The last woman to be executed as a witch in Sweden lived only fifteen minutes from my summer house outside Eskilstuna.

Not in magic – but in people, their faith, and their doubt.

Anna Ersdotter was the last woman executed as a witch in Sweden. She lived and died in the same landscape where I now swim, grill, and take photographs. A life was ended in 1704 because the people around her decided that her way of understanding the world was dangerous.

That was where my interest took shape.
Not about the supernatural – but about why certain ways of believing awaken fear.

That question did not remain in history.
Slowly, it began to turn toward myself, as something that took form in the body, in relationships, in meetings with people who lived in ways different from mine.
That was where my own journey began.

My friends say that I am developing spiritually.
I myself have long hesitated before the word.

I have never searched for an outer god.
Instead, I have begun to suspect that if there is something we can call god, it may exist within me.
And in others.
And in what arises between people.

I am beginning to believe that heaven is a place on earth.
Not as a religious idea, but as an experience.
Moments when the mind lets go.
When touch becomes larger than desire.
When someone listens in a way that changes you.

That is why I am here.
Not to become a believer, but to stay curious.

Why Are People Called Witches?

My love speaks with the dead.
Not to escape life.
But because they come to her with messages for their friends and families.

One friend dances with fire and bathes in clay.
As if she wants to remember a body that existed before the rules.

Another works with sound healing.
She makes my body tremble without touch, as if the nerves know more than my intellect.

The next woman introduced me to Kashmir massage.
A form of touch that is greater than sex, because it wants nothing – only to make space.

Another is a strong woman who likes to take clients through life, death, pleasure and pain

And who also explores what the plant world has to offer.
Not as escape, but as knowledge.

They say: therapist, healer, dancer, medium, body worker.

Society sometimes says: alternative, vague, unscientific, provocative.

And somewhere here, then and now meet.

In the 17th century, it was called witchcraft.
Today, it is called transgressive.

The difference is that no one lights the fire anymore.
But the uncertainty toward what cannot be measured remains.

When I return to the landscape around Eskilstuna,
I sometimes think of Anna Ersdotter.

Not as a symbol.
But as a human being.

This is therefore not about witches.
It is about faith.
About curiosity.
About why I, who never searched for a god, am still drawn to those who work with the invisible.

Not to find answers.
But to learn how to ask better questions.