Beliefs about the supernatural were rife in early modern Denmark–Norway. However, they were not static, and certain agents could influence them. Several incidents in the case of the demonic possession in Thisted suggest that Køge Huskors functioned as a catalyst and provided a cultural script for the events that followed. Without this book, the case may have taken a completely different turn.
The events concerning the possession in Thisted began in January 1696, when a young woman named Maren Spillemands came to the market town of Thisted to seek the council of Ole Bjørn, who had recently been made pastor of Thisted. For the preceding twelve years she had displayed ambiguous symptoms of an unknown illness, starting with pains in her thigh. Some had long held her to be possessed, and because a local woman, Maren Christensdatter, was the first to claim this, she was suspected of having caused possession by witchcraft.
1 National Archives, Copenhagen, Bilag til jysk missive af 7. november 1696 ang. Kommissionen i den thistedske besættelsessag, pp. 976–7. Kirsten Langgaard, a nine-year-old child, had also displayed strange symptoms for the past year. Her schoolteacher described her condition as either a strange childishness (she was seven or eight at the time) or the result of a natural illness.
2 Ibid., pp. 994–5. Others, including local pastor Palle Madsen, described symptoms more consistent with those of demonic possession. This is evidenced in a letter he wrote to Kirsten’s father in 1695 in which he described the young girl’s partial recovery, stating that she was less afflicted than before and could now stand on her feet, eat bread and utter the name of Jesus. This implies she was unable to do this during her ‘attacks’, during which she would scream, experience pains, open her mouth wide and stretch her body. Kirsten was in Pastor Madsen’s house for treatment at the time, but ultimately it was unsuccessful, leading her father to seek Ole Bjørn’s council in early 1696.
3 National Archives, Copenhagen, 1697 Protokol B, p. 450. Maren’s and Kirsten’s early symptoms appear vague, they were open to interpretation and they seem similar to those in other cases in Jutland, in which common people used the term ‘possession’ synonymously with unexplained illness perceived to be the result of witchcraft.
4 Louise Nyholm Kallestrup has found several such cases (‘Knowing Satan from God’, pp. 179–80). The symptoms did not necessarily match those of the theological definition of demonic possession, and there seems to have been no consensus that they were possessed. However, this was about to change. Pastor Ole Bjørn quickly took charge of events and announced that Maren and Kirsten were genuinely possessed by the Devil. Although this diagnosis was a distinct possibility, according to the official guidelines of the
Church Ritual (1685), the swiftness and firmness of this conclusion went directly against the guidelines, which stipulated that pastors who encountered people who claimed to be possessed should be cautious and sceptical, as genuine cases of demonic possession were rare. They were also ordered to consult doctors to rule out natural causes of the symptoms, and the only action a pastor should take to cure a demoniac was to pray for them. However, Ole Bjørn brought the possessed into the church, attempted to exorcise them, and spoke with them in a performance with the whole congregation as an audience; all of this went directly against the instructions outlined in the
Church Ritual.
5 The relevant paragraphs are found in chapter 6, article 3 (Danmarks og Norgis Kirke-Ritual [Copenhagen, 1685], pp. 226–45). ProQuest has digitised a copy of the original quarto edition from 1685, for the Royal Library, Copenhagen.~
Plate 3.2. The town of Thisted as seen from the south, including the church in which some of the events took place. The copperplate was initially produced in 1677 for Peder Hansen Resen’s (1625–88) Atlas Danicus, never published in full.
Instead of adhering to the official guidelines, Ole Bjørn seems to have found an alternative script for the Thisted case in
Køge Huskors. He actively used the book as an argument for the reality of demonic possession, and according to witnesses, he even preached about the book and warned that the possession in Thisted would become even worse than the events mentioned in this book. Seemingly, the witnesses did not feel the need to explain to their interrogators what
Køge Huskors was, which suggests that the book and its narrative were already well known.
6 National Archives, Copenhagen, Bilag til jysk missive af 7. november 1696 ang. Kommissionen i den thistedske besættelsessag, pp. 55–61. In other words, knowledge of
Køge Huskors circulated widely, and Ole Bjørn made sure his congregation was familiar with its narrative if it was not already acquainted with it from the many copies of the book
that circulated in Denmark–Norway at the time. Even those who had not read the book themselves became involved in a literary community through Ole Bjørn’s sermons. After Ole Bjørn took charge of events and offered
Køge Huskors as a script for a true possession, the demoniacs’ symptoms seem to have worsened, and they began to mirror those described in the book, which more clearly corresponded to the theological description. Now convinced by Ole Bjørn and the women, several witnesses reported seeing the demoniacs levitating, displaying unnatural strength, experiencing convulsions and making animal noises,
7 Ibid., pp. 558–74, 659–63, 710–15, 852, 995–7. all things described as signs of possession in the book.
8 J. Brunsmand, Et forfærdeligt Huus-Kaars (1674), pp. 27–8, 44–5. Witnesses also began seeing strange animals such as bewitched hares and white rats, sometimes glowing as though they were on fire.
9 National Archives, Copenhagen, Bilag til jysk missive af 7. november 1696 ang. Kommissionen i den thistedske besættelsessag, pp. 88, 387. Such sightings of unnatural animals, especially rats, were the first signs of the supernatural that heralded the strange events in
Køge Huskors.
10 J. Brunsmand, Et forfærdeligt Huus-Kaars (1674), pp. 23–5. The two demoniacs attracted large audiences, which seems to have only worsened their symptoms. Soon the indications of possession apparently spread to other local women – almost like an epidemic – and six months later twelve women claimed that they were possessed by devils. Ole Bjørn and other local pastors took turns trying to help, and sometimes exorcise, them.
11 National Archives, Copenhagen, Bilag til jysk missive af 7. november 1696 ang. Kommissionen i den thistedske besættelsessag, p. 387.The most important change in the affected women in Thisted was that the possessed began to speak as though devils were speaking through their mouths in deep, guttural voices, and apparently displayed supernatural knowledge. To an audience they could very exactly predict their fits, something that was also reported in
Køge Huskors.
12 Ibid., pp. 989–1; J. Brunsmand, Et forfærdeligt Huus-Kaars (1674), pp. 32–3. In other words, their possession became verbal after Ole Bjørn became involved. The women assumed new social identities by following the cultural script of the text, and as demoniacs they now had a voice and an audience. The demoniacs, or rather the devils inside them, claimed to have been cast into their victims by a witch, Anne Christensdatter, and stated that they would not leave until she had been burned at the stake.
13 National Archives, Copenhagen, Bilag til jysk missive af 7. november 1696 ang. Kommissionen i den thistedske besættelsessag, pp. 997–9. Such executions were what finally cured the demoniacs in
Køge Huskors. Inspired by the book, Ole Bjørn quickly had Anne Christensdatter imprisoned and tried, hoping to achieve the same results.
14 Ibid., p. 982. Later on, similar allegations were made against Anne Vert, another local woman, and she too was tried. However, in all known cases of demonic possession in seventeenth-century Denmark, witness statements from demoniacs were used as evidence only twice: in the witchcraft trials in Køge (1608–15) that were described by Brunsmand in
Køge Huskors and in the trials brought by Ole Bjørn.
15 L. Kallestrup, ‘Knowing Satan from God’, p. 169. This was because such statements were regarded as having been made by the Devil – who, according to theology, was a notorious liar – making them inadmissible as evidence in a Danish trial.
16 Jens Christian V. Johansen, Da Djævelen var ude… Trolddom i det 17. århundredes Danmark (Odense, 1991), pp. 32–3. Because of this, both women were later acquitted at the High Court of Northern Jutland.
On 18 April 1696 Ole Bjørn wrote a letter to his superior, the bishop of Aalborg Jens Bircherod, reporting that demonic possession had become epidemic and asking for the assistance of neighbouring pastors. In the letter he explicitly compared the possession in Thisted to Køge Huskors and used it to argue that he should be granted support:
It seems to me that this case is very similar to the well-known story of
Køge Huskors; indeed, in many ways it is more terrible, as the evil spirit has also spoken against me publicly, here in the church, while I was in the pulpit in a professional capacity, not just from the mouth of the possessed (as often has happened), but also from the arches of the church.
17 My translation. The original reads: ‘Ellers synes mig at denne Handel meget ligner den bekendte Historie og Beretning om Kiøge Huskaars, ja i mange Maader overgaar den i Forskrekkelse, saa at den onde Aand end ogsaa offentlig her i Kirken haver ladet sig høre imod mig, da jeg stod paa Prædikestolen i mit Embedes Forretning, ikke alene af den Besættes Mund, (som tit er skeed) mens end og af Kirke-Hvelvingen […]’: (National Archives, Copenhagen, Bilag til jysk missive af 7. november 1696 ang. Kommissionen i den thistedske besættelsessag, p. 387).The wording suggests that
Køge Huskors was well known, at least to Ole Bjørn and his peers, and that it influenced Ole Bjørn’s beliefs about what was happening in his congregation. In the letter Ole Bjørn listed all the classic symptoms of possession that the case now presented; all that was missing was the victims’ ability to speak foreign languages such as Latin and Greek.
18 Ole Bjørn’s report seems to reference a list of signs needed to prove demonic possession, as he quotes their description in Latin. His source for this list is unclear, but it corresponds closely to a list in the first draft of the Church Ritual and generally accepted lists of symptoms (S. Borregaard, Danmarks og Norges kirkeritual af 1685 [Copenhagen, 1953], pp. 39–46; B. Levack, The Devil Within, pp. 6–15). However, a lack of knowledge of Latin was also mentioned in
Køge Huskors, where a pastor’s Latin speech led the Devil to respond that he did not want to occupy his mind with such things.
19 J. Brunsmand, Et forfærdeligt Huus-Kaars (1674), p. 53. Another parallel with
Køge Huskors was that the devils, probably inspired by the book, revealed that Ole Bjørn was the original target of the possession, as Hans Bartskær had been in the book.
20 National Archives, Copenhagen, Bilag til jysk missive af 7. november 1696 ang. Kommissionen i den thistedske besættelsessag, pp. 527–31; J. Brunsmand, Et forfærdeligt Huus-Kaars (1674), p. 30. Bircherod was initially supportive and apparently convinced by Ole Bjørn, but he soon became more sceptical as the pastor and the demoniacs were unable to reproduce the supernatural symptoms before him and a rural dean at a meeting in Hillerslev. Ole Bjørn also attempted to get the devils occupying Maren and Kirsten to converse in Latin, but all they managed were three disconnected words: ‘gloria’, ‘diabolus’ and ‘victoria’, which was not enough to convince either Bishop Bircherod or his assistant, Christoffer Mumme, of the presence of demonic possession.
21 Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Jens Bircherod, Til en anden Biskop i Jylland angaaende Besættelsen i Thisted, 1696; National Archives, Copenhagen, Bilag til jysk missive af 7. november 1696 ang. Kommissionen i den thistedske besættelsessag, pp. 434–8.