“The Devil Was with Her”: Othered Social Identity of a Finland-Swedish Ostrobothnian Cunning-Woman

Abstract

Abstract:There was a strong Lutheran and revival movement presence in rural Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia in Finland at the turn of the 20th century. Gendered roles affected how members of the community were expected to act and work. People with a reputation for witchcraft transgressed these communal norms and were exceptional informants for the folklore collectors. This article studies how an othered social identity was constructed and maintained in a premodern rural community by taking narratives collected and published between 1912–2012 about a certain cunning woman as a case study. This article analyses with close reading the othering themes contained by these narratives and how they reflect various expectations regarding normative life in a rural village community. The results show that the othering of a person with a reputation of being a witch was not only harmful for social identity but could also be a social coping mechanism.