Witchcraft in Denmark

Abstract

'WE used to have a witch here in our town. His name was N.,' the newsagent, a woman in her forties, told me. We were sitting in the small living-room beside the shop, and outside a motor-cycle roaring up and down the street was having a startling effect on the tape-recorder. I had really come with the object of collecting information about seamen's beliefs in the days of sail, but by chance the conversation had lighted upon this witch, remembered by my informant from her childhood in the thirties: 'Mothers would not venture out without putting bread and salt in the pram,' she continued, 'for if he happened to look at the child and there was none there, the child would fall ill. They said that he had the evil eye; but when I think about him now, I see him with such nice, gentle old man's eyes.' This conversation took place in 1960 in a small Danish town, and before I returned to the hotel where I was to spend the night I had received proof that witch-belief was still alive in Denmark. 'Did anyone talk about his having a book?' I asked my informant. 'Yes, he had this dreadful book. What was it called, now?'-'Cyprianus,' her sister suggested.-'That's right, and he couldn't die until he had found someone to take over the book from him. Who is it now they say has taken over his witchcraft?'-'Valborg,' replied the sister after a pause. Thus began an investigation of witchcraft in a provincial Danish community in the course of which the writer of this article came to make the acquaintance of some of our last 'witches'-unhappy women or men (witches are by no means always female), whose lives had been ruined by superstitious rumours and slander. Out of regard for all the people involved, the results of the investigation were deposited for the time being in the Danish Folklore Archives, and are reproduced here solely as documentation to prove the continued existence of the belief in witches. With this as background, in addition to other folklore records in existence, I shall maintain that the phrase 'each town has its witch' in 'The Midsummer Ballad' was more than a poetic commonplace at the period when that poem was composed. When Holger Drachmann wrote it in 1885, witchcraft was still alive and flourishing in the country and the smaller market towns. The witch, like the local 'original,' was the role commonly provided in the idyllic villages and cosy provincial towns for individuals who did not conform within the small social group where everyone knew and was concerned with everyone else. It is difficult to understand how witch-belief could have lasted for so long if it was merely based on foolish misunderstanding and ignorance, as we have been led to assume ever since the Age of Enlightenment. But during the last few decades examination of historical as well as present-day milieux incorporating witch-belief has shown the untenability of the old ideas and led to the realisation that this type of manifestation possesses various psychological and sociological functions.