Witches of the North: Scotland and Finnmark

Liv Helene Willumsen

Brill, 2013 - History - 394 pages

Witches of the North. Scotland and Finnmark is a comparative study of witchcraft persecution in Scotland and Finnmark, Norway. A wide range of quantitative and qualitative analyses based mainly on legal documents shed light on the witch-hunts in the two regions during the seventeenth century. Statistical analyses give information about tendencies in the source material in total. The qualitative chapters contain close-readings of trial documents, wherein the various voices heard during a trial are analysed: the voice of the scribe, the voice of the law, the voice of the accused person and the voices of the witnesses. The analyses combined provide a broad view of the historical phenomenon in question as well as in-depth studies of individual witchcraft cases.

About the author

Liv Helene Willumsen, Ph. D. (2008) in History, University of Edinburgh, is Professor of History at the Department of History and Religious Studies, University of Tromsų. Her recent publications include Witchcraft Trials in Finnmark, Northern Norway (2010), the exhibition texts at Steilneset Memorial, Finnmark (2011), Witches of the North: Scotland and Finnmark (2013), and Steilneset Memorial. Art Arcitecture History (2014).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Witches of the North: Scotland and Finnmark; Volume 170 of Studies in Medieval and Reform; Volume 170 of Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions : History, Culture, Religion, Ideas; Studies in medieval and Reformation traditions, ISSN 1573-4188
• Author: Liv Helene Willumsen
• Publisher: Brill, 2013
• ISBN: 9004252916, 9789004252912
• Length: 394 pages
• Subjects: History / Europe / General; Law / Criminal Law / General