The Vardø Witch Trials

Everyone knows Salem. Almost nobody knows Vardø.

At the very edge of Europe, above the Arctic Circle, there was a place people believed stood on the boundary between this world… and something else. A place where the Devil could enter the world.

In February 1692, the same month the Salem accusations began, the last victim of the Vardø witch trials was being brought to court. Salem was over in little more than a year. This had already been going on for 70 years.

91 people died, most of them women, in Norway's deadliest witch hunt.

It began in 1619, when a Scottish sea captain arrived in this isolated community, a coast full of widows. Soon, a terrifying belief took hold, that witches were living among them.

Join me as I travel to the remotest parts of Norway, to the places where the women lived, were imprisoned and put to death. And I've been given rare access to the 17th century witch trial court books, with one of the few people alive who can still read them.

Whose words were really in those confessions?
And why did they kill so many women?

A 6-part documentary series from Lisa Williams.
Sound design by Craig Edmondson.