introduction explicit legislation, is widened to its understanding in society. One can also see the different understandings clash, between the people who intentionally commit the crimes and the people who abhor them. There are elements of development, discourse, and social construct in this history, but mostly we find segments of society trying to come to grips with the strange aspects of well-known crimes. How could someone walking down the street just shoot dead the first person they met? How to fathom how a kind, trustworthy babysitter can suddenly kill their charge? Why enter a church only to commit sacrilege? Why would someone desire to be executed? Was there some common motive or setting that could explain such crimes? Maybe the most appropriate definition that can be given when it comes to murder, which probably was the most prolific and definitely the most infamous variation of this type of crime, is summed up by Tyge Krogh: ”Det særlige ved disse mord var, at morderen ikke nærede nogen uvilje mod offeret, og at hensigten med mordet var at blive henrettet.”3 The crimes that are the focus of this book were thus acts committed to engineer the perpetrator’s death. This was the underlying motive which defined the crimes. Krogh has, however, also described how uninterested all participants in the trials in the courts of law, in his studies the courts in Denmark, often were of the motive behind a crime.4 Despite the many obstacles, there is an abiding interest in motive. It has been central to many genres of crime fiction; modern legislators are preoccupied with finding ways to legislate about general terror as a motive. In historical studies, at least of crime, though, the word motive has at least a double meaning. There were the motives for a crime, especially 3 ’Distinctive for these murders was that the murderer held no bad feelings for the victim and the reason for the murder was to be executed’, Krogh 2004 p 21. 4 Krogh 2020 p 229 sq: ”A suicide murder is defined by its motive, but the motive was not relevant for the courts until 1767, when a decree was issued against murders with intent to be executed. The courts were interested in establishing the facts and in premeditation.” Krogh 2012 p 34: ”The lawyers accusing, defending and judging were not particularly interested in the perpetrators’ possible religious motives for committing the murders. Such motives did not affect the charge and could not be used to plead mitigation of sentence. If the court records were our only source, it would be difficult to maintain a dominant religious motivation.” 20
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=