Scandinavian *itchy Women
Burn them with fire! Set their souls free! Make my cock hard again! In Medieval Scandinavia, the churches had taken over from the previous pagan religions, and nothing would be fair to women again. While being one of the earliest witch hunts in Scandinavia, the trial and torture of Ragnhildr in 1324-1325 in Bergen showcases the simplest way men tend to subjugate women, with sex, or lack of ability in this case. This is more blatant than the 16-18th century trials in Sweden and craze in Finland, which, seemly, were less obviously against women straight out, and, more for embarrassment of the cruellest sort. The most terrifying aspect is that this is proof that people will blame anything on anyone else if it means that it’s not their fault. And that any outsider and especially women who are, for some reason, forced from birth to take on this role are constantly the main targets, and why, because it’s easy.
In my first line of argumentation, I will examine the percentages of targets in each example to show how sexually biased the system was. After all, women do tend to be seen as weaker and more easily manipulated than men, therefore, less free will. This is quickly engrained in Christian children with the story of Adam and Eve since Eve was the one to submit her will to the snake and eat the apple of knowledge before convincing Adam to do the same getting them both kicked out of the Garden of Eden. I won’t delve too much into this yet, but it seems that even without sexuality Adam of much easier to convince to disobey Eve, as it took a devil snake to tempt her and she only needed to bat her eyes, but I digress. As the perpetual evil of the world, seem through Christian eyes, women are easy targets and the simple other, because they are not men. From the earliest witch trials, women were singled out due to their sex. Not only did most of the Bergen trials focus on one woman, Ragnhildr Tregagás, but also the largest proportion dealt with men not being able to get sexually aroused and thus blamed other women for their shortcomings. The report from Mitchell is more of a look at one individual case and how it reflects the other instances; in the paper by Östling he quotes that “519 women were accused (72% of all defendants)” (Östling 2012: 100). Meanwhile, in Sweden and the Finland/Russia area “Over 90% of the accused were women, and … without doubt average peasant women” (Östling 2012: 102).
Carefully examining the difference between honor and pride, these two articles tackle both sides of the discussion. The Bergen article focuses on pride, the pride of the men in the city. The rumors had spread; Ragnhildr had had relations with her third-degree relation Bár∂r while her husband was still alive. Of course, this was adultery, but even this wasn’t enough of an issue for the 14th-century Norwegians. They accused her and other women at the time of being able to keep men from becoming sexually aroused or being unable to have children. This is much more a matter of pride, the men are unable to perform their “duties” to their satisfaction, and what they should be able to do. No matter that they just might be getting older, it must be the fault of their wife or secret and jealous mistress rather than their natural issues. Different from honor, which is something given by others, pride is only in one’s mind. In the regions of Sweden and Finland, they focused more on the honor side of anyone accused. The entire issue with witchcraft in that area was more going along the side of humiliation from others than actual harm. Of course, accusations still focused on women, many of whom were single, but especially in 17th century Sweden the focus was much more on the threatening “to dissolve old customs and views of what men and women were allowed to do. Traditional patriarchal society was thereby shaken at its very foundations, …” (Östling 2012: 100). While this was more a mix of both a struggle between honor and pride, the argument can be made that it is not inherently sexual by nature, but possibly competition between people vying for power.
Being born a biological female, especially in Medieval Christian Europe, generally meant that they would need to get married and have children. Sexual relations were not seen as sinful, because God wouldn’t give humans a taboo/sin to follow to achieve his wishes, “increase and multiply, and fill the earth" from Genesis 9:1. However, it was common for women to be sold off like property and used as such, without regard for her desires. It was believed that women, as they had commonly been depicted, were either virtuous or a whore, with no in-between (Karras 1996). Therefore, any woman who had had relations with either a man out of wedlock or another man while married was living with sin. Also with sex being a natural and integral part of humanity, the pleasure that could be achieved was not mentioned in the Bible and was seen as sinful unless you are only having it to bear more children (Bullough 1996). But with this chaotic back and forth between sin and Godliness, the women who became prostitutes, or “witches”, in 14th century Scandinavia were not always seen in the light of rationality; while men could commonly have engaged in prostitution without much shame as a sexual outlet outside of marriage, women were seen to use it as a means of financial support (Heckel, p12-16). Other evidence linking this to the idea of witchcraft is the 14th-century idea wording that a house of ill-repute or known as a “trolle hus (lit., ‘troll or witch house’) could have been used in Swedish to mean ‘whorehouse’ ” (Mitchell 1997: 20). This, however, only looks at the act of prostitution as a means of problem-solving for women, not a terrible thing by the simplest rationality, but also that the woman is soliciting the man for sex, rather than acknowledging the possibility of the other way around. If we focus on the witchcraft trials, whether in 14th century Bergen or 16th – 17th century Sweden and Finland, women’s possible sexual promiscuity was likely a major factor, as most of the women accused were single and had low-income wages, those more likely to engage in prostitution (Östing 2012).
Taking on a new dimension, the Finnish craze of the late 17th century brought children into the mix. As the believed personification and truth, a child was, at first, the ultimate witness for either side. Though as the trials grew more and more common, it was discovered that children, especially beggar children, were being bribed by adults who wanted the “proper” result, and with more and more children stepping forward to testify the judges ruled that a child’s testimony would be worth a half down to a tenth of a full witness (Östling 2012). Östling surmises that this was caused by them being bribed with money, clothes, or other gifts at first, but some did it for the excitement and power it instilled within them (2012). Even very young children were sent up to the stand to, more likely, lie about their mothers being witches just to get enough money to survive. This is speculation, of course, however, most children wouldn’t have understood that when these “witches” were found guilty they were executed, or what that may mean for them in the long run. After all, in the ‘Finnish witch craze’, “between 250 to 300 persons had been executed” (Östling, 2012).
Leading to confessions that were made, turning your children against either their mother or father, or even other local people in the village was ALWAYS regarded as a serious accusation, one in which the security would incur to torture out a confession if they must. With both witch trials and the craze upon which I base my thesis, the women and men were tortured until they admitted to doing wrong, or in the extreme, following the devil. For instance, Ragnhildr was brutally tortured until she admitted to cursing her 3rd cousin, Bár∂r, when he got married, she made a pact with the Devil, that because of her Bár∂r left his wife Bergliót, she learned witchcraft from a Sorli Sukk, etc. (Mitchell 1997: 18-19). And, because the ‘witches’ were tortured into admitting their wrong there was no way around the fact that they must be executed, most commonly burned at the stake, though “in Sweden the witches were beheaded before their bodies were burned” (Östling, pp103). As one of the earliest “witch trials” Ragnhildr’s case was looked at for generations of witchy dealings to come. The fact that she confessed to all, the renouncement of God, the pact with the Devil, the cursing, the sexual promiscuity, everything, this would have led people, especially men in power, to assume that with one came the rest. Even if she only admitted to it all after calling to testify what Bishop Au∂Finn called “the wisest men in the country” or “distinguished men” (Mitchell 1997: 25).
As a connection to major evil powers, such as the Devil himself, witches are seen as the middle-man, the intermediary to bring more people into the fold. They were thought to bring children to the side of evil, and curse men to be unable to be faithful to their wives and their God’s will. Evidence shows that all of this: honor, pride, manipulation of children and other witnesses, and torture, had to start with the cultural understanding that a man would not be at fault for what they do. They are projecting outward issues on the helpless and manipulating people around them. They would not wish to be blamed for sexual inadequacy so they blame women and the Devil for them not to face the truth of the situation. Witchcraft has long been seen as the seduction and cursing of men, but what happens if men were cursing their cocks with elevated fear that they couldn’t perform?
Work Cited
Bullough, Vern L. & Brundage, James A. The Handbook of Medieval Sexuality. Ed., New York: Garland Publishing, 1996.
N. M. Heckel, “Sex, Society and Medieval Women”. River Campus Libraries, www.library.rochester.edu/robbins/sex-society#bibliog.
Karras, Ruth. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Mitchell, Stephen A. “Nordic Witchcraft in Transition: Impotence, Heresy, and Diabolism in 14th-century Bergen,” Scandia. Tidskrift för historisk forskning, vol. 63, no. 1, pp. 17-33, 1997.
Per-Anders Östilng. Witchcraft trials in 17th-century Sweden and the Great Northern Swedish Witch Craze of 1668-1678, Studia Neophilologia, 84: sup 1, 97-105. 2012.
Mary Douglas and Scandinav-ious Witches
Figure 1 - Witches' Cauldron by ElvenstarArt on DeviantArt.com
Being visible and open did provide a detrimental factor for women living in a village; they were the ones who were still around. Men, going out to hunt or fighting in turf wars weren’t around to be gawked at by the other village citizens who were left behind so no one may have thought much of the scandalous behaviors they would get up to while away (out of sight, out of mind). This is especially poignant with the Nordic and Swedish witch craze because the accusations were from inside the village, not the outside. In fact, in the Swedish 17th-century trials, the general population of women were “generally more or less well-to-do farmers who were accused, and it was usually another farmer” (Östling 2012: 99). As well as being “often instigated by social conflicts between individuals living in the same community” with “conflicts between members of the same family being very rare” (Östling 2012: 98). So, therefore, in conflict with Mary Douglas’s theory that these violations were from the outside is not quite accurate.
Using the Nordic paper by Steven Mitchell about Bergen’s witch trial in the 14th century there are two paradoxically opposing viewpoints on this idea of violation; the barrier of which is defined by whether one is looking at it from a woman’s, Ragnhildr’s, human choice, or from the male-centric idea that she was violated and thus impure. As a woman, I am biased in favour of the idea that women are people, who have wants and desires and can make their own choices and own mistakes. There was the belief that women were more susceptible to the will of the devil and were/are more corruptible than men. That statement by Östling read as a backing to Mary Douglas’s argument, that an outside force penetrated the community through the most vulnerable members.
This then leads to the paradoxical point, if the society excludes the men but is from their perspective, the threat is from the evil from outside, controlling women, even though it could easily be women themselves or the other in the society. But if it includes men the evil is actually from the inside, forcing its way through a body like cancer, whether the bad was from the men or the women, the leaders cannot possibly think they are in the wrong, and that the women are to weak or feeble to do anything for themselves, therefore it must be outside evil. In these cases, while Douglas wants the violation of the body in these contexts to represent the violation of social norms, it’s the complete opposite; this had to be normal, or none of the other accusers would be in a single group perpetuating this reoccurring craze. And as soon as you have more than one person involved in any way, there is already an other, an outsider, who can be set to take the blame; even when it’s one person blaming the other.
Work Cited
Mitchell, Stephen A. “Nordic Witchcraft in Transition: Impotence, Heresy, and Diabolism in 14th-century Bergen,” Scandia. Tidskrift för historisk forskning, vol. 63, no. 1: 17-33, 1997.
Östilng, Per-Anders. Witchcraft trials in 17th-century Sweden and the Great Northern Swedish Witch Craze of 1668-1678, Studia Neophilologia, 84: sup 1, 97-105. 2012.
Stewart, Pamela J. and Strathern, Andrew. Witchcraft, sorcery, rumors, and gossip. Cambridge University Press, New York. pp. 18-33. 2004.
