Gyde Spandemager
Gyde Spandemager (died 1543) was an alleged Danish
Background
In 1543 King Christian III of Denmark equipped a war fleet of 40 ships to chase an imperial Dutch fleet away from the coast of Norway to the Netherlands. Outside Helsingør the fleet was stuck in a calm and the whole project failed. The failure was blamed on Spandemager, who was said to have gathered a group of witches in a valley outside the city and enchanted the ships. Spandemager was arrested and interrogated through torture.
Trial
The trial against Gyde led to the accusation of several people in 1543-45, all accused of "enchant[ing] the ship of His Majesty, so as to prevent it from getting any wind". Gyde was described as the wife of a merchant. Her trial was handled by the royal governor Eske Bilde. She confessed her guilt during torture, and pointed out several people of both sexes, including vicars, which led to the expansion of the witch trial, as her words were taken very seriously. She also said that the enchantments would never disappear unless she was allowed to remove them personally. The people pointed out were arrested and tortured "so hard their limbs were separated" (Malmö, 3 December 1543), but no one other than Gyde confessed. A merchant's wife from Helsingör was released after she was given an alibi by the citizens of the city saying that she was somewhere else at the time when she was supposed to have been with the witches performing the enchantment. In November 1543, the King demanded for "the rightful old principal of the witches" to be burned. She seems to have been interrogated for a while after this.
Context
This was the first of three famous cases where marine catastrophes were blamed on sorcery and resulted in witch trials in Denmark. In 1566, several Danish ships sunk in a storm outside Gotland; women in
This was one of the earliest witch trials in Denmark, after Karen Grottes and Bodil Lauritzen, who were burnt in Stege in 1539. In 1530, the "wives of Lars Kylling and Jørgen Olsen" were burned on Bornholm, but the island was at this point (1525–75) ruled by Lübeck.
See also
- Anna Koldings
- Anne Palles
References
- Hans Anckarstjerna: Djævle og trolddom [Devils and magic]
- https://web.archive.org/web/20110717103618/http://sten25.tripod.com/stortorget_radhuset.htm
- Dagligt Liv i Norden i det sekstende Aarhundrede [Daily life in Scandinavia in the 16th century] Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag, Copenhagen (1914)
- Peter Andreas Harteg: Heksebål på Bornholm [Witch trials at Bornholm], Bornholms Tidende (1992)
- Möller, Peter von: Halländska herregårdar[Halland manors], 1871 (Swedish)