Sollefteå parish, Ångermanland

The Sollefteå Witch Trials

In 1674 the accusation reached Ångermanland. It had come up the country the way weather does, one parish at a time — the belief that women were carrying children to Blåkulla in the night. In Sollefteå the court sat and the children were asked to name names, and they named them. Neighbours testified about neighbours. The records list women whose whole lives are otherwise absent from history: they exist in the archive only as the accused. Some were condemned. The panic burned through the district and then, as suddenly as such things do, it went out — and the parish went on living beside itself, with everyone knowing exactly who had said what.