In Ringebu in 1763, everyone was starting on Easter celebrations. The day was the first of April, and two workers from a local farm were on their way to the local stave church. There were no masses that day, and they wanted to look for sewing pins. Supposedly they were quite popular wares to exchange for other things.

Hans Tostensen and Ole Halvorsen would to their horror find something entirely different that day. Once inside the graveyard, they made their way to the stairs on the north side. Then they noticed that there was something under the top stone of the steps.

It was a newborn baby girl, and she was dead.

In horror the young men hurry back to their farm to tell their boss, and in the following year, this sad case would end with a head on a pike.

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Siri Branstadkampen had two children from before, Kari born in 1751, and Siri born in 1759. She had one of them with a shoemaker named Jacob Larsen. Her third girl was not his though, as she ended up in an affair with a married man named Guldbrand Engebretsen Brandstad. He was 26 and she was 40, so there was quite the age difference there.

When he found out she was pregnant, the young farmer and soldier panicked. It was god fearing times, and if anyone found out what he had done, his reputation would never recover.

He started looking for ways for her to miscarriage the child, and if she didn’t agree, he would threaten to take his own life. He tried anything. He got brews that would kill the baby in the womb, and if that didn’t work, he had started planning on paying the shoemaker Jacob to accept the new child as his own as well.

The poisons did not work though, and as she started putting on weight, Guldbrand got her a sheep skin to wrap around herself to hide the growing child.

Siri started eating less, and the women around her started realizing there was something wrong, but she would not tell anyone.

Then on a Sunday in November in 1762, a little baby girl was born. Unwanted even before her birth. Her mother bore her alone, then cut her umbilical cord and cleaned her before she realized there was something wrong.

Having fallen hard not long before, and not having felt any life in her stomach after her fall, she had been sure that was the cause of her child having died before birth. Something that had given much joy to her former lover, as he was sure the baby would be out of his life soon.

He left for work for the birth, and when he returned, he eventually agreed to help her remove the body, and not before New Year’s Eve 1762 did they go together to place the baby in the steps of the church.

Where the two young men would find it 4 months later.

The farmer Ole Elstad called the priest the second he heard what the men had found, and Sigvall Friis Irgens came with the local policeman and fogden, a state employee that had the power equal to the police as well as all matters of claiming taxes and immigration.

After the mass on Easter day there was an investigation of the body, and they found that the baby had been carried to term. There was a blue ring around the throat, and there had come blood from the mouth and nose. To them it was clearly a murder, and now the challenge was to find the mother of the child.

However, in small places people talk, and when the news of a baby being found in such a state, the name Siri soon reached the investigators, and she was called. When he heard of this, Guldbrand still tried to make her blame others, trying to make her claim a drifter was the father.  

She was honest about his involvement though and kept saying that the baby had been dead when she gave birth, and that she was sure it was because she had fallen. The investigators found it strange that she would clean a dead born baby and cut the cord though, at least before noticing something was not right.

In the case against her, there was seven witnesses, one of these being the father of the child. Then it was those that had investigated the baby body, the two that found the body, and two local women that had been the ones that had suspected she had been pregnant. After their stories she was not charged though, as they decided to find more witnesses instead. And Guldbrand was prosecuted for false testimony.

The new witnesses were those that had gotten the medicine for him, and people that had heard him tell of a lot more than what he had said during court. Even Guldbrand’s captain testified to him having told him what had happened. Ensuring the man had given a testimony that held up in court.

One would think that this would be great news for Siri. That it had been proved that she had been in a bad situation with a man that was pressuring her to do what he wanted, and she must have felt the only way out was the death of her child.

However, the court still held firm that a man threatening to kill himself was not a valid reason to kill your child. She had agreed to take the poisons he had given her, and since they did not believe the story that she had fallen and the baby had died before being born, it also meant she had been the one to strangle her own baby.

July the 11^th, in 1763, she was found guilty. They tried to appeal it to the court of appeals, but to no avail. Then it was appealed to the highest court of the King of Denmark, but there was no mercy there either.

The first of June 1764, Siri met her execution. And as the norm was in those days, those that killed their own babies would be beheaded, and their heads was to be put on pikes as warnings for all.

It is not clear how it went with the father of the child after his own judgment, but it is safe to say he didn’t get beheaded for his role in it all. He might have gotten some fines over trying to fake his testimony, but he didn’t have a much longer life either. In 1766, he died as well.

Just from looking at the area of Gudbrandsdalen in Norway, where Ringebu lies, it is a sad fact that it was quite common for this sort of endgame for women that ended up in this situation. Either they would face judgement and ridicule for having a child out of wedlock, and in worst case be excommunicated, or they would go the extreme measure of killing their child and hope they would not be found out. And for the men, even if they were found as accomplishes, if the child was killed, they would usually just face a fine. Another Siri in Gausdal was also beheaded, and even if her lover Ola had been found guilty for helping her, he just got a fine for 40 daler(Old Norwegian currency), that his family helped him pay.

If a man were found to have children outside of wedlock that would be worse for them though, as they could be sent to do forced labor. So that a lot of men would rather the woman lose her child any way possible would be the best outcome for men that would rather not take any responsibility for their own discretion.

So, even with the harsh punishment, it didn’t seem to have any effect at the times, and there are a lot of records of women taking the road towards this sad outcome.

As times changes, and the punishment for children outside of marriage has disappeared, and the judgement has lessened, the stories of mothers killing their babies has thankfully diminished to a few sad cases around the world.

It does not make any of the cases any less heartbreaking though.

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Sources:

Lie Pedersen, Jan Vidar (2008) Drama i dalen – bind 2. Lillehammer. Dølaringen Boklag.

Picture of Ringebu Stave Church, taken by Marthinius Skøien between 1880 and 1887 and is public domain