To play this audio please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Nature and EnvironmentNorwayhttps://p.dw.com/p/5OiX0
Send a voice message to LivingPlanet
Subscribe to the podcast here: Living Planet Podlink
TRANSCRIPT
Liv Helene Willumsen: That it happened on Christmas Eve is very important. There are some days of the year where we, in folklore, believe this curtain between the world we see and the world we do not see is much more open than other days.
The storm came suddenly. It came very quickly.
The storm was strange. It was difficult to explain.
Suddenly the sea smoked like ashes.
They did not believe that such a tragedy, such a sudden accident, that this could be caused by natural causes. It was unnatural.
It becomes clear; it becomes plausible that witchcraft could be the reason.
Lewandowsky: People think the Middle Ages are behind us, but actually, I’m not so sure about that.
Today on the show: Magic, madness, and the storms that start it all. From a witch panic in the Arctic, to death threats in the American South, we trace an old idea that keeps coming back: that someone, somewhere must be raising storms. I’m Neil King. This is Living Planet.
It’s Christmas Eve, 1617. In Vardø, a fishing village above the Arctic Circle at Norway’s northern edge, the sun hasn’t risen for a month. The Polar Night is at its midpoint. For a few hours each day there’s twilight. Then darkness returns.
Beneath the northern lights, people live by the sea. Women tend livestock on shore. Men fish the icy waters of the Barents Sea. The settlement is ruled from faraway Copenhagen, watched over by a fortress and its gallows.
And on this Christmas Eve, many of Vardø’s fishermen are out at sea when something unexpected happens.
A storm appears almost without warning.
By the time it’s over, ten boats carrying 40 fishermen have vanished.
Willumsen: We know because of the court records, the fishermen had not come back.
For centuries, historians like Willumsen have tried to understand what happened next: how a deadly storm could help set off one of Europe’s most notorious . But before we hear more on that let’s fast forward 400 years when across the Atlantic in the US another storm would produce an eerily familiar search for answers.
Jaclyn Rothenberg: We flew to Florida, almost within a few hours, because we knew that this was going to be a very intense storm.
We didn’t know what was going to happen, and so the agency made the decision, and I think it was the right one, to supply security personnel to be outside my home.
In late September 2024, the trees in Washington DC are just beginning to turn. At the headquarters of FEMA, staff are tracking a storm that is gathering strength in the Gulf of Mexico.
Jaclyn: There are daily briefings that take place at FEMA every single day at the 8:30 OPs meeting. So there’s always an awareness of when a major storm is coming.
That is Jaclyn Rothenberg, who back then was FEMA’s director of public affairs. As Hurricane Helene approaches Florida, she’s preparing to deploy.
Jaclyn: My job as the director of public affairs was to put out information to tell people what they could do to get resources, where they could go, who they could listen to.
But as Helene approaches land, another threat is beginning to spread online. Jaclyn is from Georgia. She knows the region. She understands that trust in the federal government can run thin, especially with a presidential election only weeks away. What she doesn’t know yet is that she is about to become the target of a conspiracy theory.
Jaclyn: It was standard practice for us to put up on our FEMA rumors page about what was true and not true, just because information is flying during a disaster, and it’s often that things get lost in translation. What we experienced in Helene and Milton was something completely different than a typical rumor mill, you know, game of telephone social media mystery.
The day after Helene makes landfall, Jaclyn is on the ground in Florida, surveying damage alongside state and federal officials.
Meanwhile, the storm keeps moving north.
As communities across the Southeast begin digging out, Jaclyn becomes one of FEMA’s public faces for the disaster response.
She spends her days talking to reporters, sharing updates online, and helping people connect with federal aid.
At the same time, false claims about the storm are multiplying.
News clip (North Carolina man): You know, the government controls the weather. And this was a direct attack on the area.
The idea sounds far-fetched. But online, it’s finding an audience.
As the conspiracy grows, Jaclyn finds herself at the center of it. Some claim the government created the storm. Others accuse FEMA of diverting disaster money overseas. Her name begins appearing across social media posts and fringe online forums.
Jaclyn: I had, you know, people that I went to middle school with reaching out to me… responding online, because people saw what was happening…
It’s now early October. Before many communities have recovered from Helene, another major hurricane is bearing down on the same region.
Across Florida, people rush to prepare. Some evacuate. Others stock up on fuel and supplies. Online, the conspiracy theories continue to spread. Posts mentioning Jaclyn attract millions of views. Her social media accounts fill with abuse.
On October 5, she is still pushing back against false claims.
On October 6, she is still giving interviews.
On October 7, meteorologists are warning of yet another danger.
The next day, tornadoes begin touching down across Florida.
Dozens of them.
Cars are tossed from roads. Buildings are damaged. And the hurricane itself hasn’t even arrived yet. When the rain finally comes, one veteran meteorologist struggles to hold back tears.
Meteorologist: I apologize, this is just horrific.
For Jaclyn, the storm online is reaching a breaking point.
Jaclyn: I don’t think everyone really fully understands that misinformation can lead to actual action.
Federal officials discover that threats against Jaclyn are circulating in darker corners of the internet. Then comes one threat serious enough to trigger a response.
Jaclyn: I’m pretty sure he said he wanted to shoot me. When they approached me, I really didn’t know how the threat was being portrayed…I really didn’t know how the threat was being portrayed, and honestly, I was very taken aback by it. So, I called my husband and said, “Can we stay at a friend’s house? We made the decision to have me stop tweeting or communicating or doing interviews out of my safety, which was really hard because my job was to communicate, and the fact that I was not being able to help people in their greatest time of need because of my own personal safety felt terrible.
When Jaclyn returns home, there are federal agents posted in SUVs outside her house, and in the days following the hurricane, it’s in one of these government vehicles that she is escorted to and from her office.
Jaclyn: That’s usually something that is given to someone in a very high-ranking position … I was always a staffer, so it was just kind of out of body, and I think looking back, a little scary. People have a lot of feelings during disasters, and understandably, it’s stressful. But this was very, like, visceral towards me as a person, as a Jewish American, attacking me for my role.
Stephan Lewandowsky: The question is, why does this happen, right?
That’s Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Bristol who studies conspiracy theories.
Lewandowsky: There’s always some element of fear in conspiracy theories.
He says the COVID-19 pandemic offers a perfect example. For some people, it’s easier to believe that the pandemic was an attack than a random twist of fate. The same thinking applies to storms.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News anchor, dedicated an entire episode of his podcast to a storm manipulation conspiracy theory. When his guest said it was “indisputable” that Hurricane Helene was manipulated by the government, Carlson said…
Tucker Carlson: I’m glad you keep bringing up the COVID vax because it would be hard for my middle-aged brain to accept a lie at this scale. How could you do that? How could you hide something this big, this profound from an entire population? Except I just saw it five years ago with the COVID vax, which was a total lie. … So I know for a fact, what you’re describing is possible.
Lewandowsky: The reason people do that is because it offers them, in the moment, a weird sense of comfort. And the reason this can be comforting is because you have then created a world that could have been different if only these bad people hadn’t done it.
The alternative to a conspiracy theory is often…
Lewandowsky: an uncontrollable world, right? If I’m saying, well, you know, some bat somewhere could cough on some guy who’s collecting something in a cave, and bang, two million people die. That’s scary.
More than four hundred years before Hurricane Helene, people in the small Arctic fishing settlement of Vardø confronted that same fear of something was difficult to explain let alone control. Back then, the explanation wasn’t a secret government plot. It was witchcraft.
Willumsen: The trials came as an answer in a way to try to find who was responsible for this storm, which gave such a tragic result.
The loss of 40 fishermen transforms the community.
Willumsen: A lot of families lacked the man, the husband, the father. They lacked the man. Who should create safety in the families? He was not there. He was drowned.
In the years that follow, outside influences arrive in Vardø that will make searching for someone to blame much easier.
In 1619, the Danish crown appoints a new governor to the fortress overlooking the village. His name is John Cunningham. He is Scottish, and he comes from a country already consumed by witch hunts.
King James of Scotland had famously become convinced that witches could raise storms and sink ships. Cunningham arrives in Finnmark carrying those same ideas. A year after he takes his post, the storm trials begin. The first target is an Indigenous Sámi woman from a neighboring village.
Willumsen: Karen Edisdatter. During the interrogation they used all types of torture and methods to force this confession.
She is placed on the rack. Inquisitors tie Karen Edisdatter’s limbs and use a crank to pull them apart. In her confession, recorded in court, she says the devil forced her into evil, because when she refused, he stretched her limbs until blood came from her nose and mouth.
Willumsen: the way such a witchcraft panic is constructed, the first woman who is accused, and who was tortured during interrogation. She knew that her confession was important. The next question was, “Who else did you see there?”
The answer to that question will drive the panic forward. And this panic becomes possible, Willumsen says, because of a new theory. Myths about magic and witchcraft had existed for centuries. But what emerges in Europe during the witch-hunt era is something different.
The threat is no longer a solitary person with mysterious powers. The threat is a hidden network.
A secret group working together in service of a larger evil. It’s an idea that spreads through popular books.
Willumsen: The most famous is Malleus Maleficarum, or the Witches’ Hammer.
It warns that witches meet in secret, work together, and possess the power to raise storms. An entire chapter is dedicated to manipulating weather.
Willumsen: This is something different, because everybody could get hold of this devilish power. You also have this idea of collective witchcraft.
The logic is familiar. A catastrophe happens. Someone must be responsible. And the explanation lies not in nature, but in a hidden conspiracy. In Vardø, investigators press Karen Edisdatter for details. They want to know who else was involved? Who else had helped create the storm? Karen tells a story.
And once she does, suspicion begins to spread.
Willumsen: This is my main point in all I have been writing and studying…
For Willumsen, dangerous ideas become truly dangerous when people with authority decide to act on them.
Willumsen: these fanatical ideas, combined with power of persons who have power. I think this combination is deadly…
The storm itself killed forty men. What followed would claim many more lives. But witch hunts are not just stories from the seventeenth century. The same pattern still emerges after disasters today. Fear creates a story. The story identifies a culprit. And eventually, people with power begin repeating it.
Lewandowsky: Modern people always, you know, we feel so superior … And well, as it turns out, emotionally and cognitively, we’re probably, you know, we haven’t we haven’t taken too many steps.
Biden: Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman from Georgia, is now saying the federal government is literally controlling the weather. We’re controlling the weather. It’s beyond ridiculous. It’s stupid. It’s gotta stop.
In the chaotic days between Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posts on social media that the government is controlling the weather.
For Jaclyn Rothenberg, it marks a turning point.
Jaclyn: The reality is you don’t know everyone who is your audience on the internet.
And people who saw a tweet from an elected official who made that connection did carry that rumor.
Nearly a year later, the claim arrives in Congress.
Marjorie Taylor Greene: This hearing of the subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency will come to order.
Eleven months after Hurricane Helene, Greene convenes a hearing titled: “Playing God with the Weather.”
Taylor Greene: Humans have been trying to control the weather for centuries. … Today, people are still trying to control the weather, but some things have changed. Modern attempts at weather control don’t appeal to divinity. Instead, they use technology to put chemicals in the sky …
The hearing focuses on cloud seeding, a real technology used in some places to encourage rainfall. Aircraft release tiny particles into existing clouds, helping water droplets form. Studies suggest it can produce modest, localized increases in precipitation. But creating or steering a hurricane is another matter.
Taylor Greene: I now recognize Dr. McCracken for his opening statements.
Michael MacCracken is Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs with the Climate Institute in Washington DC.
MacCracken: Research has made clear that changing a major specific event-a hurricane or a drenching rain or a drought-is just beyond human capabilities. That’s not what’s happening. Nature has so much energy involved. That’s not going to happen.
But the hearing is not really about what scientists say is possible. Instead, some lawmakers argue that the very existence of weather-modification technologies raises suspicions. Texas Representative Michael Cloud is one of them.
Michael Cloud: I think most people, you know, back home tuning into this would first of all be shocked to find out that maybe some of the suspicions, like weather modification, which is not really talked about … come to find out, like, “Okay, this has really been happening for decades. This is not conspiracy theory. This is like fact. There’s businesses involved in doing this.”
In this hearing, Marjorie Taylor Greene gets the last word.
Taylor Greene: These climate activists … they want to take away our God-given rights, our God-given rights over the earth, in order to satisfy their godless climate cult beliefs.
Jaclyn: I think sometimes they like to pick certain communities to be scapegoats, and that I don’t know how to change, but it is important to talk about that so that we can dispel some of those long-standing rumors that go back to the 1600s.
But how to dispel such deeply rooted ideas?
Jaclyn is no longer at FEMA. Her appointment ended with the Biden administration. Now, she works in crisis communication, where she is applying the lessons she learned at FEMA. One lesson on myth-busting? It’s best done on the ground by locals.
After Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted her conspiracy theory about the weather, Congressman Chuck Edwards pushed back. Edwards is a Republican whose North Carolina district was struck by Helene. His statement said: “Nobody can control the weather.”
Jaclyn: It’s always important to identify who your best messenger is. For us, it was local officials who they trusted the most, and people in community, they can actually help you change the conversation, and it did.
That lines up with psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky’s findings on authenticity. He says authenticity is double-edged sword: because scientists are trained to speak in a measured way, they often sound unauthentic. On the other hand, populists can speak hateful misinformation from the heart.
Lewandowsky: Some people take authenticity to be a marker of honesty.
The phrase “some people” is one Lewandowsky repeats when he talks about conspiracy theories. That’s because, based on several studies, there is a stubborn portion of the population that is particularly susceptible to conspiracy thinking. Lewandowsky estimates it’s roughly 20% to 30% of people.
In 2025, one in five surveyed Americans believed the US government was secretly putting chemicals in the air to counteract climate change.
The good news: Lewandowsky says the same people who are prone to conspiracy thinking, may be more convinced by authentic voices in their local community.
Lewandowsky: A study I was briefly involved in that is being done in Kenya involved hairdressers as vaccine champions. The hairdressers were trained to talk to their customers about vaccinations. you know she’s doing a great job on my hair, so maybe I should trust her on vaccines, right? I mean, it’s sort of-it’s a bit crazy, but it works. That’s what people are like, you know. Oh, he’s a good cook. Maybe his opinions about climate change are also good.
It would appear that trust can move through a community just as quickly as fear.
In Finnmark, Karen Edisdatter was only the first accused. The trials continued for decades. Storms came and went and accusations multiplied. By the end, ninety-one people had been executed for witchcraft.
Willumsen: Many, many cases tied together until the last one in Finnmark in 1662-63. After this last witchcraft panic finished in 1663, there are very few witchcraft trials in Finnmark, and only one death sentence passed.
So what changed in Vardø? It wasn’t a royal decree. Nor a visiting scholar or outsider who put an end to trials.
According to Willumsen, the turning point came from within the community itself.
When children began appearing in the courtroom.
Willumsen: When you come to 1663, and you get these small girls accused of witchcraft…
For decades, Vardø’s residents had watched neighbors accused, tortured, and executed.
But this time, the local jurors refused to go along. There was a line they would not cross.
Willumsen: They say we cannot say that these small girls are guilty…
The panic finally begins to break. But for Karen Edisdatter, it comes far too late.
Willumsen: The last sentence of the court records is that this person is sentenced to death in fire at the stake…
She was brought from the fortress until the place of execution… tied to a ladder, and then there was the burning of the pile had started already, so she was toppled onto the pile. So, and people in the local community were invited to see this execution because it should be a message. It must have been terrible. The smell of burnt hair, burnt flesh, cries, and it must have been a terrible idea to look at during this execution.
Four hundred years separate the witch trials of Vardø from hurricanes, social media, and congressional hearings. But Liv Helene Willumsen says the impulse behind them survives. Around the world, accusations of witchcraft still lead to violence and killings today.
The technology and targets may have changed. But faced with fear, uncertainty and events beyond our control, humans are still searching for explanations. And sometimes, for someone to blame.
Willumsen: There is something that is going, that has been going on. There is a thread you can see throughout the centuries. It is not. It is not over.
