History Repeats Itself On The Television Screen
Even if school’s history class was a bit of a drudge, historical movies and television series delivered the same old stories with much more passion and intrigue than tweed wearing professors. Television series and films are not only massively entertaining, but they can often inspire profound discussions about the story threads. These fascinating tales of past times offer insights into old world societies and sometimes warn future man as to what his world could be like if he repeats the same mistakes; “history repeats itself.” Netflix has become the ‘goto’ online portal for historical movies and television series and the network has now realized there exists an insatiable thirst for historical shows, fact and fiction. Sometimes a history lesson is necessary to fill in the background to these series and movies.
Devil’s Bride
Set in 1600s Finland, Devil’s Bride tells the dark story of a girl who falls in love with a married man and to remove his wife from of the picture, the girl accuses the innocent woman of witchcraft, later to discover to her horror how 17th-century churchmen dealt with witches.
In the real world, during the 17th-century witch-hunts, Finland was part of the Swedish Kingdom and most people followed the Lutheran religion, barring a small minority of Orthodox Catholics in the east. It was this institutionalized religion that caused magical thinking and superstition to greatly influence everyday life. According to Marko Nenonen and Timo Kervinen, in their paper Finnish Witch Trials in Synopsis at the beginning of the early modern period (1500-1800) Finland was famous for its witches and its great shamans who inhabited Lapland. Between 1520 - 1750 charges of witchcraft, magic and sorcery were laid against at least 2,000 people.
