Torsåker witch trials

The Torsåker witch trials took place in 1675 in Torsåker parish in Sweden and were the largest witch trials in Swedish history. In a single day 71 people (65 women and 6 men) were beheaded and then burned.

The trials began when Johannes Wattrangius of Torsåker parish told Laurentius Christophori Hornæus of Ytterlännäs parish to investigate witchcraft in his parish. Ytterlännäs and Torsåker were both in the Diocese of Härnösand of the Lutheran Church of Sweden. Hornæus was zealous in his work — by the time his task was complete, 71 people had been beheaded and burned. 65 of these were women, which was roughly one fifth of all women in the region.

The witch trial reached Torsåker as a result and a consequence of the great wave of witch hysteria, which had begun to flourish over Sweden after the trial caused by Gertrud Svensdotter against Märet Jonsdotter in Dalarna in 1668. Sweden did not have separation of church and state, causing state-employed Lutheran priests to abide by government instructions. (Lutherans called their ministers "priests" while in Sweden,and did not switch to the British term "minister" or "preacher" until in America in the late 1800s.) These Lutheran priests were ordered to use their sermons to inform their congregations of the crimes committed. Thus, the rumour of the witches spread over the country, where witch-hunts had earlier been a rarity. Hornæus was ordered to perform an investigation by order of the special commission which had been created to deal with the suddenly erupted witch craze.

The priest had two boys stand at the door of the church to identify the witches by an invisible mark on their forehead as they went in. On one occasion, one of these boys pointed at the wife of the priest himself, Britta Rufina; people gasped but she (as she told her grandson who wrote down the story) then slapped the boy, and he quickly apologized when he saw who he had pointed at, and said he had been blinded by the sun. This could very well have been true, as he would not have dared to point at the wife of a priest if he had recognised her.

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