”Jag må nu dö medan jag har förståndet qwar, så kan jag weta på hwem jag tror”: Erfarenheter av tortyr under 1700-talets mitt

Anton Runesson

doi:10.7557/4.7287

Authors

Anton Runesson Stockholm University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/4.7287

Keywords:

witchcraft, torture, body history

Abstract

This article explores ten women’s experiences of being on trial for witchcraft and enduring torture in Sweden in 1757, as they were retrospectively accounted for during a review trial in 1760, at which these women sought relief and tort. Contrary to previous scholarship on both torture in general and torture in connection with early modern witch trials, which has approached torture either as a ritual of power and punishment or a ritual of forced conversion, I depart from a phenomenological stance of the body in order to understand how these women experienced the ways body, pain and mind were related with one another. Thereby, I uncover how the women experienced their torments as an escalating procedure aiming to affect their minds (förstånd), both by inciting affective movements and by inducing pain. Moreover, I connect these experiences to what the women understood to be at stake during their torments: their access to mind/reason, which, in turn, was the faculty enabling them to believe in God. Finally, I argue that the ability to believe in God through reason conditioned their various ways of explaining the relations between body, pain and mind.

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