Hans the Werewolf

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The so called "Hans The Werewolf" (1633–1651) was an alleged Estonian werewolf and sorcerer.

In Estonia, around one hundred witch trials were held in 1610-1650, and 29 women and 26 men are recorded executed for sorcery. A book about witch craft was published in Riga in 1626. This was to some extent a persecution of the old pagan animism, which were very much alive in Estonia, where Christianity, forced upon the people by violence by the foreign conquerors, was in reality weak. The weak Christianity, however, also meant that the baltic people did not believe in the Devil, and therefore not in witches. But they did believe in werewolwes, and the Baltic witch trials were therefore more or less werewolf trials; the public regarded the accused as werewolves, while the authorities judged them as witches. The trial of Hans is an example of this.

Hans was put before the court in Idavare accused of being a werewolf at the age of eighteen. He claimed he had gotten the body of a wolf by a man in black. The court asked if it was his soul or his body participating when he turned into a werewolf, and if he felt as an animal or a human when he did. He answered that he felt like a wild beast. Thereby, the court considered it proved, that he had not dressed out, but really transformed into a werewolf; and, as he was given this disguise by a "man in black", which the court thought was obviously Satan, he could be judged to death guilty of witchcraft. This was a common way in the Baltic countries of making an accusation of a werewolf into a witch trial.

Accusations of magic, which was often about enchanted potions, was rare in Estonia, but accusations of werewolwes were common. At 18 trials, 18 women and 13 men were accused for damage on property the had caused in the shape of werewolwes. Under torture, they confessed having hidden their wolves skin under a rock. The only thing needed to make this a witch trial, was a pact with the Devil. As late as 1696, a flock of werewolwes was considered to run wild in Vastemoisa under their leader Libbe Matz.