3 Possessed by a Book: Cultural Scripts for Demonic Possession in Early Modern Denmark

This chapter revisits the case of the demonic possession in Thisted, which is well-known in the historiography of early modern Denmark–Norway. The most thorough investigation is still Danish runologist and curator Anders Bæksted’s two-volume doctoral thesis, published 1959–60, in which he included many of the original court documents and other archival sources, some in full, others as excerpts.3 A. Bæksted, Besættelsen i Tisted 1696–98, vol. 1 (Copenhagen, 1959); A. Bæksted, Besættelsen i Tisted 1696–98, vol. 2 (Copenhagen, 1960). Since Bæksted’s book, the case has been treated academically several times.4 See, for instance, G. Henningsen, ‘Trolddom og hemmelige kunster’, in A. Steensberg (ed.), Dagligliv i Danmark. I det syttende og attende århundrede (Copenhagen, 1969), pp. 161–96; K. Gørlitz and O. Hoffmann, Djævlen i kroppen. Synden i hjertet (Copenhagen, 1987). The most detailed portrayal of the Thisted case since Bæksted’s is Danish historians Charlotte Appel and Morten Fink-Jensen’s micro-historical investigation of 2009, which focused on pastor Ole Bjørn’s involvement in the case.5 See their chapter ‘Præsten og de besatte: Ole Bjørn, præst i Thisted, 1693–1698’, in Ch. Appel and M. Fink-Jensen, Når det regner på præsten. En kulturhistorie om sognepræster og sognefolk. 1550–1750 (Højbjerg, 2009), pp. 195–232.

Historians have long attempted to explain the peculiar phenomenon of demonic possession. In the early modern period sceptics were already trying to expose the so-called demoniacs as impostors and frauds. This also happened in the Thisted case, for instance in the anonymously-published satirical account Kort og sandfærdig Beretning (1699), which represented the official stance on the matter.6 Á. Magnússon, Kort og sandfærdig Beretning, om den viit-udraabte Besettelse udi Tistæd (Copenhagen, 1699). This small book was written by Árni Magnússon based on the court documents, and he was encouraged by Matthias Moth, one of the judges (Bæksted, Besættelsen i Tisted, 1960, vol. 2, pp. 307–12). Long-standing alternative explanations have been that the demoniacs really suffered from early modern diagnoses such as melancholia, hysteria and epilepsy or that the cases were a combination of deception and mental illness.7 For instance, see D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia, 1981). Psychiatrist Fr. Hallager also explained the Thisted case as a manifestation of mental illness (Magister Ole Bjørn og de besatte i Thisted [Copenhagen, 1901]). More recently scholars have begun to move away from trying to diagnose the would-be demoniacs as mentally ill.8 See, for instance, H. C. Erik Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth Century Germany (Stanford, 1999); H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witchcraft, Madness, Society, and Religion in Early Modern Germany (Farnham, 2013); D. Lederer, Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe: A Bavarian Beacon (Cambridge, 2006). There are good reasons for this, namely that it is difficult to diagnose historical individuals with any certainty, that it is arguably ahistorical to do so as early modern people did not have a modern concept of mental illness, and that it does not further our understanding of the phenomenon. Instead, I contend that we must understand early modern demonic possession as a transnational, religious and cultural phenomenon that was very real to people in the past.

Scholars of early modern witchcraft and demonic possession such as Stuart Clark, Brian P. Levack and Philip C. Almond have convincingly argued that cases of demonic possession played out similarly to theatrical performances, where individuals performed as part of a group. According to these scholars, possession is best understood as following a kind of cultural script – a set of common religious and cultural beliefs.9 S. Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997); B. P. Levack, The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West (New Haven, CT, 2013); P. C. Almond, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern England: Contemporary Texts and Their Cultural Contexts (New York, 2004). Cultural scripts offered ways to interpret strange events and symptoms, and they may have determined how a case of demonic possession played out by assigning certain roles to those involved and possible ways to act and react. Although scripts did not determine how people acted, they established ways in which individuals could act when faced with possible demonic possession. Approaching demonic possession from the perspective of cultural scripts and studying their possible origins allows a dynamic examination of how beliefs about the supernatural were circulated and transformed in early modern Europe.

In the Thisted case, several agents seem to have found a useful script in the possession narratives of Køge Huskors (1674).10 J. Brunsmand, Et forfærdeligt Huus-Kaars, eller en sandferdig Beretning om en gruelig Fristelse aff Dieffvelen (Copenhagen, 1674). Because of its long title, this book was usually referred to simply as Køge Huskors, which is how I will also refer to the book in this chapter. Also see the scholarly edition: J. Brunsmand, Køge Huskors, ed. A. Bæksted (Copenhagen, 1953). Indeed, I argue that this book and the cultural script it provided had a significant effect on the events in the case and that it functioned as a kind of agent of change or catalyst, shaping beliefs and even actions of individuals involved in the case. This approach highlights the role books and texts played in this process. Although Køge Huskors had no intention of its own, it still had an effect on events as the provider of a cultural script.11 The relationship between print, physical books and demonic possession has also been examined in S. Ferber’s work, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern France (London and New York, 2004); M. Gibson’s Possession, Puritanism and Print: Darrell, Harsnett, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Exorcism Controversy (London, 2006) and A. Cambers’ ‘Demonic Possession, Literacy and “Superstition” in Early Modern England’, Past and Present, no. 202 (2009), 3–35. The connection between Køge Huskors and the Thisted case has been made before. Bæksted highlighted the references to it in the Thisted case, and Appel and Fink-Jensen briefly commented on it.12 A. Bæksted, ‘Indledning og noter’, p. 69; Ch. Appel and M. Fink-Jensen, ‘Præsten og de besatte’, p. 212. Most recently, Norwegian cultural historian John Ødemark identified the Thisted events as a watershed in two articles that investigated how Køge Huskors underwent a genre shift, from historical account to fiction, over the course of its many editions.13 J. Ødemark, ‘Djevelbesettelsen i Køge og ånden fra Thisted: bokhistorie, kulturelle skript og virkelighetsforståelse’, in B. Lavold and J. Ødemark (eds), Reformasjonstidens Religiøse Bokkultur. Tekst, visualitet og materialitet (Oslo, 2017), pp. 71–109; J. Ødemark, ‘Inscribing Possession: Køge Huskors and Other Tales of Demonic Possession across Genres and Cultural Fields in Denmark–Norway (1647−1716)’, Ethnologia Scandinavica, 47 (2017), 1–20. However, the significance of this book in the concrete events of the Thisted case has not yet been fully investigated. By applying the concept of a cultural script in an analysis of the court documents of the case, I intend to change this.14 Ødemark also used the concept of a cultural script, but he applied it to the texts and narratives found in Køge Huskors and Magnússon’s 1699 account of the Thisted case (‘Djevelbesettelsen i Køge’, pp. 96–103), not to the events of the case. Moreover, the case presents an opportunity to examine how ‘ordinary people’ read, used and interpreted books in early modern Denmark–Norway and how they became part of a literary community. It also shows how texts such as the transnational genre of possession narratives could foster new social identities and give agency, or ‘literary citizenship’, to individuals who otherwise did not have a voice in early modern society.