The Witches of Vardo: THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER: 'Powerful, deeply moving' - Sunday Times

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This excerpt from Rune Blix Hagen’s “Christmas Witchcraft in 17th-century Finnmark” encapsulates our topic today: remembering witchcraft at the Steilneset Memorial. Designed by artist Louise Bourgeois and architect Peter Zumthor, the memorial opened in 2011. It is two separate buildings. First, there is a 410-foot-long wooden structure framing a fabric cocoon that contains Zumthor’s installation. Using wooden frames, he created sixty bays in a long line which are suspended by cable-stays and coated in fiberglass membranes. Inside is a timber walkway, 328 feet long by five feet wide, with 91 randomly placed small windows that each contain a single lightbulb in memorial of those executed for witchcraft. Second, there is a square smoked glass room, standing 39 feet tall, with Bourgois’s installation entitled The Damned, The Possessed and The Beloved. Using weathering steel and 17 panes of tinted glass, the walls stop just short of the ceiling and floor, leaving gaps. A metal chair with flames projecting through the seat is reflected in seven oval mirrors placed around it. As Bourgois stated, “The perpetual flame…that old chestnut of commemoration and reflection…here is devoid of any redemptive quality, illuminating only its own destructive image.” Steilnest Memorial in Vardo, Norway The setting of The Witches of Vardø, an isolated fishing community in a remote part of Norway in the latter half of the seventeenth century along with its subject matter, reminded me strongly of The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave which I read in 2021. And those who have read, as I have, books such as The Manningtree Witches by A. K. Blakemore or Widdershinsby Helen Steadman will be familiar with accusations of witchcraft being levelled against women, especially those considered "different", for instance women skilled in healing. Also how fear of association can turn a community against those accused, how natural events can be interpreted as portents of evil or how unconventional behaviour can be viewed as a sign of possession by the Devil. An intricately woven, timeless novel about prejudice, misogyny, freedom and the power and strength we can find within’– Christy Lefteri

On 24 December 1617 Eastern Finnmark in northern Norway suffered a terrible storm, where "sea and sky became one." [2] This happened suddenly, "as if loosened from a bag." [2] A great majority of the male population was out at sea at that time and were surprised by the storm, which sank ten boats and drowned forty men. The same year, the new law of sorcery and witchcraft for the union of Denmark-Norway was issued and announced in Finnmark in 1620. [2] Witch trial [ edit ] And finally – after years of research and writing – what’s it like seeing the book out in the world and in the hands of readers?

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Bob Mortimer wins 2023 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with The Satsuma Complex Perhaps it was this remoteness that caused Finnmark to suffer a much higher rate of witch accusations than anywhere else in Norway. Manilla Press, the literary imprint of Bonnier Books UK, has acquired The Witches of Vardø by Anya Bergman in a two-book deal. Margaret Stead, publisher, acquired world English language and translation rights from Marianne Gunn O’Connor at the MGOC Agency. The first is the doctrine of demonology. Begun around the 1620s by a Scottish governor, demonology spread throughout Europe. Its influence in Vardo is best seen in the story of a learned couple from the south of Norway, Ambrosius Rhodius and Anne Friedrichsdatter Rhodius, who were imprisoned at Vardohus in 1662. Ambrosius was an astrologer and physician (the two believing to be complementary sciences), but he was considered politically dangerous because he predicted the result of an ongoing war (we’re guessing it wasn’t favorable). Anne was known for being outspoken, and got into a disagreement with the governor.

Kirsti was sentenced to be burned alive at the stake on 28 April 1621, a couple of months before ten other women had been burnt for sorcery. She became the last victim of the great witch trial of 1621. My new novel The Witches of Vardø is my passion project, the writing of which has been an obsession for ten years. Set in 1662 the book is inspired by the true events of a series of witch trials on the arctic island of Vardø in Northern Norway, and tells the story of three women – Anna, Ingeborg and Maren caught up in the witch panic. Spoken Word and Social Practice: Orality in Europe (1400-1700). BRILL. 2015-07-17. ISBN 9789004291829. At Christmas 1662, children were accused when sisters Ingeborg Iversdatter and Karen Iversdatter (8 years old), children of one of the newly executed women, were brought in for questioning with Maren Olsdatter, the niece of one of the executed women. The children told many stories, and the priest had a hard time making them say the catechism when they were in the "trollkvinnefengeselhullet" (the "witches-hole") in the fortress, where witches were kept awaiting verdict.In the remote village of Vardo, this epidemic would rename the city as “the Witch Capital of Norway.” In just 99 years, between 1593 and 1692, there were more than 140 witch trials in the village. Some were isolated, focused on a single individual, while others were panics–consisting of successive trials over a short period of time. These panics were where children were most likely to be accused, with the doctrine of demonology stating that anyonecould be a witch. The three greatest panics were during 1620 to 21, 1652 to 53, and 1662 to 63. Notice how each panic spans two years? That’s because they were most common during the winter months. P. S.: The mention to the Sámi made me research them and find they’ve always been persecuted and pushed to conversions, it made me want to find more and read from their natives and hear their songs. To make their voice heard louder. They who’ve withstand, these natives to the Laplands with their gods and reindeers, with their songs and colors. Feared so much, that many people across the world were rounded up and executed. While some locations are well-known for this history, one part of Northern Norway remained off the radar of many people. This powerful work of historical fiction draws on the records of the witch trials in 17th Century Norway, focusing on the lives of a number of women caught up in these events.