Kirsten Iversdatter went from farm to farm begging for food, wearing the ragged clothes that were all she owned. People feared that she could take away their good fortune. She depended on them for her next meal.
On 12 October 1674, she was burned to death at Galgeberget, the execution ground below Steinberget on the western edge of Trondheim. She was a Sámi woman, usually called Finn-Kirsten, and the last person executed for witchcraft in Trondheim. Before she confessed to any dealings with the Devil, a court had already decided that she should die.
Kirsten travelled through the farming districts of central Norway, asking for food. She was familiar to people in Gauldalen, where her visits had acquired a dangerous reputation. She was accused of threatening misfortune when households refused her what she asked for. In a world where words were believed to carry destructive power, an angry beggar's departure might stay in a family's memory long after the encounter itself.
A later illness or loss could give that memory a purpose. The woman who had asked for something became the woman suspected of taking something away. Kirsten's supposed power offered an explanation for misfortune, and her poverty brought her again and again to the doors of the people who could accuse her.
Her Sámi identity sharpened the suspicion. "Finn" was the word Norwegians used for Sámi people, and the name attached to her carried an association with magic. Sámi people were widely believed to possess powers that could heal, find lost things or cause harm. Norwegian households might seek such services and fear the people thought capable of providing them. There was room for both beliefs in the same household.
None of that tells us what Kirsten herself believed or practised. It tells us something about the reputation that could arrive at a farm before she did.
She was arrested at Støren by two local farmer-constables and held in irons until her case could be heard. Before the local court, she denied practising witchcraft. The proceedings reached into the rest of her life anyway. She had not attended church regularly. She moved from place to place. She had children born outside marriage: a daughter, Karen, born in Orkdal in 1654, and another, Lisbet, born in Beitstad in 1672, eighteen years and a long road apart. These were matters over which the authorities claimed jurisdiction, and together they became evidence of what the court considered an evil and ungodly life. The court sentenced her to beheading.
She had denied witchcraft. She was condemned anyway.
After the sentence, while she remained in the custody of the bailiff of Gauldal, Jens Randulf, Kirsten confessed to having given herself to the Devil. The confession changed the legal course of the case. It went to the higher court in Trondheim, where a pact with the Devil carried the punishment prescribed by the witchcraft ordinance of 1617: death by burning.
She was moved to imprisonment in the Archbishop's Palace, in the custody of the county governor, Joachim Vind. Her hearing in Trondheim ran from 29 June to 1 July 1674. Officials and clergymen from both the city and Gauldalen took part in the interrogations. The woman who lived by asking other people for food now faced an assembly of men whose authority extended over her body, her religion and her sentence.
Among the expenses preserved from her imprisonment was a payment for the cords and lines used to torture her. The accounts listed them among the ordinary costs of the case. As the interrogations continued, her confessions became fuller.
The learned men questioning her understood witchcraft through demonology, the study of the Devil and his dealings with human beings, and her confessions gave them what that study expected. She said she had renounced her baptism and her Christianity, and that she had been in the Devil's power for fifteen years. She described no harm done to any farm, animal or child. The accusations had begun with what a beggar might do to a household. The interrogations ended with her allegiance to Satan.
They also concerned other people.
Under torture and questioning, Kirsten named more than thirty supposed accomplices. One woman, she said, had flown through the air with her several times. One man had visited hell three times. The names reached beyond poor travellers to prosperous farmers in Gauldalen and townspeople in Trondheim, and her case spread into other households, generating investigations, accusations and proceedings to clear reputations.
Some of those accused had the means to answer through the courts. Wealthy people pursued actions against the allegations, defending their names through the same legal system that had condemned Kirsten. No one else was burned for witchcraft in Trondheim, but the repercussions continued until 1677.
For Kirsten, the demand for information continued alongside the sentence. Clergymen approved her condemnation and recommended further torture to discover who else had supposedly shared in her offences. Confession had changed the manner of her death. It had also given the interrogators more questions to ask.
On 12 October, she was taken under guard to Galgeberget, at the western approach to Trondheim. A large crowd gathered at the execution ground. There, Kirsten was bound to a ladder and thrown into the fire.
She had travelled between farms in clothes she could not afford to replace, dependent on what other households would give her. Imprisonment, interrogation and two death sentences had brought her to the execution ground at Trondheim. She was burned in the same ragged clothes.
