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One thing that becomes immediately apparent when visiting the medieval witchcraft museum in Iceland[1] was how strategic the use of Witchcraft accusations were

One thing that becomes immediately apparent when visiting the medieval witchcraft museum in Iceland[1] was how strategic the use of Witchcraft accusations were by the middling elite. One cunning foreign family with ties to occupying Denmark was able to secure land hold rights for nearly an entire peninsula from local Icelanders on the northwest through the strategic use of witchcraft accusations. During this period of occupation nearly 120 trials occurred over a 60 year period[2]. The people weren’t superstitious - they were corrupt. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strandagaldur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strandagaldur [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3n_R%C3%B6gnvaldsson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3n_R%C3%B6gnvaldsson

vmception 6y ago
Those articles are more interesting than OP's article. When I research a lot of wealthy families I frequently find their level of comfort not possible to replicate because it is something considered impropriety today. Taking advantage of an imbalance in the socioeconomic order that was promptly fixed as soon as anybody noticed.
- ipsum2 6y ago
  Could you give an example of that level of comfort? Servants were more common back then, but not sure what else.
  - danans 6y ago
    Most likely that you had enough wealth and owned enough productive land or other capital to secure the lifestyle of your progeny for generations to come.
    - hatenberg 6y ago
      So like Fred Trump
      - danans 6y ago
        Probably, but he's far from alone. It's practically the definition of what the nobility and the gentry/bourgeoisie have in common. In contrast, workers and professionals must sell their personal skills in the labor market to survive. Unless they are extremely lucky, opportunistic, and hardworking and doing so become part of the gentry, their children will have to do the same.
  - vmception 6y ago
    For example, the family that was able to exploit the socioeconomic order to pick up those land plots from people indicted for witchcraft probably still owns those land plots, but new people will not be able to use the same tactic to obtain land now.
    - eirini1 6y ago
      maybe not witchcraft accusations per se, but im quite unsure how you can be aware of events occuring in the world right now and think that exploiting the current socioeconomic order to gain land and wealth is not done.
      - vmception 6y ago
        Right it wouldn’t be a witch craft accusation , in the west Its one example
        Fjolsvith 6y ago
        Pedophilia.
        viraptor 6y ago
        Are you sure? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse
        justinclift 6y ago
        Seems more a case of "use whatever the hot topic is for circumventing rational thought". Recent version could be something like this: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firing-innocent/613615/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin... Or any of the other modern topics people have mentioned. It'd need to be combined with having the ability and intent to acquire the property of the targeted people. In the above example, being the people don't seem to really own much/any property anyway, maybe it's harder than it first looks?
      - zentropia 6y ago
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  > not possible to replicate because it is something considered impropriety today At first glance, but then we're forced to recall the entire Epstein shenanigans. And that's only bits of insight in to that level of indulgent debauchery.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  India is supposed to be an example. Families with extensive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagir holdings under the Mughals were apparently relatively easily convinced that their possibly de facto but definitely not de jure hereditary estates would be better protected under John Company, whose officers had grown up assuming de jure hereditary estate transmission.
- arvinsim 6y ago
  I believe that they exist today. They leverage their power and connections to remain anonymous and away from public scrutiny.
  - quickthrowman 6y ago
    The Cargill/McMillan family is probably the most famous of these in the US. They’ve kept their company private and have managed to stay under the radar fairly well considering their level of wealth.
    - travmatt 6y ago
      The Sacklers were able to keep their business relatively disconnected from polite society for a long time as well.
    - throw0101a 6y ago
      And then there are the Koch brothers: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_family Who've probably got their hands in too many things: * https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Kochland/Christopher-Leonard/9781476775388 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Kochland/Christopher-... * https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/07/kochland-review-koch-brothers-pollution-congress-republicans https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/07/kochland-rev... * https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examin...
  - ororo9 6y ago
    They definitely do, and LEO knows. The schemes and cons, deflection... they’ve not changed. Think about, this is only 3-4 generations back. What neuroscience is revealing about shared/inherited brain structures and limbic->cortex system algorithms, the habits of agency haven’t had that long to fade out, especially as we clung to tribal communities and abusive nuclear family silos. But those families control LEO, so their mandate is to fight DVD player theft and smoking pot. They again demonize our individual minor failings to control the greater human narrative, gift trillions to their buds while we fight over TP, face masks, and flat or skeuomorphic UI day to day. Doing the real important social work! Western culture hasn’t really evolved it’s emotional organization habits all that much until recent times, say the last 20 years. Now that the first generations raised primarily on science and a much less overt, yet still present, racism are coming into power, we’ll see. Until the last generation though, most people in power were raised in “story mode”. “Be a godheaded manipulator, manage the masses effort and agency, for of course they’re idiots for not having your job of rich guy! If I can do it anyone can! Why they aren’t is their free will!”
- fuzzfactor 6y ago
  The rich are different: https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Are-Different-Priceless-Quotations/dp/067944386X https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Are-Different-Priceless-Quotatio...
  - mettamage 6y ago
    I read the premise of that book and it doesn't square with what I know about rich people from personal experiences with them. What I've learned is that money is a multiplier for personality and if you have a humble personality, then you'll stay humble while you're rich (with some caveats about people that are not truly humble).
    - fuzzfactor 6y ago
      I agree with you completely on the humility, that's the only ones I would best be involved with, but these are not the ones who make it into this kind of book. The emphasis is on the extreme, privileged and over-the-top attitudes stereotypically encountered. Fortunately, exclusive communities with these stereotypical aspirations are not as overwhelming as they could be. It's a small book, largely true quotations, and I think worth reading as an entertaining way to refresh awareness of peculiarities that can arise as riches are struck or wealth is created or increased.
claudeganon 6y ago
This is essentially the thesis of Silvia Federici’s tremendous book, “Caliban and the Witch.” Witch hunts were pursued to reorganize familial, gender, and labor relations to suit the needs of an emergent Capitalism: >For serfs, who tilled the land in exchange for a share of its crops, home was work, and vice versa; men and women grew the potatoes together. But in capitalism, waged laborers have to work outside the home all the time, which means someone else needs to be at home all the time, doing the domestic work. Gender roles, and the subjugation of women, became newly necessary. Early feudal elites in rural Europe enclosed public land, rendering it private and controllable, and patriarchy enclosed women in “private” marriages, imposing on them the reproductive servitude of bearing men’s children and the emotional labor of caring for men’s every need. Pregnancy and childbirth, once a natural function, became a job that women did for their male husband-bosses—that is to say, childbirth became alienated labor. “Witches,” according to witch-hunting texts like the Malleus Maleficarum, were women who kept childbirth and pregnancy in female hands: midwives, abortionists, herbalists who provided contraception. They were killed to cement patriarchal power and create the subjugated, domestic labor class necessary for capitalism. http://inthesetimes.com/article/21592/capitalism-witches-women-witch-hunting-sylvia-federici-caliban http://inthesetimes.com/article/21592/capitalism-witches-wom...
- kimi 6y ago
  Frankly, seems rather far off. This is looking at the past through modern (or better, current news) eyes. The peaks of witch-hunting and capitalism are rather well spaced. And there was no need for patriarchy to do anything - they were firmly in control with zero contestants.
- ertian 6y ago
  Wouldn't it be nice if history were actually this simple? The idea here is that Romans, with their pater familias, or the Confucian Chinese, for whom the father was a mini-emperor, were just preparing the way for capitalism, 2000+ years before the fact? Marriage and home-bound women were not an invention of the late medival world. Women may well have been more free in the preceding period, but that was the exception, not the norm.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
haukur 6y ago
Do you have any sources relating to the foreign family you mention, and of them securing landholding rights? Based on what I've found, the man that was burned wasn't rich (his family does appear to have become moderately well off by the time's standards at a later date, however). I haven't found any mention of foreigners. The lawyer in the matter was Icelandic.
wutbrodo 6y ago
The _elites_ weren't superstitious, but that doesn't mean noone was. Evil always needs useful idiots to grab power, a dynamic that's only accelerated with the move to democracies (though to be clear, this isn't a knock on a democracy: I'm with Churchill when he says democracy is the least bad of all the forms we've tried).

vmception 6y ago

Those articles are more interesting than OP's article. When I research a lot of wealthy families I frequently find their level of comfort not possible to replicate because it is something considered impropriety today. Taking advantage of an imbalance in the socioeconomic order that was promptly fixed as soon as anybody noticed.

ipsum2 6y ago
Could you give an example of that level of comfort? Servants were more common back then, but not sure what else.
- danans 6y ago
  Most likely that you had enough wealth and owned enough productive land or other capital to secure the lifestyle of your progeny for generations to come.
  - hatenberg 6y ago
    So like Fred Trump
    - danans 6y ago
      Probably, but he's far from alone. It's practically the definition of what the nobility and the gentry/bourgeoisie have in common. In contrast, workers and professionals must sell their personal skills in the labor market to survive. Unless they are extremely lucky, opportunistic, and hardworking and doing so become part of the gentry, their children will have to do the same.
- vmception 6y ago
  For example, the family that was able to exploit the socioeconomic order to pick up those land plots from people indicted for witchcraft probably still owns those land plots, but new people will not be able to use the same tactic to obtain land now.
  - eirini1 6y ago
    maybe not witchcraft accusations per se, but im quite unsure how you can be aware of events occuring in the world right now and think that exploiting the current socioeconomic order to gain land and wealth is not done.
    - vmception 6y ago
      Right it wouldn’t be a witch craft accusation , in the west Its one example
      - Fjolsvith 6y ago
        Pedophilia.
      - viraptor 6y ago
        Are you sure? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse
      - justinclift 6y ago
        Seems more a case of "use whatever the hot topic is for circumventing rational thought". Recent version could be something like this: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firing-innocent/613615/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin... Or any of the other modern topics people have mentioned. It'd need to be combined with having the ability and intent to acquire the property of the targeted people. In the above example, being the people don't seem to really own much/any property anyway, maybe it's harder than it first looks?
    - zentropia 6y ago
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
> not possible to replicate because it is something considered impropriety today At first glance, but then we're forced to recall the entire Epstein shenanigans. And that's only bits of insight in to that level of indulgent debauchery.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
082349872349872 6y ago
India is supposed to be an example. Families with extensive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagir holdings under the Mughals were apparently relatively easily convinced that their possibly de facto but definitely not de jure hereditary estates would be better protected under John Company, whose officers had grown up assuming de jure hereditary estate transmission.
arvinsim 6y ago
I believe that they exist today. They leverage their power and connections to remain anonymous and away from public scrutiny.
- quickthrowman 6y ago
  The Cargill/McMillan family is probably the most famous of these in the US. They’ve kept their company private and have managed to stay under the radar fairly well considering their level of wealth.
  - travmatt 6y ago
    The Sacklers were able to keep their business relatively disconnected from polite society for a long time as well.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    And then there are the Koch brothers: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_family Who've probably got their hands in too many things: * https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Kochland/Christopher-Leonard/9781476775388 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Kochland/Christopher-... * https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/07/kochland-review-koch-brothers-pollution-congress-republicans https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/07/kochland-rev... * https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examin...
- ororo9 6y ago
  They definitely do, and LEO knows. The schemes and cons, deflection... they’ve not changed. Think about, this is only 3-4 generations back. What neuroscience is revealing about shared/inherited brain structures and limbic->cortex system algorithms, the habits of agency haven’t had that long to fade out, especially as we clung to tribal communities and abusive nuclear family silos. But those families control LEO, so their mandate is to fight DVD player theft and smoking pot. They again demonize our individual minor failings to control the greater human narrative, gift trillions to their buds while we fight over TP, face masks, and flat or skeuomorphic UI day to day. Doing the real important social work! Western culture hasn’t really evolved it’s emotional organization habits all that much until recent times, say the last 20 years. Now that the first generations raised primarily on science and a much less overt, yet still present, racism are coming into power, we’ll see. Until the last generation though, most people in power were raised in “story mode”. “Be a godheaded manipulator, manage the masses effort and agency, for of course they’re idiots for not having your job of rich guy! If I can do it anyone can! Why they aren’t is their free will!”
fuzzfactor 6y ago
The rich are different: https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Are-Different-Priceless-Quotations/dp/067944386X https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Are-Different-Priceless-Quotatio...
- mettamage 6y ago
  I read the premise of that book and it doesn't square with what I know about rich people from personal experiences with them. What I've learned is that money is a multiplier for personality and if you have a humble personality, then you'll stay humble while you're rich (with some caveats about people that are not truly humble).
  - fuzzfactor 6y ago
    I agree with you completely on the humility, that's the only ones I would best be involved with, but these are not the ones who make it into this kind of book. The emphasis is on the extreme, privileged and over-the-top attitudes stereotypically encountered. Fortunately, exclusive communities with these stereotypical aspirations are not as overwhelming as they could be. It's a small book, largely true quotations, and I think worth reading as an entertaining way to refresh awareness of peculiarities that can arise as riches are struck or wealth is created or increased.

claudeganon 6y ago

This is essentially the thesis of Silvia Federici’s tremendous book, “Caliban and the Witch.” Witch hunts were pursued to reorganize familial, gender, and labor relations to suit the needs of an emergent Capitalism: >For serfs, who tilled the land in exchange for a share of its crops, home was work, and vice versa; men and women grew the potatoes together. But in capitalism, waged laborers have to work outside the home all the time, which means someone else needs to be at home all the time, doing the domestic work. Gender roles, and the subjugation of women, became newly necessary. Early feudal elites in rural Europe enclosed public land, rendering it private and controllable, and patriarchy enclosed women in “private” marriages, imposing on them the reproductive servitude of bearing men’s children and the emotional labor of caring for men’s every need. Pregnancy and childbirth, once a natural function, became a job that women did for their male husband-bosses—that is to say, childbirth became alienated labor. “Witches,” according to witch-hunting texts like the Malleus Maleficarum, were women who kept childbirth and pregnancy in female hands: midwives, abortionists, herbalists who provided contraception. They were killed to cement patriarchal power and create the subjugated, domestic labor class necessary for capitalism. http://inthesetimes.com/article/21592/capitalism-witches-women-witch-hunting-sylvia-federici-caliban http://inthesetimes.com/article/21592/capitalism-witches-wom...

kimi 6y ago
Frankly, seems rather far off. This is looking at the past through modern (or better, current news) eyes. The peaks of witch-hunting and capitalism are rather well spaced. And there was no need for patriarchy to do anything - they were firmly in control with zero contestants.
ertian 6y ago
Wouldn't it be nice if history were actually this simple? The idea here is that Romans, with their pater familias, or the Confucian Chinese, for whom the father was a mini-emperor, were just preparing the way for capitalism, 2000+ years before the fact? Marriage and home-bound women were not an invention of the late medival world. Women may well have been more free in the preceding period, but that was the exception, not the norm.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

haukur 6y ago

Do you have any sources relating to the foreign family you mention, and of them securing landholding rights? Based on what I've found, the man that was burned wasn't rich (his family does appear to have become moderately well off by the time's standards at a later date, however). I haven't found any mention of foreigners. The lawyer in the matter was Icelandic.

wutbrodo 6y ago

The _elites_ weren't superstitious, but that doesn't mean noone was. Evil always needs useful idiots to grab power, a dynamic that's only accelerated with the move to democracies (though to be clear, this isn't a knock on a democracy: I'm with Churchill when he says democracy is the least bad of all the forms we've tried).