The Reckoning | EP 7

How did Norway’s deadliest witch hunt finally come to an end? In the series finale, Professor Liv Helene Willumsen and I follow the last cases and what brought the trials to a stop.

Salem’s witch trials are known all over the world, but few people have ever heard of Vardø. So how does a small town live in the shadow of a past like this?

On the headland where many of the accused were burned at the stake now stands the Steilneset Memorial. The team behind it tell me how it was made and what it has meant for the town. I hear how the renowned architect Peter Zumthor approached his long, dark corridor, a space for the victims alone. At the end of the corridor, Louise Bourgeois created her last major installation, a chair that burns day and night. By then she was in her nineties, working from her New York flat. I hear about the letters she wrote to Liv Helene, and how that chair came to be.

The final word goes to Liv Helene, who has dedicated her life to bringing these voices out of the archives and into the world.

This series is dedicated to all the victims of the Finnmark witch trials.

Find me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vardowitchtrials

Sound design by Craig Edmondson.

With thanks to:
Professor Liv Helene Willumsen, UiT The Arctic University of Norway
A special mention to the late Solbjørg Ellingsen Fossheim, former state archivist in Tromsø, who in Liv Helene’s words read “all these pages, all these words, all these letters” of the original court records with her.
Professor Jennifer McNabb, University of Northern Iowa
Historians Rune Blix Hagen and Johan Morken
Author Anya Bergman
Isa Maline Isene, Vardø Museum
Reidun Laura Andreassen
Trine Kanter Zerwekh, Norwegian Scenic Routes
The National Archives in Tromsø
Mark Stenersen, UiT

Voices by Anne Mali, Sven, Klara, Olivia, Ingrid, Jon Erik, Anne Elisabeth, Marianne and Gry.

The court records in this episode come from Professor Liv Helene Willumsen’s source edition, translated into English by Katjana Edwardsen.

Anya Bergman’s novel The Witches of Vardø: https://anyabergman.com/the-witches-of-vardo

Written, hosted and produced by Lisa Williams.