1694: Mette Jensdatter, Viborg infanticide

On this date in 1694, a young woman died an infanticide in Viborg, Denmark.

Denmark in the 17th century consolidated into an absolute monarchy and with this came a consolidation of the sovereign power of life and death. Once a local office comprising a variety of obligations and prerogatives, the executioner gig became in this period a state-level appointee answering to the governor, and charged with exercising his law enforcement aspect throughout a region.

According to a post formerly at the Viborg Museum site but now consigned to the digital oubliette, executioners so appointed soon began exercising their privileged labor position to gouge prices as well as limbs, eventually requiring (in 1698) a royal edict fixing their fees thusly (all prices are quoted in rigsdalers):*

Beheading with an ax 8 dlr.
Plucking off a hand or a finger 4 dlr.
Nailing up a severed head and hand (pair) 4 dlr.
Hanging 10 dlr.
Dismantling gallows 4 dlr.
Breaking someone on the wheel 14 dlr.
Mounting a broken body on the wheel 7 dlr.
Corpse burial 3 dlr.
Tearing flesh with red-hot tongs (per tear) 2 dlr.
Public whipping 5 dlr.
Burning a person 10 dlr.
Burning condemned books 3 dlr.

Hopefully Viborg was saving its rigsdalers accordingly for in the same era as this list we have — again via the Viborg Museum’s phantom post — a sad instance of a domestic tragedy that is all too familiar in these pages:

On 30 August 1694 was the executioner summoned to execute maid Mette Jensdatter. The story behind was tragic; Mette, who was in the house of Søren Kristensen Høeg in St Michael’s Street, secretly gave birth on the first of August to a boy. On the same day she killed her child and hid the body under the bed. Søren Høeg was classified as the child’s father, but apparently Mette alone was tried and convicted.

Høeg did not escape the opprobrium of his neighbors and his conscience, for a few months later he attempted suicide and in punishment was banished from Viborg.

* I’ve limited the list to the most grisly entries.

On this day..

1948: Johannes Rasmussen, Danish Resistance betrayer

Anti-Nazi Danish Resistance turncoat Johannes Rasmussen was shot at Viborg on this date in 1948.

Arrested by the Gestapo in December 1943, Rasmussen (Danish link) broke under torture and informed on his former comrades, but he also extended his collaboration far beyond (more Danish) mere capitulation and became their henchman and collaborator. Rasmussen befriended his captors and working as an interpreter and interrogator until someone from the Resistance shot him in February 1945 and left him bedridden.

Arrested on the day after the German occupation ended, he unsurprisingly got no mercy from the countrymen he had betrayed.

On this day..

1536: Skipper Clement, rebel

On this date in 1536, the Danish rebel Skipper Clement was put to death at Viborg.

Clement (English Wikipedia entry | Danish) was a naval officer for the Danish king Christian II.

When said heavyhanded monarch was deposed by his own uncle Frederick, Clement turned privateer … and when said deposing-uncle Frederick died in 1533, Clement entered the ensuing civil war between supporters of the still-imprisoned ex-king Christian II and those who backed Frederick’s own son Christian III. This was also a social and political war over the Reformation.

Clement went to war for his former boss, Christian II, instigating a 1534 North Jutland uprising of the Catholic peasantry that in October of that year trounced the Protestant noble army sent to suppress it at the Battle of Svenstrope Mose (Svenstrop Bog or Moor).

That battle clinched Clement’s reputation as one of the great peasant-rising leaders, and also clinched for Clement the fate that usually befalls such characters. Shortly after, Clement’s aristocratic ally cut his own deal with Christian III and abandoned the rabble to a vicious counterattack. In December 1534, General Johan Rantzau stormed the rebel strongholdof Aalborg, slaughtering two thousand peasants, reducing freeholding farmers to tenants, and bringing Clement home in chains for a grand finale.

The captured commander languished in his dungeon awaiting the conclusion of the civil war. It took a good year under siege for Rantzau to bring Copenhagen to heel, but once that city capitulated in August 1536, Clement was brought out of storage for use as a victory cigar. (Danish link)

On September 9, 1536, wearing a lead crown to mock his ambition, Clement had his head chopped off, and his remains were dismembered and set up for public display.

Danish speakers may enjoy these short audio narrations of the Svenstrope Mose and Aalborg engagements. Aalborg parents may enjoy sending their children to Skipper Clement International School.

On this day..