I really doubt that 50,000 accused witches were executed in Sweden. Historians think it was something like 40,000 in all of Europe over 250 odd years.

People also often say that witches were burnt at the stake, but according to records that never happened in England. It did in other parts of Europe though.

The massively inflated numbers of deaths (I’ve heard things like millions) seem to be a modern thing. Maybe not created, but certainly forwarded by feminists as “proof” of misogyny.

The sentence should have read “50000 people throughout Europe.” It’s changed now. I checked the fact before using it (on Answers.com or something like that) and that was the number that was given….).

I agree with you that the whole thing may have been hyped up a bit though. The Salem Witch trials in the US may have something to do with it. Not sure how many women got executed there, but it was in the one digit for sure. But 50 000 people in Protestant Europe over 200 years means these executions can’t have been that unusual.

I too remember being told in school that the witches were killed before they were burnt at the stake.

I inserted the best picture of this maze that I was able to find (I only found three) There are tons of these stone mazes around in Sweden. Some are really ancient, some are only a few hundred years old. It appears that nobody knows anything about this particular maze. I simply couldn’t find any info about its origins.

Local people historically never went to the island, so they hardly know anything about it, whereas under normal circumstances, the origin would probably be known locally. Their is a twice-weekly tour there now, otherwise the island is off limits on the grounds of being a nature reserve. Aparently it is the home of Scandinavia’s biggest frogs.

Maybe the stories about the island were made up to protect the maze? If you put something like that in an easily accessible place then people probably would have moved all the rocks by now.

Are there any purposes to the mazes? Usually mazes are just follies, but this one hardly looks like it was made to impress the guy next door.

There is much more to this island than I first thought. No wonder it scared people! I will add a few things to the post, and I may create a separate entry about it.

Apparently the island is made of the same very rare stone as Ayers Rock in Australia..!

Apparently the weather around the island causes it to usually be covered in mist, adding to the mystical aura around it. It is very difficult and dangerous to try to dock a boat there.

The maze was there when Carl von Linneaus (a very famous botanist) visited in 1741. There was a guesstimate that says it is bronze age - same era as the stone-circles on the British Isles. I believe it is a bit unclear what these were for also.

I know (from school) that people used to court in these mazes during the Middle Ages. Hence the name Jungfrudans (maiden’s dance). (More romantic and fascinating than being picked up in a night club, don’t you think )

Also the Vikings supposedly used them for fertility rites, however exactly how… was never specified!

Another name for them are “Trojaburg” (meaning Castle of Troy)

I don’t remember ever learning what their original bronze-age purpose might have been. It probably isn’t actually known.

Stone mazes need a bit of maintenance though. If it really is originally from the bronze age, I agree that it must have recieved some form of maintenance during the centuries.

As far as I know, most of the stone circles in the UK are related to astronomy. Stonehenge lines up with the solstices and equinoxes (I think it’s events) and the moon’s 18.6 year orbit thing (wikipedia says it’s the “longitude of the ascending node”, which basically means the time it takes for it to appear in the exact same place in the sky). It was built by priests or something to show their people that there was still order to the world even though everything was changing (coming out of an ice age or something). To be honest, I wasn’t paying that much attention.

But anyway, I don’t see how a maze has anything to do with something like astronomy!

While trying to check the Hebrides rock thing, I found something that said that they’ve been inhabited since 8000BC. I always expect remote islands to be the last places to become inhabited but it seems like they’re often some of the first, probably due to safety.

Some really old churches have bits of pre-Christian stonework incorporated in the walls. You can make up your own mind whether this was because it was a cheap way to get the stone, or whether the early priests wanted to take over the pagans’ stuff in order to convert them more easily..

In the civil war, the people who lived near the Iron Age fort at Maiden Castle once rebelled against Cromwell’s army. They went straight to the ancient fort. Where the parliamentary troops just rode up and shot them, true, but it shows something.