Places of justice and awe: the topography of gibbets and gallows in medieval and early modern north-western and Central Europe

Abstract

Well into the eighteenth century, the European landscape featured gibbets and gallows as tokens of local judicial authority. Despite divergent geography and social structure, the location of gallows is remarkably consistent. The importance of visibility and positioning along major traffic routes and boundaries is well known and therefore rarely considered worthy of further analysis. Historians often uncritically reproduce the motives given by contemporary authorities for harsh punishments and the erection of gallows at the border of their jurisdiction. Written sources tend to mask the political, social and religious aims of executing and displaying criminals at peripheral, yet visible and accessible locations. Through a comparative study of gallows topography in the Netherlands, Lower Austria and Shetland, this paper seeks to disclose the highly diverse and paradox concepts that lie behind the seemingly uniform location of gallows throughout medieval and early modern Europe.