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.Lamberg, Marko, Häxmodern: berättelsen om Malin Matsdotter, Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, Helsingfors, 2021 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."Lennartsson, Rebecka & Lennartsson, Rebecka, Från skuggsidan : folk och förbrytelser ur Stockholms historia, Stockholmia, Stockholm, 2014 Malin testified in the trial of her spouse that he had been sleeping with a knife under his pillow and had acted suicidal.
Malin Matsdotter remarried in 1669, this time to Anders Arendtsson. Her daughters left home soon afterward, stating as a reason the frequent arguments between their mother and stepfather. Very little is known about Malin Matsdotter, other than fragments that came forward during her trial, which also amounted to little. Her profession is unknown; she is mentioned to have been active as a midwife at one occasion, but whether that was her regular profession is unknown.Per-Johan Ödman (in Swedish) : Kontrasternas spel I ("The play of contrasts") (1995) 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. Her house included a sauna, which was a common way for people to clean themselves in this time period, and it is known that she earned a small income by renting out her sauna. In court protocol she is referred to by the sobriquet "Rumpare Malin"; the meaning "Rumpare" is unknown, but it is similar to the term "Rumpoxe", which was a contemporary pejorative used for "stupid"/uneducated people.
Since 1668, a national witch hunt raged through Sweden since the accusation of Märet Jonsdotter by Gertrud Svensdotter in Dalarna, resulting in the establishment of witch commissions around the nation and execution of about 280 people, accused of abducting children to the Witches' Sabbath of Satan in Blockula and often judged upon the testimonies of children.Alf Åberg: Häxorna. De stora trolldomsprocesserna i Sverige 1668–1676 (The witches. The great witch trials of Sweden in 1668–1676) 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. By May 1676, the Katarina witch trial had resulted in the execution of the sisters Brita and Anna Zippel, Maria Jönsdotter, Margareta Matsdotter and Anna Persdotter Lärka, as well as death in prison by suicide of Anna Månsdotter and Karin Johansdotter.
Trial In July 1676, Malin Matsdotter was reported for witchcraft by her nineteen-year-old daughter Maria Eriksdotter. Her reported stated:
Malin Matsdotter was questioned and interrogated to tell the truth. She was thoroughly questioned regarding her religious instruction. When asked to recite the Creed, she answered that she could not bother to read and barely knew the Lord's Prayer. Her language difficulties attracted attention when she had difficulty reading the prayers the court instructed her to: she did not know them herself, and even had trouble repeating them when they were read to her. The court noted that she hesitated in a suspicious way when she was to repeat the prayers word by word. The fact that she had trouble reading was in fact uncommon in 17th-century Stockholm: since the Swedish Church Ordinance 1571, every citizen regardless of class or sex was by law required to be able to read, so that they may be able to read the bible. The fact that she seems to have preferred Finnish was not considered strange by the court, as the capital had a great Finnish minority from the nearby province who even had their own congregation; however, what was regarded suspicious for a person accused of consorting with the Devil was, rather, the fact that she had difficulty to read and pronounce words from the holy scripture.
Her daughter Maria Eriksdotter testified that Malin took her and several other children to Satan in Blockula, and that Satan himself, "The Mean One" appeared in court, long, black and with horns, standing by her mother, holding her skirt and whispered in her ear never to confess. Malin was ordered by the court to fall on her knees and pray to be able to confess, and after having obeyed, her daughter stated that she could no longer see the Devil.
10-year-old Matthias Wallendorph and seven-year-old Margreta Jöransdotter both testified to having been abducted by Malin to Blockula, and they supported Maria Eriksdotter in her words that Satan appeared behind Malin and cautioned her not to confess. The married woman Gertrud Mattsdotter testified that Malin had abducted her children to Satan 16 times before losing them in a game to another woman accused of sorcery, Anna Simonsdotter Hack, called Tysk-Annika ('German-Annika'), and that Malin had abducted them 14 times while in prison. The children of Gertrud Mattsdotter testified that they had been beaten by Malin to prevent them from testifying, and Gertrud Mattsdotter testified that she had seen her children endure fits while being supernaturally beaten by Malin from prison, and that she would rather see them die than suffer, and that she would kill Malin herself if she was not executed. Gertrud Mattsdotter's daughter Annika asked Malin if she had not played with Tysk-Annika about who was going to set fire to Count Per's palace, but Malin refused to confirm this. Malin's older daughter Anna Eriksdotter supported her sister's testimony that their mother took them to Satan, but when she stated that she herself had started to abduct children herself, she was also placed under arrest. The court did ask Maria Eriksdotter if she was trying to have her mother executed in order to inherit her house, but she denied it. Malin's husband is not mentioned much during the trial and was never called to testify.
Malin Matsdotter was asked by the court to fall upon her knees and repeat a prayer read to her, but she did not succeed before her 11th attempt, which was given great importance by the court. She had at one point been hired as a midwife by Anna Zippel, who had previously been executed for witchcraft, and she commented that if she had ever taken anyone to Blockula, which she denied, then in that case, she would have learned it from Anna Zippel.
The court was convinced of her guilt by the testimony of her own daughters combined with her lack of religious knowledge and difficulty to read prayers. She commented the testimony of her daughters with the words: "My God, let them go there [Blockula] for ever", and stated that she did not mind dying when her own daughters testified against her. Her daughters were questioned again and stood by their testimonies, as Malin stood by her denial. Such firm denial was often regarded as a sign that the Devil assisted the witch to withstand interrogations. She accused her daughters of a bad lifestyle, and when the court asked her to specify, she answered with such language that her answer was in fact never written down in the court protocols, because they were "offensive to decent ears". She did state that her daughters had committed theft and that they had barely made an attempt to work and support themselves as maidservants before they had gotten bored and returned to her and expected to be supported by her again.
Execution On 16 July 1676, Malin Matsdotter was judged guilty as charged by a unanimous court on the testimonies of her daughters and sentenced to be executed. The method of execution was the subject of debate in the royal witchcraft commission, who was to decide between three alternatives; the first was the customary execution by decapitation followed by public burning of the corpse; the second was that she would be subjected to torture prior to the first alternative; and the third alternative was that she would be executed by being burned alive. The last alternative was given the majority vote. The clerical commissioner Carolinus stated in his vote that the honor of God should be regarded before the personal pain of Malin and that she should be given a taste of what was awaiting her in Hell after having seduced so many souls to Satan; commissioners Ivar and Noreus motivated their vote by the deterring effect such a method would have upon the public and her accomplices, and commissioner doctor Urban Hjärne suggested that she be tortured with hot iron prior to the execution, which would make her unconscious and unable to feel pain, because her death would otherwise be too cruel, but the suggestion was revoked with the view, expressed by a priest, that the honour of the name of God was more important than Malin's personal experience of pain; the method was also deemed necessary as an example to the public and to her accomplices. She was instead to have a bag of gunpowder secured around her neck to make her death quicker. Because the court was convinced of her guilt, her refusal to admit guilt made her position worse on the eyes of the court. One suggestion was, that at the place of execution, she would be given a last chance to confess her sin; if she did so, she would be decapitated before she was burned.
The method of execution make the case of Malin Matsdotter unique in Sweden. She was the only person of the almost 300 people executed during the great Swedish witch hunt of 1668–76, to be executed by being burned alive instead of by decapitation followed by public burning of the corpse, which was the normal execution for sorcery in Sweden. Though several crimes formally allowed for public burning as method of execution, this actually meant that the condemned be "executed and burned", which meant that they were first executed by decapitation or hanging, after which their corpse was publicly burned: the method of burning someone still alive is only known to have been used in the country a very few times before, and the verdict was therefore controversial.