Malin Matsdotter

Malin Matsdotter or Mattsdotter, also known as Rumpare-Malin (1613 – 5 August 1676) was a Swedish woman accused 9f being a witch. She is known as one of few people in Sweden confirmed to have been executed by burning for witchcraft, and the only one to be executed by this method during the famous witch hunt Det Stora oväsendet ('The Great Noise') in Sweden during 1668–1676, which ended with her execution.

Early life According to protocol, Malin Matsdotter was of Finnish heritage: she herself later stated in court protocol that she originally learned her prayers in the Finnish language. She was born in Ostrobothnia in Finland (at the time a part of Sweden) and moved to the capital of Stockholm to work as a maidservant in the 1630s. In 1638 she married Erik Nilsson (1592-1668), who worked in the manufacture of nails and other metal threads, and they had two daughters: Anna Eriksdotter (born 1655) and Maria Eriksdotter (born 1657).

In 1668, her husband was executed for having intercourse with a cow. He had been reported by their 13-year-old daughter Anna, after she and her sister had been brought home after running away to escape being beaten by their father, then by their mother at their father's command. During the beating, Anna reportedly said to her father: "God knows mother beat, and You beat, and I shall no longer remain silent, such a sin You have committed, all the time standing on a chair over our black cow like a rooster over a hen." Malin testified in the trial of her spouse that he had been sleeping with a knife under his pillow and had acted suicidal. Though described as poor, in 1676, she owned her own house in Mariaberget in Stockholm, and she had been hired as a midwife by Anna Zippel (also accused in the same witch trial), but there is no information that she was a professional midwife, and she is not referred to as such in the court protocols. The Swedish witch frenzy reached its peak with the Torsåker witch trials in 1675, and reached the capital of Stockholm the same year with the Gävle-Boy, which led to a witch trial in the congregation of Katarina Church, known as the Katarina witch trials, were children and teenagers of the Katarina Parish started to follow the example of the Gävle Boy by pointing out women for abducting them to Satan. According to contemporary witnesses, Malin Matsdotter behaved with great dignity and courage during her execution. When asked to take the hand of her daughter to make peace with her before death, she refused. She "did not seem to fear death much, courageously mounting the stake", and even the official execution protocol noted that she "was very tough". She spoke calmly with the executioner, "allowing him to fasten her with iron by her hands and feet", and the bag of gunpowder was placed around her neck to hasten death. She talked back to the priests with her head held high when they pleaded with her to acknowledge her sin, maintaining her innocence. When her daughter cried out and appealed to her to admit her crimes "Malin delivered her daughter in the hands of the Devil and cursed her for eternity". The daughter in question would have been Maria Eriksdotter, as Anna Eriksdotter was herself in arrest as the time. The execution in itself was described: "But though all of this was both horrifying and pathetic to look upon, those who suffered death did not shed one tear but stood by their standpoint of innocence with an unnatural courage". Tradition claims that Malin Matsdotter did not scream but died in silence, in accordance with contemporary view that witches felt no pain.

Aftermath The execution of Malin Matsdotter did in fact signify the end of the Katarina witch trial in Stockholm and the end of the national 1668–76 witch hunt in Sweden. Some of the judges in the commission, notably Urban Hjärne and Eric Noraeus, begun to express skepticism toward the child witnesses and instigate a different interrogation technique against them by asking them to repeat their testimonies rather than to affirm their already given testimonies. This was particularly brought about since the child witnesses had started to accuse people from the upper classes, such as the Captains wife Margareta Staffansdotter Remmer and Maria Sofia De la Gardie. This resulted in the breakdown of one witness, Annika Thomsdotter, in court on 11 September 1676, which snowballed into other witnesses to retract their testimonies and blamed the leading witnesses, the Gävle Boy, Lisbeth Carlsdotter and the Myra Maids to have convinced them to perjure themselves. Seventeen child- and teenage witnesses admitted perjury. This efficiently discontinued the Katarina witch trial. The remaining accused, Margareta Staffansdotter Remmer, Karina Ambjörnsdotter and Margareta Matsdotter Dufva, were freed, and the courts instead prosecuted the witnesses for perjury, leading to both executions and physical punishments.

The leading perjurers, the Gävle Boy, Lisbeth Carlsdotter and the Myra Maids (Annika Hinrichzdotter and Agnis Eskilsdotter), were executed on 20 December 1676. The daughter of Brita Zippel, Annika Zippel, were sentenced to be whipped and died during the punishment. The oldest daughter of Malin Matsdotter, Anna "Annika" Eriksdotter, was herself under arrest after having stated during her testimony against her mother that she had herself begun to follow her example by abducting children to Satan. Imprisoned, she reported that she heard her mother call for her in her dreams, pinch her and ask her to "come as soon as possible" because she had accused her of witch craft. Anna Eriksdotter was, as the other remaining accused, freed from the charge of witch craft, but sentenced to be whipped for perjury. During the whipping, the crowd attacked the guards performing the whipping by throwing stones. Malin's younger daughter Maria Eriksdotter was given an official warning to make amends for her sin of perjury.

Malin Matsdotter was the last person to be executed for witch craft in Stockholm, the last person to be executed by burning in Stockholm, and the second last to be executed by burning in Sweden, next to Lars Nilsson in 1693. In 1677, all the priests of the country were ordered to proclaim in their churches that the witches had now been expelled from the country forever, in order to avoid further witch trials. This ended the great Swedish witch hunt of 1668–76. Though there were accusations after this, few people were executed for sorcery after the year of 1676. The last execution for witchcraft took place 1704 when Anna Eriksdotter was decapitated, the last person to be executed for sorcery in Sweden.

Legacy Malin Matsdotter is the role model for the novel Djävulens Märke by Magnus Nordin. She is a central figure in the children's book series Jakten på Jack by Martin Olczak.