Steilneset Memorial, Vardø

Finnmark · Norway · Execution site

Under torture they confessed to flying to the mountain Domen and dancing with Satan. Ninety-one lamps now burn in the dark for those burned here.

Steilneset is the wind-scoured spit outside Vardø where those condemned to death in Finnmark were taken to be burned. During the three great waves of trials in the seventeenth century — the worst beginning in 1621 — 91 people were sentenced to death in the county, most of them entirely ordinary women from Vardø, Vadsø and the fishing settlements around. Torture and the water ordeal forced out the confessions, and they were all about the same thing: that they had flown to the mountain Domen, danced with Satan and feasted with him inside the rock. Since 2011 a memorial designed by Peter Zumthor and Louise Bourgeois has stood here: a suspended corridor 122 metres long where 91 small lamps burn, one for each of the executed, beside a glass cube holding an eternally burning chair. The sea thunders beneath the floor and the wind makes the whole structure creak. Few places in the Nordic countries carry their horror so nakedly.

FAQ

Where is Steilneset Memorial, Vardø located?

Steilneset Memorial, Vardø is in Finnmark, Norway.

More haunted places in Finnmark

Accounts are drawn from local folklore and visitor reports.