She was born in Österbotten in Finland (at the time a part of Sweden) and moved to the capital of Stockholm to work as a maidservant in the 1630s.
Her reported stated: The true daughter of Rumpare Malin, Maria Eriksdotter age nineteen, were called upon and confessed that she had the same night been abducted by Anna Wife of Staffan, who sells beer at Dalarö, to whom she had been lost at games by her mother [...] Last Easter Evening her mother allegedly said to her: My daughter do you wish to follow me and we will make people out of you [...] thereafter she began to take her every night [to Blockula] [...] the second time [she travelled to Blockula] upon a man.
The fact that she seems to have preferred Finnish was not considered strange by the court, as the capital had a great Finnish minority from the nearby province who even had their own congregation; however, what was regarded suspicious for a person accused of consorting with the Devil was, rather, the fact that she had difficulty to read and pronounce words from the holy scripture.
[2] Malin was ordered by the court to fall on her knees and pray to be able to confess, and after having obeyed, her daughter stated that she could no longer see the Devil.
[2] Malin's older daughter Anna Eriksdotter supported her sister's testimony that their mother took them to Satan, but when she stated that she herself had started to abduct children herself, she was also placed under arrest.
[2] The court was convinced of her guilt by the testimony of her own daughters combined with her lack of religious knowledge and difficulty to read prayers.
[1] On 16 July 1676, Malin Matsdotter was judged guilty as charged by a unanimous court on the testimonies of her daughters and sentenced to be executed.
The clerical commissioner Carolinus stated in his vote that the honor of God should be regarded before the personal pain of Malin and that she should be given a taste of what was awaiting her in Hell after having seduced so many souls to Satan; commissioners Ivar and Noreus motivated their vote by the deterring effect such a method would have upon the public and her accomplices, and commissioner doctor Urban Hjärne suggested that she be tortured with hot iron prior to the execution, which would make her unconscious and unable to feel pain, because her death would otherwise be too cruel,[3] but the suggestion was revoked with the view, expressed by a priest, that the honour of the name of God was more important than Malin's personal experience of pain; the method was also deemed necessary as an example to the public and to her accomplices.
The method of execution by burning had been debated by the commission in Stockholm previously during the Catharina witch trial of 1675–76 and actually given to an earlier condemned, Anna Lärka, for her refusal to admit guilt, but it was retracted when she finally did so.
She "did not seem to fear death much, courageously mounting the stake",[5] and even the official execution protocol noted that she "was very tough".
She spoke calmly with the executioner, "allowing him to fasten her with iron by her hands and feet",[5] and the bag of gunpowder was placed around her neck to hasten death.
She talked back to the priests with her head held high when they pleaded with her to acknowledge her sin, maintaining her innocence.
The execution in itself was described: Tradition claims that Malin Matsdotter did not scream but died in silence, in accordance with contemporary view that witches felt no pain.
[2] This was particularly brought about since the child witnesses had started to accuse people from the upper classes, such as the Captains wife Margareta Staffansdotter Remmer and Maria Sofia De la Gardie.
[2] The leading perjurers, the Gävle Boy, Lisbeth Carlsdotter and the Myra Maids (Annika Hinrichzdotter and Agnis Eskilsdotter), were executed on 20 December 1676.
The oldest daughter of Malin Matsdotter, Anna "Annika" Eriksdotter, was herself under arrest after having stated during her testimony against her mother that she had herself begun to follow her example by abducting children to Satan.
Imprisoned, she reported that she heard her mother call for her in her dreams, pinch her and ask her to "come as soon as possible" because she had accused her of witch craft.
[2] Anna Eriksdotter was, as the other remaining accused, freed from the charge of witch craft, but sentenced to be whipped for perjury.
[2] Malin's younger daughter Maria Eriksdotter was given an official warning to make amends for her sin of perjury.