Sep 30, 2026 · 45 min · 11 segments
I go looking for who brought the Devil to Vardø, following a trail Professor Liv Helene Willumsen calls the witchcraft triangle. It runs from Germany to Scotland, through a royal wedding, storms at…
Lisa WilliamsHostLiv Helene WillumsenGuestJennifer McNabbGuestRune BlixhagenGuest
And for these ideas to reach Vadu, it's quite a chain of events, starting with a royal wedding and a bride nearly lost at sea.
She's been married to King James, but by proxy, with a standing groom beside her at the altar.
Now the fleet is carrying her to a husband that she has never met, and it goes wrong almost at once.
During a ceremonial salute, fired in her honour, a cannon kills two of the gunners in front of the princess.
So they marry again, this time in person, and the following spring they sail home to Scotland, but the crossing back is rough too.
By the time they reach the Scottish court, the suspicion is already in writing.
One of the diplomats who has been watching these events unfold writes to a friend that he hoped to see those who by their enchantments raise the tempest suffer shipwrecks themselves.
They confessed that on Halloween night that they had sent devils up the keel of her ship.
And in Scotland, that same fear became the North Berwick trials, where the women brought before the court confessed to precisely that.
So he interrogated her, and she was tortured, and he was convinced that she was a witch.
Her name was Agnes Sampson, and under torture she told him what he'd come to hear, that the storms had been raised on purpose.
And for these ideas to reach Vadu, it's quite a chain of events, starting with a royal wedding and a bride nearly lost at sea.
She's been married to King James, but by proxy, with a standing groom beside her at the altar.
Now the fleet is carrying her to a husband that she has never met, and it goes wrong almost at once.
During a ceremonial salute, fired in her honour, a cannon kills two of the gunners in front of the princess.
So they marry again, this time in person, and the following spring they sail home to Scotland, but the crossing back is rough too.
By the time they reach the Scottish court, the suspicion is already in writing.
One of the diplomats who has been watching these events unfold writes to a friend that he hoped to see those who by their enchantments raise the tempest suffer shipwrecks themselves.
They confessed that on Halloween night that they had sent devils up the keel of her ship.
And in Scotland, that same fear became the North Berwick trials, where the women brought before the court confessed to precisely that.
So he interrogated her, and she was tortured, and he was convinced that she was a witch.
Her name was Agnes Sampson, and under torture she told him what he'd come to hear, that the storms had been raised on purpose.
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