The seventeenth century saw the development of increasingly centralised polities in northern and eastern Europe that sought to normalise the religious status of their unchristianised minorities. A new kind of antiquarian curiosity about unchristianised peoples was shown by figures such as Johannes Schefferus, although ethnographic study often went hand in hand with campaigns of conversion and confiscation of sacred objects (like Sami rune drums). At the same time, anxieties about witchcraft were sometimes brought to bear on unchristianised peoples as idolaters potentially in league with the devil - although attitudes varied greatly from region to region. This chapter explores the impact of colonial expansion on Europe’s unchristianised minority and the role of missionaries, antiquarians, witch-hunters, and ethnographers in redefining the ‘pagan’ threat.