The Sami - Sorcerers in Norwegian History

Rune Blix Hagen

Sorcery Persecutions of the Sami

«Like no one else, the Sami have excelled in the diabolical art» 

At the court session in Vadsø in February 1692, the noaidi and reindeer-herding Sami Anders Poulsen - Poala-Ánde - from Utsjok-Varanger was sentenced to death and to be «burned alive at the stake» for having «practiced the wicked and ungodly art of sorcery». The trial of Poulsen is the last serious legal proceeding for witchcraft among the many noaidi cases of Sami in Finnmark in the 1600s. This is the dark chapter in Norwegian and Sami history examined by Rune Blix Hagen in this account.