The Witches of Finnmark

GARY INDIANA ON THE STEILNESET MEMORIAL

IN FINNMARK, at the Arctic tail end of Norway that lops over Sweden and Finland, American artist Louise Bourgeois and Swiss architect Peter Zumthor collaborated on a monument to the ninety-one persons burned there as witches in the seventeenth century. On June 23, a year after Bourgeois's death, the Steilneset Memorial was opened to the public by Queen Sonja of Norway (that rare thing, a monarch people actually like) in a dedication ceremony that drew what appeared to be most if not all of the surrounding population.

The witch trials, tortures, and executions that took place at Steilneset, on the island of Vardo, were inspired in …