Johan Morken
History researcher at the University of Oslo whose MA project examines the role of extreme weather in the 17th-century Finnmark witch hunts; guest on The Vardø Witch Trials podcast.
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Sep 30, 2026
Lisa WilliamsHOST
To understand what life was like here, I spoke to historian Johan Morken, who has studied these trials and the weather that has shaped them.
Johan MorkenGUEST
They had focus on fishing and keeping livestock and then sell that fish to merchants so that they could get grain.
Johan MorkenGUEST
These communities are therefore very reliant on the sea, both in order to get fish, but also to get produce.
15 MINS LATER
Johan MorkenGUEST
When people are faced with a very massive storm or a lot of storms happening one after another, people are likely to interpret it as something unnatural, as something out of the ordinary.