The Great Noise- The Power of Witchcraft Panic

Speaker A: Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Haunted History cron miracles in Sweden. During Easter you will not be surprised to see children dressed up in ragged clothes and a broom between their legs. At first glance, the tradition of Easter hag seems quite innocent. Deeper study though, reveals a darker history one of oppression and persecution. Everywhere through history you can see the scars of witch trials. Sweden is no different. The year such troubles had been avoided by a legal system that did not consider witchcraft and sorcery even a crime. By 1350 it would be added to the list however, of capital crimes but even then only in force if it was proved that murder was involved. Two centuries later, however, a shift in Sweden took place and this would change. Religious fear, like in many other European countries, would lay the groundwork something that, as you can imagine, as so often seen in history, would only end tragically. The Protestant Reformation of Sweden in 1527, under the reign of Gustav I brought with it a newfound hatred for anything related to witchcraft. This new wave of fanaticism was a stone thrown out into the water and ripples began to form. Over 100 witch trials during the 16th century would be carried out thankfully only leading to ten people being punished with death. The great noise that would come later was still just a quiet whisper compared to the roar that would follow. By 16 eight a new act was passed that added the punishment of death to all cases of witchcraft. In 1617, in the town of Finnsfong, located in the north a witch trial that took place was long considered a legend until proven true a witch trial not created by panic and hysteria as often the case, but instead influenced and ordered by the people in power. Austrogothia was, during the 1610s ruled as an independent duchy by the king's cousin John, the Duke of Austrogothia and his wife and consort, the Princess Maria Elizabeth of Sweden. The royal couple, especially the princess, is considered to have been directly responsible as the instigators of the witch trial together with their private chaplain, Claudius Pritz, a man with deep ideological influence over the couple. Early on he was known to have accused a woman of trying to enchant his employers and to defend them. He had her tried and executed by burning her at the stake. Law around her tragic end suggested, as the flames began to consume her that she attempted to reach out and grab for the priest's robes to pull him in with her. After this, Pritz only continued to exert his influence and the case seems to have impassed on the royal couple a strong belief in witches. Until then, witch trials in Austrogothia were uncommon as the rest of Sweden. The Duke, who was allowed to issue laws in the duchy would create his own laws but superseded that of the kings by 1617 and the witch trials in finspong came to an end. Nine women were dead, eight through execution and one through neglect. The eight condemned women were each guided through the forest under the COVID of darkness until they reached the edge of a cliff. From the ground below they could see a raging, burning bonfire. One by one these women were pushed from the edge to their death, burning in the fires below. The witch trial of Finnsbong has been a legend. In folklore, part of the woods has been called the Block Killer Hills. The tan is called the sorceress. Tan cave is reputed to have been the hiding place for accused women from the trial. Out in the wood, the legend says that one can hear female voices crying out I am innocent. And the one who dared mocked them will fall dead before the sunset as a farmhound once did. The witch hunt of Ostergotland would not be the last. The next time a witch hysteria broke out in Sweden in the great witch hunt of 1668 to 76, known as the Great Noise would see the flames burning hotter than ever. The torsaco witch trials that would follow later would begin when Gertrude Svenstotter, aged just twelve, found herself tending sheep in the autumn of 1667 alongside the shepherd boy Matt Snilson. That day the pair would get into a fierce argument over some bread that resulted in Gertrude hitting the younger boy before running away and jumping over a stream. To Matt's he saw the event differently, believing Gertrude had in fact walked on the water, something that he would later tell his father. His belief in his words would lead his father to take him to the local priest. It was the beginning of everything that followed. Gertrude was rounded up and taken to the priest for questioning, where she was encouraged to confess that she had indeed walked on water and that she had done so by magic, which had been given to her by the devil. Out of fear, gertrude made a detailed confession, claiming that the family made Merritt had shown her how to do this. Of course, her interrogators listened. Gertrude's confession was the catalyst for others to step forward, corroborating the stories, and Merritt was called to court to answer the accusations and to face her accusers, who were mostly children. The court listened avidly as the children cried and pointed out others in the audience. The court believed fervently it was their duty to seek out the evil among them. And so ten more suspects were soon added to the list. A list that would grow as one would accuse another, and then another, and then another. An ever expanding web catching innocent flies, the ripples spreading wider and wider. At just twelve years old, Gertrude would be sentenced to death on September 13 of that year. By the following spring, 22 women and one man would find themselves defending themselves against the false accusation of witchcraft. 18 were sentenced to death despite the national court of the day revoking eleven of these sentences. The remaining seven were executed on May 19, 1669. The More witch trials, as they became known, was the first mass execution during the Swedish witch trials, with reports of it spreading throughout Europe, with a rather provocative German illustration of it. Considered to have had some influence on the Salem witch trials, the trial only helped to fuel rumors, thus creating more hysteria to root out the witches. Many were also angered by the king's actions in commuting a number of the sentences, and so they created a commission to oversee future trials, which would mean they would act independently with no more involvement from outside authorities. The commission also rewrote the law, making it so that no confession was necessary for a conviction, and that torture was a legitimate and right means of extracting the truth. Now, those ripples were a raging torrent, and the event known as the Great Noise would drown out any and all sound of reason. For eight years, this panic continued to spread and grow until by 1674, much of the activity now resided in the areas surrounding the town of Torsaca. The parish priest there, Laurentus Christopher Hornes, was young and at just 29, enthusiastic and zealous in his work, and positioned to oversee the witch trials. Hornes was a priest with a terrifying reputation, believing it was his holy duty to find the evil amongst them. The witnesses of the witch trial were mostly children, as the main accusation of the witches was that they had abducted children on the Sabbath of Satan, ornaus had several methods to get the children to give the testimony he wanted. He whipped them. He bathed children in the ice cold water from Wintry Lakes. He put them in an oven, showed them fuel, and pretended that he would light the fire in the oven and boil them. His grandson, who wrote down the story in 1735 after it was dictated by his grandmother, was quoted as saying, I remember some of these witnesses who by these methods were in lack of health for the rest of their lives. He adds that children were still, 60 years afterwards, afraid to go near the house where his grandfather lived. In the fall of 1674, the priest had two boys stand with him to greet the parishioners. These boys claimed that they could see witches through invisible marks on their foreheads. When the boys saw these marks, they would point them out, and a growing list began to be compiled of suspects. On one occasion, the priest's own wife was pointed out. Records showed the boy accusing her was dealt a swift blow by Hornes, and the accusation was speedily recanted, with a young boy blaming the sun for temporarily blinding him. By October of 1674, the witch trials of Torsaca, with over 100 men and women accused, was opened. No physical evidence existed that these people were witches. They stood before the court based on testimony extracted from children through torture and fear. Some of these would avoid punishment, managing to escape claiming pregnancy. Others died in jail awaiting sentencing. By early 1675, the courts, led by Hornes, found 71 guilty, and immediately the 65 women and six men were marched outside, where they were surrounded by men bearing long pikes. They were herded out of town and taken to a hill where spikes and a large bonfire waited for them before burning. Each prisoner was decapitated away from the spikes to avoid them being bathed in blood, making them difficult to light. The families were then given permission to remove the clothes and valuables before they had to lift the bodies of their loved ones onto the spikes before they were lit, the head thrown without care into the burning pyre. The Torsaca trials has the largest record for executions for witchcraft on a single day anywhere around the world. It culminated at the end of 71 lives in front of friends, families and neighbors. Because of superstition and fear. The Great Noise rumbled on for a few more years, with witch hunts continuing across Sweden, even reaching the capital, where authorities were able to shed doubt and validity on the testimony of children. The king ordered all priests in the country to stand up in the pulpit and declare all witches driven out. In Torsaca, the boys known as the Tailboys, who had aided Horneus mostly out of fear and physical threats, were considered pariahs. The community could only see the role they played in the deaths of their children, sisters, mothers, wives and loved ones. Each of them died under mysterious circumstances, the only detail recorded of the Tailboys being they had had their throats cut. The memory of these events has lived on in the tradition known as gladpask. Each year in the spring, children dress up as Easter witches. Wearing red paint on their faces and colorful scars, they travel from door to door, asking for sweets. After a week, the celebration culminates in a feast day ending in a bonfire, the goal being to frighten and send any witches away. The Great Noise was not just history, but heritage, a dark heritage that continues to make paths in the present. With the Easter hag, an innocent, positive tradition despite the dark event it signals, we all have a duty to shine a spotlight on the darker stories of our country's past. Paying attention can teach us why these things still happen. Eli Weissel, the Romanian born and American writer who survived the Holocaust, who would go on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, dated the executioner always kills twice, the second time with silence. Thank you for listening. See you next time. Bye for now. If you like this podcast, there's a number of things you can do. Come and join us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Spread the word about us with friends and family. Leave a review on our website or other podcast platforms to support the podcast further, why not head on over to join us on Patreon, where you can sign up to gain a library of additional material and recordings? And in the process, now you're helping the podcast continue to put out more content. On a final note, if you haven't read it already, then you can find my piece In Search of the Medieval in volume three of The Feminine Macabre over on Spookets.com or via Amazon. Links to the book will also be in the episode description. Thank you everyone for your amazing support.