lots of people for witchcraft,
you get your name in the papers.

You stop being Joe Ordinary
and become somebody

who's rid the world
of a major menace.

[church bell tolling]

[Goran Malstedt] Hornaeus, he
was the one responsible

for the children witnesses.

He used what is called
"Visgossar". Wise boys.

There were a couple
of boys in this area

that said that they
had capability

to see who were
the real witches.

And they can do so
simply by looking at them

and seeing signs on the forehead
that mark somebody as a witch.

They are generally very poor.

They're early teenage.

[Goran Malmstedt] They were
traveling around in this area,

offering parishes and
priests that they could

point out the witches
if they only got paid.

[Ronald Hutton] They
are believed, because
they're supposed

to be the kind of people who
go to the Witches' Sabbath

taken on and groomed
by adult witches.

When people came
out of service,

they would stand and they
would point to the people

that they would
believe were witches.

Everybody would fear
meeting these boys.

Could be enemies
of their families,

people they've fallen out with,
or it could be the people

that the minister has
primed them to identify.

[Ronald Hutton] One of them
actually accuses Hornaeus' own

wife, and she has the presence
of mind to slap the adolescent

across the face and
realizing people

are turning on him.

He then claims he was
blinded by the sun

and made a mistake and
backpedals very fast.

♪ ♪

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
The t*rture methods applied
by Laurentius are gruesome.

He would be what we would
call a true sadist, I think.

He would dunk children and
people into ice water,

and he would shovel the
children into ovens.

If you had seen the images
of hell in churches,

just imagine how frightening
it must have been

to be put into an oven.

[Diane Purkiss] He's almost
behaving like the wicked witch

in the "Hansel and Gretel" tale.

To catch a witch, you have
to be a witch, it seems.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
Laurentius does not limit

himself to torturing children
and suspected witches.

He also tortures
regular witnesses,

so he is really
zealous in his efforts

of extracting what he
believes is the truth.

♪ ♪

[Diane Purkiss] The very fact
that you've pinned your hopes

on the idea that children
will be able to tell you

about being kidnapped by
witches means that you want the

next child that you
speak to to confirm that

version of the story and
make your case for you.

You tend to sort of sink
all your intellectual

and legal capital in a
particular version of events.

[Ronald Hutton] He would
often construct testimony

by taking really
rather fragmented,

inadequate testimony from a
number of different witnesses

and fusing it together
to make one polished

and apparently convincing
single testimony.

[narrator] Now Hornaeus
has completed his

vicious investigations, the
trial in Torsåker can begin.

Overseen by the
local authorities,

it will become one
of the bloodiest

witch trials in Sweden.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup] In
an ordinary witchcraft trial,

you would have maybe
one, maybe two,

maybe three suspects
charged with witchcraft.

Maybe you will have
one execution.

Laurentius Hornaeus
had, in fact,

a hundred people charged for
witchcraft at the same time.

That was the largest
group of people

in the entire course of events.

His work is to round
up the confessors,

especially among the
children, also to appear as a

witness during the trials.

He's not one of the jury,
he's just a witness,

but he's a very active witness.

[narrator] Almost 700 people
live in the area,

and Hornaeus forces over 100
of them, mostly children,

to make diabolical
and devastating

accusations in court.

[Ronald Hutton] There's the
usual mixture of generic stuff,

like going off to
Blåkula and dancing,

and there's the vivid
detail, like the story of

milking barrels of milk
from the forefinger of

a member of your family,
and then taking off

the milk to Blåkula to
make butter for the party.

[Goran Malmstedt] The
accused were kept in prison
in different houses.

They didn't have
to lock the doors.

They stayed there voluntarily.

It wasn't easy for
them to run away,

because where should they go?

But it's difficult to
understand that they

didn't take the chance.

[Ronald Hutton] It's entirely
plausible that so many of the

accused confess because
they've been convinced that

it'll simply not be
viable to decimate the

workforce of the community.

And so to get it over
with quickly and

present the authorities
with an absolutely

impossible legal conundrum
seems a very good way of

short-circuiting the system.

[narrator] Almost 100 suspects
are put on trial.

The commission finds
a staggering

71 guilty of witchcraft.

Despite the verdict, the
convicted witches are

spared from execution...

for now.

[Ronald Hutton]

[bells tolling]

It is the beginning of
the Swedish Midsommar,

and the whole community
is at church.

♪ ♪

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
They were going to church,

thinking that everything
was back to normal.

If they were suspected
of witchcraft,

they would not have been
let into a service.

Somebody somewhere must
have said to these people

that you are off the hook.

♪ ♪

[Ronald Hutton] And
somebody who is not the
minister of the community

stands up and gives a hellfire
sermon against witches.

On a signal from
him, the 71 accused

people are rounded up by the
rest of their community.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
All of a sudden, the door
is closed on them.

[door slams]

And they're not attending
a service anymore,

and they're all told
that they're to be

ex*cuted this morning.

♪ ♪

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
So when the door closes in

the church, it must have
been an atmosphere of panic,

of fear, anxiety.

♪ ♪

They're dragged out of
church, and they're forced to

walk by their neighbors,
by their families,

pushing them, even though
they're resisting.

♪ ♪

[Goran Malmstedt] The neighbors
and the people in this parish

guarded the way for the witches
to the place of execution.

They were standing in rows
and in that way hindering

them from any escape.

♪ ♪

It seems as if the relatives
were emotionally cold

in this situation and
that they actually draw

their relatives to their death.

♪ ♪

Some of the relatives
really believed

that their wife or mother
actually was a witch.

[Ronald Hutton] They are frog
marched three miles uphill

to a place which is known
by various names now

of which Witch Mountain
is the most often quoted.

♪ ♪

Some of them walk
with dignity and speed.

Some bring up the
rear lamenting.

They are driven up the slope
and see in front of them

these three enormous
bonfires, one for each parish

in the region.

[screaming]

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
At the mountain, the
bonfires are ready.

This stage has been set
for the executions.

This is not a spontaneous act.

♪ ♪

[Ronald Hutton] One by
one, they are beheaded.

They are so numerous that
they have to be beheaded

with the heads of the
blood heading downhill

so that the blood won't
extinguish the fires

which have now been lit.

[fire crackling]

Their bodies are piled up upon
the enormous pyres of brushwood

and roasted to pieces.

♪ ♪

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
By the end of the day,

small area were ex*cuted,

one-fifth of all the
women in these towns.

That is very, very
hard to believe

how damaging and horrible
this must have been

to local society.

[Ronald Hutton] Households
would have been ruined

right across the community.

It's really the furthest
extreme to which a local witch

trial can logically go.

♪ ♪

[Goran Malmstedt] The president
of the fourth commission,

his name was Sparre,
when he learned that

they did execute,
he got furious.

What he has told
the subcommissions

was that they shouldn't
do an execution

without consulting him.

So he wrote down
to the government

and got the
commission dissolved.

♪ ♪

[Ronald Hutton] According to
the record of memory,

the Wise Boys, the
young adolescents

who point out suspects
coming out of church

were m*rder*d, their
bodies hacked to pieces,

were found by the roadside
soon after the incident.

So there a rough kind of justice
does seem to have been done.

♪ ♪

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
Many of the witnesses, due
to the t*rture

that Hornaeus applied on them,
were crippled afterwards,

so they had to live
in the society

together with the men
that crippled them.

[Goran Malmstedt]
According to his grandson,

people were afraid of him,
afraid of passing by his house.

We know that he tried to get
another parish later on,

and he didn't get it, so
his career didn't improve.

[Ronald Hutton] He seems to
have done nothing else of note

for the rest of his life.

He just goes back
to being a nobody,

having apparently produced
the worst judicial atrocities

in the entire history of Sweden.

♪ ♪

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup] When
we reach the summer of 1675,

the news of the witch
trials have been known in

Stockholm for many years.

This is not something that they
have been confronted with,

at least not the
gruesome details.

♪ ♪

[narrator] Now fresh
accusations from a teenage boy

will not only bring
the witch trials

to the capital of
Stockholm itself,

but also reach new
levels of brutality.

♪ ♪

[Ronald Hutton] The witch
hunt in Stockholm itself

is precipitated by a
loose-lipped adolescent.

He's 13 years old.

He comes from the countryside
outside Stockholm,

and he brings in
the usual claims

of flying to Blåkulla,
seeing other people there,

and in doing so, of course,
kick-starts a witch hunt.

[Goran Malmstedt] He's
called the Gävle boy
because he was from Gävle,

and he started pointing
out women in Stockholm

as people he had
met in Blåkulla.

[Ronald Hutton] And because of
the rumors of Witches' Sabbath

and child witnesses,
which have been leaking

into Stockholm now
for almost a decade,

in one rather poor
area of the city,

it produces a
classic witch hunt.

[chain rattles]

[Goran Malmstedt] They form a
commission in Stockholm.

Some of the members
of this commission

are skeptical to the
children's witnesses.

[Ronald Hutton] The witch hunt
in the Katarina suburb

in Stockholm is
a small one.

There are eight women
accused, but the particularly

notorious episode is
that one of the women

concerned, Malin Matsdotter,
is not only found

guilty and ex*cuted, but
she's actually burned alive,

which is very rare for
a convicted witch.

♪ ♪

[Goran Malmstedt] I think it
was because they thought

that she was so
eager not to confess

and to protest about the trials.

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
There's a big difference
between seeing a corpse burning

and seeing a human person
being burned to death.

We cannot underestimate
the impression

this must have left on
people to seeing a person

being burned to death.

♪ ♪

The decisive turning point
in the Swedish witch trials

is when the child witnesses
begin to confess themselves

to having made up their stories.

Sensing that the tide of opinion
is turning against them,

others of the child witnesses
in the Katarina trials

confess to having
given false witness.

And the end product of
this, the very last victim

of the Katarina trials, is
that the witness who kicks

them off in the first
place, the Gävle boy,

is himself tried and sentenced
to death for perjury,

and he is hanged.

♪ ♪

[Louise Nyholm Kallestrup]
After the boy is sentenced to
execution for perjury,

the government decides
to put a lid on this,

to put an end to
the witch trials.

[Ronald Hutton There are
no more commissions.

There's no more tacit
encouragement from the center

for clergy to go around
urging on accusations.

They simply state that there
are no more witches in Sweden,

and this is basically as
interesting and as odd

as the start of all this panic,
that you can simply just

state that, well, end of it.

This is not just something
that you can decide

from the government,
because the devil

is still out there.

This doesn't make sense,
that you can simply decide

there are no more witches.

♪ ♪

[Ronald Hutton] This is a small
country with a low population.

The victims are generally
in thinly populated

rural districts, and
so the impact on the

communities concerned is
devastating in a way that

bigger witch hunts are not.

[Goran Malmstedt] And then you
have thousands of children

that appeared as accuser
and were engaged

in getting people
convicted and k*lled.

Considering that we don't have
such big witch hunts in Sweden

before or since the Great Noise,
it's an exceptional event.

[narrator] These brutal Swedish
witch hunts have come to an end.

Over nine years, around 200
people have been slaughtered

for the impossible
crime of witchcraft.

By the last decades
of the 17th century,

people throughout Europe
begin to question

whether witches truly exist.

The age of the great
European witch hunt

is drawing to a close,
but it isn't over yet.

♪ ♪

[crows cawing]

[birds chirping]

[wind softly blows]