Walk with a witch in 16th century Bergen

Please note this tour is a fictional story and not a historical tour

Bergen has a dark chapter in its history that most visitors never hear about. On this walking tour, you'll experience the final hours of Anne Pedersdotter, burned as a witch in 1590, through her own voice. You'll also learn how fear, envy, and political power turned an educated priest's wife into a scapegoat.

The tour starts within the walls of Bergenhus fortress, where Anne was held before her execution. From there, you'll walk through the narrow alleyways of Bryggen, past the medieval wooden buildings of the German Hanseatic League, and along the harbourfront she knew as a living, trading city. You'll hear how Bergen's booming fish trade created both wealth and resentment, and how those tensions fed the witch panic that consumed her.

As you follow Anne's route toward Nordnes, she describes the betrayal by her maid of twenty years, the priest Hans Jørgensen walking beside her proclaiming her innocence, and the jeering crowds lining the waterfront streets. She also places her own story within the broader history of witch trials across Norway, England, Scotland, Germany, and the Americas. The tour ends at the Witches Monument on Nordnes, a memorial to all those executed for witchcraft in Bergen.

On this 60-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Walk Lille Øvregaten, Bergen's oldest cobbled street, where Anne and her husband spent their happiest years
• Learn about Absalon Pederssøn Beyer, who staged Norway's first theatrical production and documented the plague epidemic of the 1560s
• Hear how Anne's refusal to attend her own early hearings ultimately sealed her fate with the magistrate
• Pass Korskirken, the medieval church whose priest fought to stop the trial
• Discover how Bergen merchants helped trigger the Finnmark witch trials, Norway's worst, by blaming fishermen's wives for declining cod stocks
• Understand how the struggle between Bergen's church and secular authorities used Anne as a political pawn

By the end of this walking tour, you'll have encountered the human face on one of history's most troubling episodes.