Witches...on Easter???

In the spirit of today's holiday, I decided to go out and see if there was any connection between witches/the occult and Easter. To my surprise, there is a deep Swedish history that connects witches and the salient Christian holiday of Easter. How did this happen, and what does it mean for us? Read on to find out.

The background information about Swedish Easter comes from this scholarly news article from JSTOR and this magazine article from the Smithsonian. Both articles detail a largely different Easter holiday than the one that I (and likely the majority of Americans) are used to. To understand this, I first read about the Swedish witch trials from the 17th century.

The Swedish witch trials occurred in the 1660s and 1670s, just a couple of decades before the mass hysteria in Salem (perhaps knowledge of the Swedish trials partially contributed to the propulsion of fear in Salem). The JSTOR article notes, however, that the scale of these trials was much larger--thousands were tried and hundreds executed. The root of this tragedy lies in a belief in a dark place called Blåkulla. Witches were believed to travel to Blåkulla every Easter to meet with Satan himself. Blåkulla was an odd world where everything is the opposite from how it is here, and witches would travel there in the air on broomsticks, cows, or even humans. What a place!

Even after the trials in Sweden ended, belief in Blåkulla continued. People (notably children) dressed as witches during Easter time, wearing outfits like the one pictured above. Coupled with this was a true fear felt among the Swedish people, rooted in the belief that witches could truly be living among them. This fear was closely associated with Easter in Sweden all the way into the mid-1800s. Still today, children dress as witches during Easter time. The fear, however, has largely evaporated, and the holiday shares qualities with Halloween. Children go door-to-door in their witch outfits and receive candy from neighbors!

What does all of this mean for us? Undoubtedly, this displays how differently holidays like Easter can be viewed, celebrated, and even feared in different countries. Moreover, this research has particularly brought to light how much of an impact a tragedy like a witch hunt can have on a culture for centuries afterwards. Even after trials like the ones in Sweden ended, the true fear of witches was ingrained in peoples' minds for years--passing through many generations. This information forced me to consider how trials like Salem and Sweden not only hurt those immediately involved, but also numerous bystanders and uninvolved individuals. Hopefully, events like these remain in the past!