The Great Noise was not just history, but heritage

January 30, 2022 8:42 PM

At first glance, the [Swedish] tradition of Påskkärring, or “Easter Hags,” seems quite innocent—these are children after all, and it’s suspected the tradition has gone on since the early 1800s. But deeper study reveals a dark history, one of oppression and persecution.

The “witch crisis” arrived as a hot pot of clashes between older folklore and the new Lutheran religion. What these beliefs had in common was an ontological starting point: that outside our visible world existed a spiritual and celestial one that was equally real.
posted by Rumple (10 comments total)

It's a good thing that these witch trials are being discussed more nowadays, but religion in general is so far removed from most daily life in Sweden that I fear most folks have a hard time relating, even if other parallels could be made. Growing up in the western United States I remember the Salem witch trials generally being taught via the allegory of The Crucible and McCarthyism.

I'd translate "oväsen" as "cacophony" for what it's worth. Not exactly the same meaning but closer to the mark than the more generic "noise". And yes, påskkärringar is a cute tradition that is carried on in the present day.
posted by St. Oops at 11:52 PM on January 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

I really appreciate this article, since it wasn't long ago that I had a notion to read more about the Swedish witch trials, but couldn't find a book or in-depth source in English. What I have read is absolutely bonkers -- children informing on their whole families, getting them killed, being killed themselves -- worse than Salem. In reading Stacy Schiff's book The Witches on Salem, though, I did see that the intellectuals of Massachusetts -- not an ironic term -- were in conversation with what had happened in Sweden.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:42 AM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

(Salem, too, goes all out for fun on Halloween, making the witch an innocent cartoon symbol. And in Massachusetts, it's history, not heritage, as Massachusetts is the most highly educated state in the union and considers itself above such things as witch hunts, with some justice. The fundamentalist tradition long ago moved south and west, where Qanon continues the grand witch hunt to this day.)
posted by Countess Elena at 5:46 AM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

At the time of the great witch crisis, Sweden had gone through a period of climate change. Colder weather affected the amount and quality of the harvests, the fertilization rates among the cattle, as well as the quality of their milk. Outbreaks of plague afflicted the people, and poverty too, as Sweden’s rulers raised the population’s taxes in support of a series of wars. Poverty and desperation laid a good foundation for the witchcraft trials to come. An examination of court records reveal that some women accused during The Great Noise may have been singled out for far simpler reasons than witchcraft. Many of them came from families who were in legal conflict with their accusers over money.

I was waiting for this part. People are always wtf about why on earth all the neighbors were accusing neighbors etc but it makes a lot more "sense" that people were really just condemning their neighbors to death so they could take all the money and all the land.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 7:15 AM on January 31, 2022 [6 favorites]

It wasn't just Sweden, either.

Wherever suspected witches were being prosecuted, the State played an important part. Such was the situation in the joined kingdom of Denmark-Norway, too. The powers of the State were ingrained in legislation, in the functioning of the judiciary and in the activities of the Church. There is no doubt that State powers, together with the activities of the king's officials, were decisive for the outcome of the trials. The Danish-Norwegian monarch Christian IV, who reigned from 1588 to1648, was an eager witch-hunter. The highest-ranking officers of the Crown in Finnmark had, as part of their agenda, cleaning the district of witches.

Christian IV bacame friends with James I, who married his sister Anne, and James wrote a book called Daemonologie, which justified witch hunting.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:17 AM on January 31, 2022 [3 favorites]

I can't help reading "a mysterious place called Blåkulla" and thinking of a Blacula spinoff.
posted by doctornemo at 8:46 AM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is horrific:

The culmination of The Great Noise occurred in Torsåker, in the region of Ångermanland, where, on October 15, 1674, seventy-one people were beheaded and burned at the stake. Women numbered sixty-five of them, every fifth woman in the parish.
posted by doctornemo at 8:54 AM on January 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm assuming that the accusing children were coached by adults, as in the 80s satanic panic. The adults that encouraged their lies and gained materially from them are the ones that should have been punished, but I'm guessing that it was an era where people believed that children were born sinful. Imagine that you're a parent who told your child to lie so you could add some land to your farm and then your child is executed for the very lie you told him to tell.

Adults using religion in icky ways are still taking advantage of children for their own gain. I just saw a video of two little girls hamming it up at a revival, pretending to be possessed. At one point, one girl says something in a raspy demon voice. The preacher asks her to repeat it and holds the microphone toward her, and the girl lifts her head so she can speak into it better. Such a thoughtful demon, making sure that the whole congregation could hear. The kids seemed to be having a good time; too bad their fun was being used to get money from a way-too-credulous audience.
posted by LindsayIrene at 9:44 AM on January 31, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'm assuming that the accusing children were coached by adults, as in the 80s satanic panic.

No doubt, but, as the thing progressed, the children probably knew what was expected in the game of witch-accusing, and supplied the expected performances at will. Maybe these had to be fine tuned a little, by asking leading questions, and not reinforcing the parts of what they invented that aren't useful, but, in the right environment, kids take to this kind of thing happily enough. It's quite terrifying.
posted by thelonius at 5:56 AM on February 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

I grew up near Örnsköldsvik, which is also in Ångermanland. I don't recall ever being taught much about this in school - if at all. Some popular folk songs allude to it, but it is absolutely not anything we studied at the time. Some of my friends back home are doing genealogy research, and are coming up with some absolutely horrific stories about their ancestors, which is the only reason I really know anything at all about it.

For the majority of Swedes, I'd say that there is absolutely a disconnect between the Easter witches and their dark history. Glad that people are starting to learn more about it, though.
posted by gemmy at 2:04 PM on February 1, 2022 [3 favorites]