Malin Matsdotter

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Malin Matsdotter (d.1676), was an alleged Swedish witch and one of two people in Sweden to be executed by burning at the stake (the other was a peasant acused for heresy in Gottröra in 1408).

Malin Matsdotter was an old Swedish woman of Finnish descent, one of many victims of the witch hunt hysteria in Sweden between 1668 and 1676. Before this time, very few people had been accused of this crime in Sweden, but between these eight years, about 300 people, both women and men, where decapitated and burned as witches.

The Swedish witch frenzy reached its peak with the Torsåker witch trials, and it reached Stockholm in 1675, where it lasted until 1676.

The witch hunt of Stockholm was mainly concentrated not on sorcery, but on the belief that the witches abducted children to the sabbat of Satan. Malin Matsdotter was one of many people accused of having done this. She was the only witch in Sweden who was burned alive; normally, the witches in Sweden were decapitated before they were burned.

Malin Matsdotter was accused by her own adult daughters, who accused her of having abducted her own grandchildren to the Devil, and she was sentenced to be burned alive because of her refusal to plead guilty, despite of the torture she was exposed to. One of the previous witches had also received the same sentence for her refusal to admit guilt, but it was revoked when she finally did so; in the case of Malin, the sentence was to be carried out.

This execution was carried out in Stockholm on the 5th of August 1676. Malin was to be executed with another woman, Anna Simonsdotter, who was to be decapitated the usual way before burning, and the differences in their behaviour have given Malin the admiration of history. The judges suggested that she be tortured with hot irons before the execution, so that she would be unconscious and not aware of the pain, but the suggestion was revoked and she was instead encouraged to swallow gunpowder to make the death quicker.

Anna Simonsdotter stepped up to her execution with great humility, full of respect for her judgement, claiming she was guilty of what she had been accused of, and by her remorse, by her psalms, and by falling on her knees and lifting her head and her hands to the sky confirmed the justice in the verdict and the justice in the world. Malin Matsdotter, on the other hand, described by witnesses as proud and firm, swallowed the gunpowder with a smile and climbed up the stake showing no fear, talked calmly to the excecutioner and let him chain her by her hands and her feet without fighting back. She talked back to the priests with her head held high when they pledged to her to aknowledge her sin, maintaining her innocence. When her daughters in the audience, who were the ones who had accused her of witchcraft, called out to her to admit her crimes, "She gave her daughter into the hands of the devil and cursed her for eternity." After this, the stake was set on fire.

It is said that she died with no pain and without screaming, which was taken as another proof of her guilt. This was the end of the witch trials in Sweden; soon afterwards, the judges, led by Urban Hjärne, began to express their skepticism against the child-accusers and witnesses. The rest of the accused witches were let free, and three of the main child-witnesses, the Gävle-Boy and the Maids of Myra, were arrested and executed instead.