Talk:Werewolf witch trials

Title
The title of this article is a translation from the title of the article in Swedish wikipedia. Personally, I don't know if it is a good title, and if I knew his last name, I would have used that. If anyone know his last name, I have no problem with the article being chanced to that name.--Aciram (talk) 17:41, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Deletion
The article have been nominted for deletion. It seem to describe and examplify a common way of conductiong a witch trial in this country. That should be relevant. --85.226.235.248 (talk) 14:01, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Notability is more than just proving that an incident happened it some point. It's proving, with reliable sources, why anyone would care about this particular one. If people just want witch info or werewolf info we have articles on that already. DreamGuy (talk) 14:42, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The reason given above is in line with what you say. The article describes a typical case: most witch trials in this area was conducted as combined witch/werewolves-trials. This is therefore not important as a werewolve article, but as a part of the witch trial and the werewolves-history in the area. This is from the cited reference by Guillou.--85.226.42.150 (talk) 11:10, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * To even claim it is typical is original research. Asserting it as a typical case does not make it notable. We need solid proof of it being notable. DreamGuy (talk) 12:03, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That claim is from the cited reference by Guillou. --85.226.42.150 (talk) 13:04, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh; the article has already been up for deletion, but it was not deleted. Wikipedia do allow foreign lanuage references.--85.226.42.150 (talk) 14:24, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

In-line citations
The sources for this article is already cited, even if the do miss in-line citations. I have have heard that in-line citations is not necessary. In any case: the citations asked for is confirmed in the book by Guillou. --85.226.42.150 (talk) 11:13, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Reverted deletion
The article was deleted and redirected to Werewoolf. It is to be regarded as a deletion rather than a merge, as the case is not mentioned in the article it was redirected to. The article has references, and furthermore, also in-line-citations. It is true that the in-line-citations does not refer to an English-speaking reference. Wikipedia, however, fully allows foregin-language references. I believe wikipedia does not even require in-line-citations for that matter, although it is preferrable. All the claims in the article is referenced by the references cited in the article, and because of this reason, it cannot be deleted for lack of referencing. Wikipedia has a lot of articles about, for example, witch trials and people accused for various crimes, such as witch craft, without them being world famous. I will leave it to others after this, and will not involve further. However: it can not be deleted with the reason that it lacks references and in-line-citations, as it does contain them, and wikipedia allow foregin language references. If it is deleted again, I will not protest further, however, it must be deleted for some other reason that those. I recommend, that it be nominated for deletion, so that more than one person can have a say. If someone wish for it to be deleted, I assume it will be nominated for deletion, which could hardly be opposed by those who is convinced the article is of no use here. That is the right way to go if you wish to delete an article. I gladly accept any verdict given by such a discussion, and wish you good luck with the nomination. Best wishes! --Aciram (talk) 17:36, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The article now has an English-speaking reference as well, even if it is not necessary. --85.226.40.64 (talk) 15:05, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You two don't seem to understand notability in the slightest. Complaining that it can't redirect to werewolf because that article doesn't mention this incident should be a big clue that this isn't notable. DreamGuy (talk) 15:16, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sacajawea isn't mentioned in the article about the United States, it doesn't man that she is irrelevant to the topic of the United States and not notable. Asarelah (talk) 17:58, 27 June 2009 (UTC)


 * It's notable to me, since 'werewolf' legends are quite a bit different in each country, notable trials and public records are rare and stand out, and anyone interested in an overview of actual historical phenomena related to 'werewolves' will benefit from having multiple sources / significant examples, not all of which are going to fit on the werewolf wiki page. In other words, this is not a subject that can be effectively summarized in a few paragraphs because nobody really understands what the actual historical reality was.  I don't see how this article is that much different (or less useful) than the one on Stubbe Peter or Giles Garnier other than the fact that it is from a part of the world and / or cites references in a language that some Wikipedia editors don't understand or like for some reason.  Drifter bob (talk) 14:44, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Renaming the page
As was requested in the nomination discussion for deletion, I will rename the page, so that the article will treat the context, the phenomena itself, as the main subject, with this case as a representative example. This will make is much easier to add references for everyone. The subject truly deserves an article here on wikipedia!--Aciram (talk) 15:09, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Article scope
as was noted above, this page was created as a translation of sv: Varulvshäxprocesser, which is apparently itself based on a 2002 report by Jan Guillou. That's fair enough, I suppose, only it should have been "Estonian werewolf witch trials", because that was Guillou's topic (?).

There are about a dozen such processes on record from Estonia, compared to a total of about 280, so it is certainly wrong to state that they were particularly frequent in the Baltic. What I think was being claimed is that they were especially frequent in the Baltic compared to the total number of witch trials (relative frequency).

But this article can easily be extended to cover the whole topic. Werewolf trials were one type of witch trial, and they occurred throughout the witch-trial period, from as early as 1407 to as late as 1725. Their relative frequency is, on the whole, rather modest, I don't find any quotable source citing an estimate directly, but comparing the well-referenced number at the Early Modern witch-hunts article it would seem the ratio of werewolf accusations was of the order of 1%.

Like the wich-craze in general, this phenomenon originates in the Alps, more specifically in what is now western Switzerland. It spread with the turmoils of the Reformation, and it peaked in the 17th century. After 1650, it began to subside, but it stuck around longest again in the Alps, but this time in the Austrian and Bavarian Alps.

This topic is of prime importance for the understanding of the werewolf topic as a whole. This is what fuelled and shaped what would become the "werewolf" character in Gothic horror literature. Of course the "werewolf" idea has ancient predecessors in Indo-European warrior cult, shamanism and what have you, but these are "predecessors". The actual "werewolf" as western culture inherited it was shaped during 1400 to 1650. --dab (𒁳) 10:06, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Lorey's treatise is just a "self-published website", but it is of excellent quality, and it is fully referenced, so it is easily possible to peruse it in building this article by citing the sources cited by Lorey. It will still be fair to credit Lorey, because he did the actual work. What we presumably cannot use is his bar chart showing the distribution of the cases in his database, both because it is his work and because he didn't publish it academically. But I am posting the chart here o talk for future reference.

--dab (𒁳) 10:30, 3 May 2013 (UTC)