Witch trials in Sweden

In 1551, king Gustav Vasa ordered those suspected of the murder of his secretary Clemens Hansson by use of poison and sorcery to be arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned and tortured, but it appears his demands were not met.

In 1575, two women were executed in Fryksdalen, and later in 1607-1610 a series of additional cases were brought up, which was submitted to King Charles IX of Sweden, where torture occurred in several of them.

[5] Bishop Abraham Angermannus' visitation journey through the country in 1596–97, in effect the final stage of the Swedish Reformation, intended to root out anything not in accordance with Protestant practices, resulted in a wave of about 140 witch trials, especially in Götaland; however, they did not result in the death penalty but rather to fines, pillorying, whippings and other disciplinarian punishments.

Notable cases were those with Brita Pipare and Geske in the capital of Stockholm, which also included descriptions of witchcraft of the kind it was by then becoming the modern one on the continent.

In 1611, a woman called Karin of Öckleqvarna was subjected to the water test, by royal command, the result of her prosecution is however lost.

The same year, the famous case of Elin i Horsnäs took place, in which the deadly outcome was likely affected by the new laws, as she had been accused but acquitted before.

However, in a preserved document, it is stated that a man named Mats in Olaby was sentenced according to the law of Uppland and Västerås to be burned.

In 1633, "Olof Fets' wife" was sentenced to be beheaded and burned in Örebro by Svea Court of Appeal because she confessed that she had been in Blåkulla once and had intercourse with Satan.

In 1635 the parliament, whose task it was to confirm the death sentences handed down by the local courts, expressed a relief that there had been very few cases of witch trials reported to them for a period of several years past.

For example, out of the 14 people (3 men and 11 women) who were charged for sorcery (3 for witchcraft, 7 for harming humans or animals) in the province of Dalarna during 1631–1667, the vast majority received a mild punishment such as banishment or fines.

16 witchcraft trials (5 against men, 11 against women), were held in 1630–1671 according to Frykdal's books of upper district law, most of whom did not result in a death penalty.

In 1650, two old women from Umeå had admitted that they had traveled to Blåkulla and used magic tricks to milk other cows and were sentenced to death according to the 1608 law.

[1] The largest and most famous Swedish witch hunt took off in 1668 during the reign of Charles XI, when the hysteria called Det stora oväsendet (literally: "the Great Noise") resulted in almost three hundred executions (more than any period prior), during the eight years until 1676, when they were stopped.

The phenomena of witches abducting children to the Witches' Sabbath of Satan of Blockula (or Blåkulla), where they were exposed to sexual abuse and forced to sell their souls, caused widespread panic among the parents of the nation, and parents of several parishes, alarmed by the rumours among their children, started to demand that the authorities issue investigations in their parishes.

[6] The commission was divided into two departments under the supervision of Governor Carl Larsson Sparre, who preserved to right to confirm all sentences before they could legally be carried out.

[6] According to some sources, 9 people were executed already on March 28 and the remaining 62 on June 1, 1675, on a mountain in the border area between Torsåkers, Dals and Ytterlännäs parishes.

[6] When some of the clergymen protested and insisted that the witches had indeed been guilty and the sorcery real, they were lectured by the Witchcraft Commission and forced to comply.

However, the Christian church regarded Pagan gods to be demons and worshipping them to be Satanism, which enabled an execution by use of the still existing witchcraft act.

In 1724, the Södra Ny witch trial of Värmland resulted in several people sentenced guilty of witchcraft, including "Captain Elin", but they were not executed.

The court referred to them as fools, who confessed themselves guilty because of insane dreams influenced by stories about the Great Noise fifty years prior, and sentenced them to be whipped and banished from their parish.

However, while formally legal, as the Witchcraft Act had never been abolished, witch trials were in practice considered a defunct phenomena in Sweden by this point.