Steilneset Memorial for the Victims of the Witch Trials

The Finnmark witchcraft trials took place from 1600 to 1692, and 91 people were sentenced to death in them. Women and men, Norwegians and Sámi, were accused; most of those condemned were women. Condemned for witchcraft, they were executed, many of them at the stake.

At the start of the century the municipality of Vardø, which was to be Finnmark's "millennium site", asked the Norwegian Scenic Routes to tell this history. Louise Bourgeois, invited to Vardø, could not manage the long journey; Zumthor, entrusted with making a proposal based on his own visits to the site, drew his first sketches on the spot. Bourgeois struggled to see how her sculptures could fit in so narrow a building and conceived a work that needed more space. Zumthor said he was willing to set his building aside and build another around the work, but Bourgeois, who liked his original sketches, would not agree: two buildings were eventually built.

The memorial opened in 2011, a year after Louise Bourgeois's death, and Queen Sonja inaugurated it on 23 June. In 2013 it received the Northern Norway Architecture Prize.

The hall is made of a specially manufactured canvas stretched by steel cables within an exposed outer framework. The canvas is meant to withstand heavy storms, and the slender timber structure to resist the forces of nature that may at any moment sweep the whole installation into the sea.

Visitors enter along a long, narrow wooden walkway about 60 cm above the canvas and up to several metres above the ground. Inside, the canvas is black. For each of the 91 verdicts a window is cut in the canvas at uneven heights, with a single light bulb hanging in front of it on a plain cord.

Beside the hall stands the pavilion, which Zumthor designed as a square building: its walls are dark glass and its roof is steel. It contrasts with the open, weather-beaten surroundings. Inside is the Louise Bourgeois installation known as The Damned, the Possessed and the Beloved, a burning metal chair, ringed by seven oval mirrors that reflect it.

In the hall, 91 plaques each carry the text about one condemned person: the name, details of the trial, the confession, then the judgment and the sentence. Liv Helene Willumsen, Professor of History at the University of Tromsø, wrote them from the original court records. Locally the memorial is called the witches' monument. The Varanger Museum, Vardø branch, is responsible for conveying this history.

The memorial is unstaffed and admission is free. A guided visit has to be booked at least three days ahead. The site is wheelchair accessible. The address is Andreas Lies gate in Vardø, and the memorial is part of the Varanger national scenic route, where it serves as a rest area and viewpoint.