The Deadly Arctic Witch Trials
After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
History Hit
4.7 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2026
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It all started when a huge storm drowned 40 men on Christmas Eve, 1617.
The people of Vardø, northern Norway, needed someone to blame.
What followed were devastating witch trials which featured one of the highest execution rates in Europe, and implicated the town's women and the surrounding indigenous population.
Joining Anthony and Maddy to delve into this icy world is author and historian Marion Gibson.
This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Christmas Eve 1617. |
| 0:05.7 | In the Arctic settlement of Varda, the wind isn't just cold. |
| 0:11.0 | It's a killer. |
| 0:12.8 | Tonight, the sea claims 40 fathers, sons and husbands in one catastrophic, icy storm. The local economy is annihilated. Every third |
| 0:26.5 | family is plunged into sudden, hopeless poverty. In the chaos of grief and ruin, there's a vacuum. |
| 0:36.1 | Into that vacuum pours the terror of early modern Europe, the wave |
| 0:40.9 | of persecution that has consumed Germany and Scotland is finally breaching the shores of the far north. |
| 0:48.1 | The officials and judges, far from home, arrive with one terrible instruction. Find the witches responsible for the wind. |
| 0:57.7 | The victims of the storm are gone, but the widows they left behind, their trial is only |
| 1:04.6 | just beginning. |
| 1:06.2 | And what's more, it will set the small island of Varda a blaze with burning. |
| 1:12.6 | Music To take us on this story today, we have none of them, Professor Marion Gibson, who is a historian and author of books, including witchcraft, history and 13 13 trials and the witches St. Osseth. |
| 1:45.3 | Marian, welcome to After Dark. |
| 1:46.7 | Thank you for inviting me. |
| 1:48.2 | We are going to be talking about a witch trial that takes place in Norway. |
| 1:52.3 | And it's known as, and we... |
| 1:54.2 | Where does it take place, Maddie? |
| 1:55.8 | Well, luckily, we have someone on our production team who is in a position to advise on the pronunciation |
| 2:01.7 | and I'm extremely nervous to do it in front of her and not making eye contact with her in the studio. Varda, is that correct? Sounds good to me. She's cheering. She's cheering. I've did it correctly. So, Marian, this is a very different setting. You know, often when we talk about witch trials, we talk about the sort of the big famous hitters of the Pendle witch trials, you know, Matthew Hopkins in the Eastern England, and even the Salem Witch Trials, which you've covered quite extensively on the show before. This is a very different setting. This is a very different context. Can you tell us when and where in history we are in this moment? So we're in the 1620s, the early 1620s, |
| 2:37.8 | and we're in the very far north of what is now modern Norway. So right up in the Arctic Circle, |
| 2:45.4 | you know, the kind of place where it gets dark all day at certain times of the year and is very |
| 2:50.7 | light at other times where you would see the northern lights a lot, a place where it gets dark all day at certain times of the year and is very light at other times |
... |
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