The Wind and the Paper | EP 1

I go to the edge of the Arctic to find out why 91 people, most of them women, died in Norway’s deadliest witch hunt, which lasted more than 70 years.

Vardø is a small island town closer to Russia than to Oslo, a place long shadowed by fears of witchcraft. Who were the women who came here, and why would they come somewhere so remote, at the far end of a kingdom?

And then, one Christmas Eve, 40 men row out into the polar dark. They never come back.

 

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Sound design by Craig Edmondson.

Featuring Isa Maline Isene of Vardø Museum and historian Johan Morken.

Research draws on the original trial records and the work of Professor Liv Helene Willumsen and historian Rune Blix Hagen.

The memorial text heard in this episode is one of 91 written by Professor Liv Helene Willumsen for the Steilneset Memorial.

A note on the numbers: Steilneset commemorates 91 victims. Rune Blix Hagen's research records at least 92 deaths among 138 people formally accused of witchcraft in Finnmark. Not all court records have survived, so the true toll may be higher.

Voices by Klara Blooma Mohn, Anne Mali Sæther and Sven Conradi.

Written, hosted and produced by Lisa Williams.