Johanna Hård

Johanna Hård née Jungberg (3 December 1789 – 12 March 1851), was a Swedish pirate.[1]

She was the daughter of farmer tenant Sven Haraldsson Jungberg (1736-1830) and Anna Britta Nilsdotter (1761-1825) in Hisingen in Gothenburg. In 1813, she married the book keeper Fredrik Hård (1776-1817). As widow, she lived on Vrångö. She had difficulty in supporting herself as a widow, and was once arrested for smuggling after having sailed to Copenhagen and sold textiles against the custom regulations.[1] She was also, in 1822, put on trial accused of having murdered her newborn child, but freed after an investigation had proved the child to have been born dead.[1]

In 1823, she was put on trial, along with her servant Anders Andersson, boatswain Johan Andersson Flatås from Gothenburg (the spouse of her paternal aunt), the fisher Christen Andersson and his servant Carl Börjesson from Styrsö. They were accused of having attacked, plundered, and killed the crew of the Danish ship Frau Mette, which had been found plundered at Fotö, with its crew slain to death. Hård denied all charges, but her co-accused testified that, while Hård had not been present during the attack on the ship, they had planned the whole act in her home, with her as the leading figure and brain behind the whole plot.[1] Hård wrote a letter to her father in which she asked him to testify to her favor and specifically asked him to confirm that her servant Andersson had been at her home at the time of the attack; when the authorities confiscated the letter and asked her about them, she claimed to have written them during contemporary insanity and confusion.[2]

Johan Andersson Flatås, Anders Andersson, and Christen Andersson were beheaded for piracy and murder in 1824, and Carl Börjesson (d. 1835) was sentenced to forced labor. The evidence against Hård was not considered sufficient for a verdict against her denial, and she was therefore released.[1] She is confirmed to have lived in Stockholm from 1825, where she called herself a sea captain's widow. Apparently, she managed to hide her past and eventually secured a position within the Royal Post Office, where she had a good reputation.[3] She died on a charity hospital in Stockholm in 1851.

Johanna Hård was remembered in popular memory as one of two popular images; as the hardened criminal who persuaded her lover to abandon his honest profession to become a pirate; or as the poor destitute widow who did what she could to support herself.[1]