Dorette Lauridtzdatter

On 26th and 27th September 1662 Dorette Lauridzdatter was accused of causing the deaths of two hired hands who worked for the Bergen merchant Lauridtz Bras. Due to adverse weather conditions among other things, the local fishermen of Vadsø and Vardø were struggling to make ends meet and often in debt to the Bergen merchants. There must have been some tension between them. We know that Dorette's husband and Bras did not have good relations. Dorette had previously been accused of killing two of Bras' cows in 1657 but at that time she had been acquitted. However she was a prime target once the new Governor Orning instigated his purge of sorcery and witchcraft in 1662.
From the court records of the time Dorette refused to confess to witchcraft, this is what she says:
'As for her being guilty of their (the hired hands) deaths, and the like, as she has been accused of, she declares before the court, under the most solemn of oaths, upon whatever part, allotment or share she may expect to enjoy in the Kingdom of the Lord, that she never was the cause of the late persons' deaths. She is utterly and completely devoid of guilt, she is innocent. As far as she is concerned she has nothing more to state.'
However the court in Vadsø was not satisfied and Dorette was brought to Vardøhus where she was imprisoned in the Witches' Hole. Over a month later on 6th November she is brought before the court again. Without doubt she would have been subjected to threats of torture, if not torture itself, during this time, being personally 'interrogated' by the Governor himself. When asked in court if she is willing to confess the full truth, Dorette replies that she will willingly oblige him. She goes on to tell how she learnt of her craft from an old beggar woman who taught her to blow into a pipe to bring about what ever evil she wished.
'She admitted to casting a spell on Lauridtz Bras' two hired hands, when she blew into the pipe in the Devil's name that he should enter them...'
Dorette goes on to denounce three other women for witchcraft, and she says that together they attempted to cast a spell on Captain Jens Ottesen's ship. The women were in the likeness of birds, an eagle, a swan and a crow, sitting atop an overturned barrel.

A witch performing weather magic from Olaus Magnus' Description of the Northern Peoples 1555

Dorette's fate was sealed. Once you admitted a pact with the devil there was no going back. Although torture was illegal under Danish law until a witch had confessed (after which she could be tortured to get the names of other witches) it is probable that all the accused women who confessed were subjected to torture beforehand. The paranoia that a woman you know might denounce you for witchcraft must have been intense. Anyone who was a little different, or an outsider such as a maid who came from a different region of Norway, was particularly vulnerable. It was not a good time to be a woman in Vardø.
Along with two of the women that she had denounced, on the same day that she had finally confessed, the three received the following verdict:
'....we have no other course, in view of the seriousness of the matter, than to decide and to judge that for such committed misdeeds they shall be punished in fire at the stake.'
Dorette Lauridsdatter was one of the 20 persecuted women who was burnt at that stake during the witch panic of winter of 1662 in Vardø.

(Court transcripts are taken from the book, The Witchcraft Trials in Finnmark Northern Norway by Liv Helene Willumsen and they are translated by Katjana Edwardsen)