Witch conference underway

[icymist]

Hundreds of women were burned at the stake in Norway's northern city of Vardø in the early 1600s, accused of witchcraft. This week people gathered to draw parallels between the city's dark history and modern-day discrimination.

If we'd lived 300 to 400 years ago, we'd probably have been burned at the stake, too," said a smiling Fisheries Minister Helga Pedersen, with a serious undertone. Pedersen opened the conference in the far northern city on Thursday.

Pedersen said many women were accused of witchcraft because they didn't conform to male expectations at the time. She noted that women continue to face discrimination, and suffer, in many countries around the world, because they don't dress the way men think they should, say things men disagree with or fall in love with someone other than the man their male family members have chosen for them.

She said current researchers on discrimination can learn from what happened in Vardø the 1600s.

Conference founder Ritta Leinonen says that Vardø's history has fascinated many, because of the human destiny and international politics it involved. She believes Vardø was especially hard-hit since the fishing village in a tough northern climate bred many strong and independent women.

Read the full article

Witchcraft in focus at Arctic rendez-vous (Related article)

Witchhunts came to an end in Europe hundreds of years ago but thousands of people around the world are still being persecuted, a subject academics will delve into at a witchcraft conference in Norway's far north this week.

Some 60 international experts will gather in the tiny Arctic town of Vardoe, home to the worst of the Norwegian witch trials in the 17th century, on Thursday for three days of lectures and talks on witchcraft in ancient and contemporary societies.

"Witches and people accused of being witches are no longer persecuted in the West, but they are still frequently persecuted in Africa, Mexico, India, Indonesia and Malaysia," one of the conference organisers, historian Rune Blix Hagen of Tromsoe University in Norway, told AFP.

"In these countries, more witches have been killed in the past 50 years than in Europe" during the 16th and 17th centuries when 50,000 people were burned at the stake, he said.

As in the past, the alleged witches are most often scapegoats singled out by their communities as responsible for illnesses, disasters, poor harvests, bad weather and other misfortunes.

Read the full article