Sophie Johannesdatter, a Swedish woman originally from a poor family in Dalsland, was the last woman to be executed in Norway. She had come over the border to Halden from Sweden in 1868 and got a job as a servant at the local wholesaler, Herr Niels Anker Stang, where she lived and worked for several years.

Her three victims, all poisoned with arsenic, were a co-worker who owed her money, her employer’s wife, whom she had never liked, and lastly her employer himself, Stang – who had discovered she was stealing from him, and was considering giving her the sack.

Local police became suspicious of her when she tried to murder a fourth victim, another servant who had become sick, first by poisoning her with arsenic like the others, and when that failed because the girl was too sick to drink the poisoned liquid, then by setting fire to the house.

The police later found out that Sophie had been in possesion of arsenic, and when the corpses of her three victims where dug up during the course of a new investigation, high traces of poison were found in all three. Sophie Johannesdatter was sentenced to death, and was decapitated on Halden’s main square on 18 February 1876 in front of a 3,000-strong crowd. She was the last woman to be publicly executed in Norway.