The Torsåker witch trials took place in 1675 in Torsåker parish in Sweden and were the largest witch trials in Swedish history. In a single day 71 people (65 women and 6 men) were beheaded and then burned. Background The witch trial reached Torsåker as a result and a consequence of the great wave of witch hysteria known as stora oväsendet, which had begun to flourish over Sweden after the trial caused by Gertrud Svensdotter against Märet Jonsdotter in Dalarna in 1668. Sweden did not have separation of church and state, causing state-employed Lutheran priests to abide by government instructions. The Lutheran clergy were ordered to use their sermons to inform their congregations of the crimes committed. Thus, the rumour of the witches spread over the country, where witch-hunts had earlier been a rarity. Hornæus was ordered to perform an investigation by order of the special commission which had been created to deal with the suddenly erupted witch panic. The trials began when Johannes Wattrangius of Torsåker parish told Laurentius Christophori Hornæus of Ytterlännäs parish to investigate witchcraft in his parish. Ytterlännäs and Torsåker were both in the Diocese of Härnösand of the Lutheran Church of Sweden. Hornæus was zealous in his work — by the time his task was complete, 71 people had been beheaded and burned. 65 of these were women, which was roughly one fifth of all women in the region. Trial The priest had two boys stand at the door of the church to identify the witches by an invisible mark on their forehead as they went in. On one occasion, one of these boys pointed at the wife of the priest himself, Britta Rufina. People gasped, but she, as she told her grandson who wrote down the story, then slapped the boy, and he quickly apologized when he saw who he had pointed at, and said he had been blinded by the sun. Hornæus was a priest with a terrifying reputation. The witnesses of the witch trial were mostly children, as the main accusations of the witches was that they had abducted children on the sabbath of Satan, and Hornæus had several methods to get them to give the testimony he wanted. He whipped them, he bathed children in the ice cold water of a hole in the ice in the lakes in winter, he put them in an oven, showed them fuel and pretended