I have written several times about my “step-great-grandmother,” Helene Olsdatter. You can find those posts using this link. Some of their assertions are outdated, and I am working on a “page” to update and consolidate them. This weekend, stimulated by conversations with cousin Sheila Geier, I did some work on a new…
Marte Østensdatter Forbrigd, as she is known in most genealogies, or Marte Bø, as I have called her, is at the center of a most bizarre and perplexing “murder mystery,” set in the Gudbrandsdal region of central Norway in the 1690s. The basic facts of the story are well-documented. She…
Marte Bø, Chapter 12 To read Marte’s story from the beginning, click here. Why bring this up? None of our three twentieth-century sources even hint that seventeenth-century witch hysteria had any bearing on the deaths at Huskelien, much less those at Gallows Hill. There was apparently no mention of it in any of…