The women, who were sentenced for witchcraft in northern Norway during the 1600s, admitted to both witchcraft and contact with dark forces. They may have been poisoned by ergot, the first stage of a parasite fungus which among other things led to severe hallucinations, cramps and gangrene, according to the university paper Tromsøflaket.

Food and drink
Torbjørn Alm, botanist and associate professor, presented the theory in a newly published article in the international trade magazine BioOne.

Alm has studied documents from a number of the witch hunts during the 1600s in Finnmark. According to Alm, the documents states that the women who were accused of having taught witchcraft after they had ingested ergot, most common in the form of bread or other flour products but also by drinking beer or milk.

Finnmark only
Alm has also read documents which indicate that the accused witches claimed to have seen small, black things (ergot) in that looked like grains in their drinks. It is also established that winter rye is often attacked by ergot. Ergot poisoning does not only produce hallucinations, but also cramps and gangrene. The symptoms are allegedly described in the same documents.

According to Tromsøflaket, it is unique for Finnmark that the women did not get their knowledge of witchcraft by studying old traditions, but through food and drink. Most of the women found guilty of witchcraft were of Norwegian decent who lived along the coast where imported flour was a part of diet. All the flour that was available in Finnmark on the later part of the 1600s was imported, and rug which often was attacked by ergot, was the majority of the flour imported, according to Tromsøflaket.