I wish I had found these two very similar post earlier, but at least here they are now.
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Ah, Easter. The time for egg hunts, bunnies, and… witches? As folklore scholar Fredrik Skott writes, Easter witches are, in fact, a longstanding Swedish tradition.
Skott traces the idea of the Easter witch to the sixteenth century, when a fear of witches as agents of Satan arrived in Sweden. In witch hunts of the 1660s and 1670s, several thousand people were tried for allegedly making pacts with the devil. Hundreds were executed.
One story Swedes told at that time was that witches flew to a location called Blåkulla to commune with Satan on witches’ Sabbaths, often said to occur on Easter. The means of transportation could be brooms, poles, cows, or even people—as long as they were greased with ointment stored in horns provided by the devil himself. In Blåkulla, the ordinary world reversed: witches sat around a table facing outward, old people became young, and women took men’s roles.
Skott writes that the belief in Blåkulla survived for centuries. In the mid-nineteenth century, Swedish Easter was many things: a sacred Christian holiday, a festive work-free day celebrated with pranks, and a time of real fear of witches. People lit bonfires and painted tar crosses on their barn doors to ward off evil. By that time, many people across western Sweden had also begun dressing up as witches at Easter.
In the Easter witch tradition, teenagers and young adults donned worn clothes turned inside out. Cross-dressing was common: Boys might appear as old witches while girls could play the role of male Easter trolls. Participants painted their faces or wore cloth or paper masks, often with hair and eyebrows made of moss. Some carried brooms, horns, or coffee pots symbolizing the feasts of Blåkulla.
The costumed witches traveled around town, sometimes playing tricks in an effort to convince people that real witches were roaming the land. That might mean knocking over wagons, riding other people’s horses and leaving them sweaty and tired, or climbing onto roofs and pouring ash down chimneys. They might also stop at houses, begging for something to eat or for a drink of schnapps.
Often, the masked witches and trolls anonymously delivered “Easter letters,” sometimes by throwing them at a house along with a log of wood and fleeing before they could be caught. The letters usually held a painting of a witch and often a verse inviting the reader to join the witches’ Sabbath. The verses might simply be playful, or they might contain an insult to a recipient believed to have done something wrong.
Skott notes that the Easter witch tradition still survives today, in a very different form. For Maundy Thursday or Easter Sunday, groups of young girls dress up in aprons and kerchiefs and visit neighbors or relatives, singing songs or giving out drawings in exchange for sweets or money. Much like bunnies and baby chicks, they are adorable and completely nonthreatening, a far cry from the wild Easter witches of yore.
The Easter Witches of Sweden - JSTOR Daily
Ah, Easter. The time for egg hunts, bunnies, and… witches? As folklore scholar Fredrik Skott writes, Easter witches are, in fact, a longstanding Swedish tradition.
Skott traces the idea of the Easter witch to the sixteenth century, when a fear of witches as agents of Satan arrived in Sweden. In witch hunts of the 1660s and 1670s, several thousand people were tried for allegedly making pacts with the devil. Hundreds were executed.
One story Swedes told at that time was that witches flew to a location called Blåkulla to commune with Satan on witches’ Sabbaths, often said to occur on Easter. The means of transportation could be brooms, poles, cows, or even people—as long as they were greased with ointment stored in horns provided by the devil himself. In Blåkulla, the ordinary world reversed: witches sat around a table facing outward, old people became young, and women took men’s roles.
Skott writes that the belief in Blåkulla survived for centuries. In the mid-nineteenth century, Swedish Easter was many things: a sacred Christian holiday, a festive work-free day celebrated with pranks, and a time of real fear of witches. People lit bonfires and painted tar crosses on their barn doors to ward off evil. By that time, many people across western Sweden had also begun dressing up as witches at Easter.
In the Easter witch tradition, teenagers and young adults donned worn clothes turned inside out. Cross-dressing was common: Boys might appear as old witches while girls could play the role of male Easter trolls. Participants painted their faces or wore cloth or paper masks, often with hair and eyebrows made of moss. Some carried brooms, horns, or coffee pots symbolizing the feasts of Blåkulla.
The costumed witches traveled around town, sometimes playing tricks in an effort to convince people that real witches were roaming the land. That might mean knocking over wagons, riding other people’s horses and leaving them sweaty and tired, or climbing onto roofs and pouring ash down chimneys. They might also stop at houses, begging for something to eat or for a drink of schnapps.
Often, the masked witches and trolls anonymously delivered “Easter letters,” sometimes by throwing them at a house along with a log of wood and fleeing before they could be caught. The letters usually held a painting of a witch and often a verse inviting the reader to join the witches’ Sabbath. The verses might simply be playful, or they might contain an insult to a recipient believed to have done something wrong.
Skott notes that the Easter witch tradition still survives today, in a very different form. For Maundy Thursday or Easter Sunday, groups of young girls dress up in aprons and kerchiefs and visit neighbors or relatives, singing songs or giving out drawings in exchange for sweets or money. Much like bunnies and baby chicks, they are adorable and completely nonthreatening, a far cry from the wild Easter witches of yore.
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In Sweden, Easter is a Time for Witches
In the Christian calendar, the Thursday before Easter is a holy day that kicks off the celebration of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which culminates on Easter Sunday. In Sweden, it’s also a day when witches come out.
Known in English as Maundy Thursday, the day is called Skärtorsdagen in Swedish — a name that comes from the Old Norse word skíra, meaning “clean,” reflecting a Roman-Catholic tradition in which the Thursday before Easter was considered a day of cleansing. Skíra becomes skär in modern Swedish, and torsdag means Thursday, so the name Skärtorsdagen can be translated as “the cleansing Thursday.”
In Swedish folk tradition, Skärtorsdagen was also believed to be the day when witches flew off on broomsticks to the legendary island of Blåkulla to feast and dance with the Devil. The reasoning behind this belief was that this was the day that Judas betrayed Jesus, an act that set loose all the evil forces in the world.
This belief in Blåkulla and consorting with Satan featured prominently in the bloody witch trials that took place in Sweden during the 17th century. Between 1668 and 1676 around 300 people were executed as witches, usually accused of having stolen children and brought them to the Devil at Blåkulla. The largest single witch trial took place in Torsåker near Sollefteå in Ångermanland, where 71 people were burned at the stake in June 1675. Of these, 65 were women — a fifth of the entire adult female population of the parish!
These days, witches are still active on Skärtorsdagen, but mainly in the form of young children who dress up as Easter witches, or påskkärringar. Wearing kerchiefs on their heads and with big freckles and rosy cheeks painted on their faces, they go door-to-door wishing people a happy Easter and receiving candy in return (similar to the American tradition of trick-or-treating on Halloween).
The påskkärring tradition has been around since at least the early 19th century, though originally it was teenagers and young adults who dressed up to cause mischief, rather than cute kids receiving candy. Although Skärtorsdagen is the day for påskkärringar in much of Sweden, there are some parts of western Sweden where Saturday, the day before Easter, is the traditional day for dressing up as witches. The night between Saturday and Easter Sunday was another time when witches were traditionally believed to be active, as they flew back home from Blåkulla.
In Norway and Denmark, the name of the day is the same as in Sweden — spelled Skjærtorsdag in Norwegian and Skærtorsdag in Danish — but there is no tradition of Easter witches. Unlike in Sweden, however, it’s a public holiday, so most people get the day off from work.
Published 18 April 2019
