Sorcerers of the North

Young Sami man with reindeer

The Sami are people of the nomadic herding tradition in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola peninsula of Russia. During the time of witch hunting in early Modern Europe they were known as The Lapland Witches, notorious for performing different kinds of magic. The opinion of Norwegian poet and preacher Petter Dass (1647 - 1707) in his book The Trumpet of the North that the Sami had special knowledge of witchcraft, was widespread in literature of the period. Even Shakespeare mentioned Lapland sorcerers in his Comedy of Errors.

Edition of The Trumpet of the North by Petter Dass 1647 - 1707

The State authorities wished to control the indigenous people of the North and used accusations of witchcraft as a means of keeping them suppressed. Sami men were accused of casting magic spells, known as 'gand', which could travel great distances like poisonous arrows. Petter Dass described the spells as swarms of black flies:

'The Lapp may well use his old 'gann' from afar;

The flies of Beelzebub powerful are

And bit where the witchcraft determines.'

The Sami were also accused of weather magic, though many Norwegian sailors paid Sami for good sailing winds. Most of all the Sami practice of Shamanism and the use of ritualistic drums, called runebomme, were described as invoking Satan.

Image from Johan Schefferus' book 'Lapponia' published in 1673. 

This book had a big influence on European scholars' perception of the invocation of Demonic forces by the Sami Shaman

In Finnmark the first to be executed for witchcraft in the early seventeenth century were Sami men, and this  in part was due to the fact that King Christian IV was obsessed with the sorcery of the Sami men since he had travelled to the far north, and experienced such tempests and storms that he believed only Satan could be the cause of them. 

 King Christian IV of Denmark-Norway believed the Sami were Devil's sorcerers

Out of 24 men accused of witchcraft in 17th century Finnmark, 16 were Sami, and 13 of these men lost their lives as a result. 

In contrast 77 women were executed, only six of whom were Sami women. The vast majority of those accused of witchcraft in Finnmark were in fact Norwegian women, the wives, mothers, and maidservants of the fishing community. In the end it was the women living within the Norwegian communities that were considered the greater threat, the enemy from within.