Gävle-Boy

The Gävle Boy (Johan Johansson Griis), (1663-1676), was a young Swedish boy remembered for being a witness in witch trials and for bearing the large responsibility for the witch trial of Stockholm in 1676.

Biography

His real name was Johan Johansson Griis (but he is in Swedish history known by his nickname), and he was the son of a shoemaker in the city of Gävle in Gästrikland. He came to live with relatives in Stockholm in 1675 at the age of twelve, after having orphaned himself by having his widowed mother Karin Nilsdotter Griis executed, claiming she had abducted him to the Sabbath of Satan in Blockula, where she had molested him sexually.

In Stockholm, he became known as the crown witness from Gävle, and everyone wanted to hear about his visits to Blåkulla. He told them many stories about the Sabbath of Satan, each one more fantastic and exciting than the next, and gathered more and more people around him, also adults, and was soon a real celebrity and regarded an expert on witches and sorcery. When people asked him if he had seen anything suspicious here in Stockholm, he hinted that he had. He became regarded as an expert on witches and abductions to Blåkulla; adults consulted him, and he could faint and pretend to be attacked by witches publicly.

Soon, other children and teenagers, inspired by his stories, began to claim that they had been abducted and taken to Satan too, and the parents in the congregation of Katarina became worried. A witch-hysteria broke out, and the parents began to gather their children in houses where they could watch over them and protect them from being abducted. After one of these nights, when they thought themselves to have been attacked by the witches, the priest of the congregation gave the mayor a petition signed by the parents, imploring the authorities to investigate to protect their children.

During the proceedings, the Gävle-boy and other children were interrogated. When the Gävle-Boy was questioned, he suddenly changed his testimony; it was not the witch Brita Zippel who had abducted him and the two teenage maids of Myra, Annika and Agnes, it was him! During his mother's execution, "her spirit" fell over him, and he had thereafter been a witch, and was able to transform himself into Brita Zippel and take children to Blåkulla himself. He was then sentenced to be decapitated and then burned as a witch, though this sentence seems to have been meant as a way to keep him away; the secular authorities did not wish for a witch trial in Stockholm.

But now, a special witch commission was created to examine and try witches, and many women were tried and executed on the strength of the testimonies of children, who claimed to have been abducted and taken to Satan by them. The Gävle-Boy had started all this, and the children were now led by the teenage girls Lisbeth Carlsdotter and the Maids of Myra, Annika and Agnes. During all this, the Gävle-Boy was asked by the court if the Devil was upset, and he testified that he was.

After the horrible execution of Malin Matsdotter, however, the judges begun to change their means of interrogation; until this point, they had written down the children's testimony during the first interrogation, and during the trial simply asked them to confirm it; now, they instead asked the children to repeat their testimony; and they were terrified when they discovered that all of the testimonies changed each time, including the Gävle-Boy's. During these trials, the children, forced to repeat their testimonies, also broke down under pressure; when one of the accused witches, Margareta Remmer (who was most likely accused because she had been an orphan and challenged the social order by marrying the wealthy city-Captain Remmer), asked the testifying girl; "Think, girl, was that really what you saw? This is a question of my life," the girl broke down, and many of these witnesses began to say that they had been told what to say by the Gävle-boy, by Lisbeth Carlsdotter and by the Maids of Myra.

Lisbeth Carlsdotter and the Maids of Myra had also behaved in a manner which made them less well seen by the authorities lately; during an execution, Lisbeth Carlsdotter was overheard by many witnesses saying to the Maids of Myra, "If it were up to me, there would soon be only three women left in this city!" During a trial, she said: "Even the counts know who Lisbeth Carlsdotter is - who the hell are you?", and during one testimony, she made a big mistake by trying to accuse Countess De la Gardie, wife of Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, the king's own aunt Princess Maria Eufrosyne of Pfalz, of witchcraft; such an accusation could never be accepted, and the judges sneered at her and told her to get back to the subject.

This was the end of the witch trials throughout all Sweden; in 1677, the government ordered the priests in the country to end all accusations of sorcery by declaring that the country was henceforth and forever purged from witches. The rest of the accused witches in Stockholm were set free, and the judges decided that the child-witnesses should be whipped and the leading witnesses, the teenaged maids of Myra, should be executed for false testimony. The Gävle-Boy, all the time in prison waiting for execution, should still be executed, no longer for sorcery, but for false testimony.

He was executed by hanging at the age of thirteen in November 1676; followed by Lisbeth Carlsdotter and the maids of Myra around Christmas.

During all these events, the Gävle-Boy was described as triumphant; he was not afraid, not even when he was sentenced to death, but seemed to be happy to be in the center of attention. He was not insane or stupid; rather he was intelligent, but he was most likely a mythomaniac.

See also

* Märet Jonsdotter
* Anna Zippel
* Malin Matsdotter
* Abigail Williams

References

* Alf Åberg, "Häxorna".
* Herman Lindqvist, "Historien om Sverige".
* Jan Guillou, "Häxornas försvarare".
* Lars Widding, "När Häxbålen brann", ("When Witches where burnt").