Brita Zippel - Execution

Execution

The execution took place in the square of Hötorget, in the city of Stockholm on the 29th of April, 1676. The three condemned women behaved differently. Anna Månsdotter committed suicide before the execution, though her body was still publicly decapitated and burned. Anna Zippel was passive and numb. Brita Zippel, however, did not go to her execution quietly.

All the way to the execution, she shook her shackles, and mocked the audience. She cursed everyone from the Royal House and the judges to the prison guards, the audience, and anyone who had come to watch her execution. She told them all to watch themselves—was she not a witch? Even if the executioner cut of her head and burned her skull and corpse on a stake, she would come back to have her vengeance on them all. If they thought she was afraid, they were sadly mistaken; Satan himself had made her insensitive to all pain. They could do what ever they pleased, burn her, cut her body to pieces, and she would feel nothing, but doubt not that she would have her vengeance—by the aid of Satan. The priest, a member of the witch commission, tried to get her to repent and take communion, but she refused. If truly a witch, she would keep on being so. She would return as a ghost devil of Satan to torment the congregation of Katarina, and she would take on the priest first.

She demanded a drink, which, under an old custom, was a right of the condemned. One of the executioner's helpers rushed forward with a bottle. She took it and drank, and would have finished the whole bottle if the executioner had not signaled, 'enough!' They took the bottle away by force, so the executioner could have his share.

Then, she and her sister were taken up to the platform. The executioner asked his helpers to take her first for the sake of order, as her sister was quiet and passive. He told them to hold her firmly, to preserve his reputation. She kicked and screamed about vengeance, and cursed and fought every step of the way. It finally took four men just to get her up to the platform. On the platform, three men sat on her to hold her down, a fourth pulled her hair to expose her neck, and a fifth struggled to press her head down to get her neck in place. The executioner aimed and struck. The audience cheered at a perfect strike as her head fell to the ground. Her sister was quickly dealt with, and then the corpse of Anna Månsdotter was decapitated. The three heads and bodies were nailed onto ladders and dropped onto the stakes.

The same day Brita was executed, her daughter Annika had gone to the priest and said to him that she had lied, that her mother was not a witch and that she should not be executed, but the priest had told her to be quiet. After the witch-trials were declared false following the investigations of Urban Hjärne and Eric Noraeus, the witnesses were tried for perjury. Annika was whipped, and she died at Christmas 1676, possibly of the whipping, at the age of fifteen.