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they slaughtered the sick pig. Worms could be sent to a human being too.
15th The lycanthropy. Werewolves had no part of finnish trials, but they had one in
Estonia. Why? The Finnish people have common roots with Estonian people and our
languages are still guite similar. Our oldest pre-christian religion is common, and there is
no werewolves in that tradition, as far as I know. So, where the estonians got the idea
about werewolves? I think that they have adopted it from germans. Estonia has been
under strong german influence, but Finland hasn't. So, I believe, that they must have
copied the idea from German "Werewolffe".
According Maia Madar (Estonia I: Werewolves and poisoners, in Early Modern
European Witchcraft ed. Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen, Clarendon Press,
Oxford 1990).
"Belief in werewolves was widespread. At eighteen trials, eighteen women and thirteen
men were accused of causing damage while werewolves. At Meremoisa 1623, the
defendant Ann testified that she had been a werewolf for four years, and had killed a
horse as well as some smaller animals. She had later hidden the wolf skin under a stone
in the fields." (page 270)
Maia Madar tells other examples, too. And in one case where 18-year old Hans had
confessed that he had hunted as a werewolf for two years, "when asked by the judges if
his body took part in the hunt, or if only his soul was transmuted, Hans confirmed that he
had found a dog's teeth-marks on his own leg, which he had received while a werewolf.
Further asked wether he felt himself to be a man or a beast while transmuted, he told that
he felt himself to be beast."(page 271)
Madar writes: "It was acknowledged that people could be transmuted not only into
werewolves, but also into bears."
So as a lawyer I must ask why they were confessing that they were hunting as
werewolves in Estonia. The answer must be torture. Torture was widely used in Estonia
ecen it was under the Swedish jurisdiction, where torture was forbidden.
16th The devil in a shape of a dog. All over the Scandinavia we had trials where the
accused said, that the devil they've met had a shape of a dog. Why the dog? Danish
witchhistorian Jens Christian V. Johanssen writes (in book mentioned above), that the
popular culture(peoples believes) borrowed ideas for wall-paintings in the church.
"In Ejsing church, Christ is tempted in the desert by the devil â•„ in the shape of a
ferocious-looking dog! Popular imagination was so vivid that on given occasions the
devil came to take his form".(Johansen: Denmark: The Sociology of Accusations in
Early Modern European Witchcraft.. page 363-364).
Well, so and so. But surely the popular culture appointed ideas from elite's culture.
17th The shamanism. I have not specialised about shamanism, so I'll now follow the
ideas that finnish shamanism expert Anna-Leena Siikala writes in her book
"Suomalainen samanismi" (Finnis Shamanism), Hameenlinna 1992.
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