[4] When Mari flew with Kirsti through the air south towards the sabbath of Satan she saw many people she knew doing the same, mostly women but also two men; they came from Kiberg, Vardø, Ekkerøy, Vadsø and other communities along the Varangerfjorden, transformed into cats, dogs, sea monsters and birds so they would not be recognized.
On the top of Lydhorn mountain Satan's Christmas party was celebrated with dance and drink, after which the witches flew back to Finnmark, except for Kirsti, who had visited Bergen and then took the long way home by sea.
Another woman interrogated in January, Else Knutsdatter, confirmed that in the Christmas of 1617, the witches had tied a fishing rope three times, spat at it and untied it, after which "the sea rose like ashes and people were killed."
They were influenced by the contemporary prejudice in Europe, where religious experts often claimed that "The evil came from North," from Nordkalotten, the home of the Sami people, who were not Christians and had a strong reputation for sorcery.
[5] These officials often believed in the teachings of the European clerics that "magic came with the Northern wind" down over Europe, and they had been placed there to correct the population according to Protestant orthodoxy.
They painted the Sami as a people of magicians, and disapproved of Norwegian women along the coast being alone at home for months when their husbands were out at sea fishing, suspecting them of committing adultery with demons.
[6] On June 23, 2011 Norway's Queen Sonja opened the Steilneset Memorial to the Victims of the Witch Trials in Vardø, a new monument by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois.
The Vardø project is also part of the Norwegian Public Roads administration’s National Tourist Routes program, through which distinctive buildings are being erected to encourage visits to outposts of exceptional natural beauty.