Nowadays, when we think of witches we imagine Halloween cartoons with warts on the ends of their big noses or maybe we even have a friend who celebrates the Spring equinox instead of attending Easter mass. 400 years ago the country of Norway killed 91 people found guilty of witchcraft during a century-long purge. The victims were all burned or tortured to death. This week, Norway unveiled a new sculpture to mark the tragedy and to apologize to those who lost their lives. Here’s the word from The Daily Beast…

Right off the crashing waves of the Barents Sea is the remote town of Vardø, known as the “witch capital of Norway.”

Four hundred years ago, Vardø embarked on a crusade to rid itself of witchcraft. For more than a century—between 1593 and 1692—there were more than 140 witch trials in the small village.

At least 91 people, both men and women, were found guilty of sorcery and burned at the stake or tortured to death.

The number may not be as large as elsewhere in Europe, but in northern Norway’s sparsely populated landscape it touched a disproportionately large chunk of the population.

About a third of these trials were specifically targeting Norway’s indigenous Sami population who arose suspicion by practicing traditional healing rituals.

The killings came in spates—one in the 1620s and another in the early 1660s, when 20 of the 30 people were put on trial were killed.

The proceedings were meticulously recorded, giving modern historians insight into the accusations and reasonings that fueled the witch hunt.

“There was an idea in Europe that in the north people might be more inclined to witchcraft and evilness than other places.”
Testimony from the time revealed that witchcraft was believed to be something one consumed—it came in the form of magically tainted milk, bread, or beer.

According to an article by historian Rune Blix Hagen at the Arctic University of Norway, the sudden spate of sorcery accusations came after a particularly brutal Christmas storm that killed 40 fishermen in the early 1600s.

It took three years for legislation that allowed mass prosecution on suspicion of witchcraft, but with that go-ahead, Vardø prosecuted with fervor.

When a woman arrived in the court and described how witches had tied knots and cast spells that caused the wrecks she was swiftly tossed to sea. When she floated, she was dubbed a witch and killed.

That year, in 1621, many more women followed in her ghostly wake after being accused and found guilty of sorcery. Many were burned at the stake, others were tortured to death.

The geographical remoteness may have had been related to the vengeance with which witches were persecuted in northern Norway.

Of course, we no longer fear witchcraft because we all know there’s no such thing as magic, right? But, if these rites and rituals are strictly for show, why have they endured for centuries and continued to be handed down through the ages even at penalty of death?

Here’s a creepy, cool BBC documentary from 1979, looking into the “Power of the Witch…”

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This year we celebrate the 35th anniversary of Bob Guccione’s X-rated epic, Caligula.

You can watch the whole film on YouTube, but I couldn’t find a version in English or with suitable subtitles. Instead, I offer this documentary about the subject of the film. While this version lacks the T&A content that made the movie such a phenomenon, it delivers a compelling message about the ancient roots of Western society and a cautionary tale about power, corruption and the decadence of the predator class.

Here’s a breakdown…

There are few surviving sources on Caligula’s reign, although he is described as a noble and moderate ruler during the first six months of his rule. After this, the sources focus upon his cruelty, extravagance and sexual perversity, presenting him as an insane tyrant. While the reliability of these sources has increasingly been called into question, it is known that during his brief reign, Caligula worked to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor (as opposed to countervailing powers within the principate). He directed much of his attention to ambitious construction projects and notoriously luxurious dwellings for himself. However, he initiated the construction of two new aqueducts in Rome: the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus. During his reign, the Empire annexed the Kingdom of Mauretania and made it into a province.

In early 41 AD, Caligula became the first Roman emperor to be assassinated, the result of a conspiracy involving officers of the Praetorian Guard, as well as members of the Roman Senate and of the imperial court. The conspirators’ attempt to use the opportunity to restore the Roman Republic was thwarted: on the same day the Praetorian Guard declared Caligula’s uncle Claudius emperor in his place.

Here is Caligula’s 1400 Days of Terror…

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We’ve just begun to experience the first cooler days in awhile here in Nashville, and the drop in temperature has put me in mind of autumn and Halloween. It’s too early for aisles of orange and black in the grocery stores, but they’ve already turned their leaves. It’s too early for costume store ads, but I saw one yesterday. It’s too early for spooky blog posts, but why fight it?

Here’s a teaser for the dreadful posts I hope to come up with next month: 2014 marks the 35th anniversary of Werner Herzog’s remake of the F.W. Murnau classic Nosferatu. Not only does Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre tip its hat to one of the earliest and greatest vampire films, and to the horror genre in general, it also attempts to create a link between the movies Herzog and his German peers were making in 1979 and the brilliant German cinema that was made before World War II and the rise of the Third Reich.

Here’s a great making-of documentary about the movie…

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Several posts back I mentioned that this year is the 45 anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s production house American Zoetrope. It also happens to be the 35th anniversary of the 1979 film Apocalypse Now which was written by Zoetrope man of letters, John Milius and directed — of course — by Coppola himself.

Fellow Zoetroper George Lucas wanted to direct the film, shooting it with a small documentary crew on locations in California. Milius wanted to direct too — his plan was to film in Vietnam in the middle of a real war zone a la Haskell Wexler’s immortal Medium Cool which features a third act shot in the middle of the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. You know you’re in strange territory when the cooler head that prevailed was Francis Ford Coppola’s, who decided to helm the film himself in yet another bid to make a massive hit that would finally free him to direct the personal films he’d always yearned to make between his other massive hits.

The whole funny, willful, ignorant, hubristic, idealistic, psychedelic, militaristic, surf-tastic and cinematic story is told here, in this warm and generous interview of John by his old friend Francis, which illuminates the central role the writer played in the making of the classic film…

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Elvin Jones was a proud son of Pontiac, Michigan and one of my favorite jazz drummers of all time. Jones’ pioneering polyrhythmic style paired with his hard-hitting, aggressive playing made him one of the most recognizable and innovative drummers of the post-bop era. Here’s a word about this documentary which tells the story of the man and his music:

Jazz bassist Ron Carter might have put it best when he stated in the 1979 video documentary Different Drummer: “The only way to illustrate or accurately define Elvin’s contribution is to play a recording of a pre-Elvin Jones drummer, play a recording of Elvin Jones, and then play a recording of a post-Elvin Jones drummer. I think these three examples would best illustrate all of Elvin’s contributions to the drums better than words could ever say.”

Jones’ tenure with John Coltrane marks the formation of one of the most important musical lineups in any genre and it’s no exaggeration to say that Jones’ imaginative, expressive drumming helped to make Coltrane’s cosmic explorations possible. Jones died of heart failure in 2004. He was 76 years old.

Here’s Different Drummer: Elvin Jones

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