Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity: Reconstucting Sacred Geographies in Norway (Oxford Ritual Studies) 9780197598634, 0197598633

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Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity

OXFORD RIT UAL STUDIE S Series Editors Ronald Grimes, Ritual Studies International Ute Hüsken, University of Oslo Barry Stephenson, Memorial University THE PROBLEM OF RITUAL EFFICACY Edited by William S. Sax, Johannes Quack, and Jan Weinhold PERFORMING THE REFORMATION Public Ritual in the City of Luther Barry Stephenson RITUAL, MEDIA, AND CONFLICT Edited by Ronald L. Grimes, Ute Hüsken, Udo Simon, and Eric Venbrux KNOWING BODY, MOVING MIND Ritualizing and Learning at Two Buddhist Centers Patricia Q. Campbell SUBVERSIVE SPIRITUALITIES How Rituals Enact the World Frédérique Apffel-​Marglin NEGOTIATING RITES Edited by Ute Hüsken and Frank Neubert THE DANCING DEAD Ritual and Religion among the Kapsiki/​ Higi of North Cameroon and Northeastern Nigeria Walter E. A. van Beek LOOKING FOR MARY MAGDALENE Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity at Catholic Shrines in France Anna Fedele THE DYSFUNCTION OF RITUAL IN EARLY CONFUCIANISM Michael David Kaulana Ing A DIFFERENT MEDICINE Postcolonial Healing in the Native American Church Joseph D. Calabrese NARRATIVES OF SORROW AND DIGNITY Japanese Women, Pregnancy Loss, and Modern Rituals of Grieving Bardwell L. Smith

MAKING THINGS BETTER A Workbook on Ritual, Cultural Values, and Environmental Behavior A. David Napier AYAHUASCA SHAMANISM IN THE AMAZON AND BEYOND Edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Clancy Cavnar HOMA VARIATIONS The Study of Ritual Change across the Longue Durée Edited by Richard K. Payne and Michael Witzel HOMO RITUALIS Hindu Ritual and Its Significance to Ritual Theory Axel Michaels RITUAL GONE WRONG What We Learn from Ritual Disruption Kathryn T. McClymond SINGING THE RITE TO BELONG Ritual, Music, and the New Irish Helen Phelan RITES OF THE GOD-​KING Śānti, Orthopraxy, and Ritual Change in Early Hinduism Marko Geslani BUDDHISTS, SHAMANS, AND SOVIETS Rituals of History in Post-​Soviet Buryatia Justine Buck Quijada VOICES OF THE RITUAL Devotion to Female Saints and Shrines in the Holy Land Nurit Stadler PILGRIMAGE, LANDSCAPE, AND IDENTITY Reconstructing Sacred Geographies in Norway Marion Grau

Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity Reconstructing Sacred Geographies in Norway

MARION GRAU

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2021 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress ISBN 978–​0–​19–​759863–​4 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197598634.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments  vii Introduction  1 1. Reconstructing Sacred Geographies: Narrating Routes and Landscapes  26 2. Vikings, Saints, and Pilgrimage  36 3. Mapping the Pilgrimage Network  58 4. Encountering Pilgrims  89 5. Ocean Pilgrimage and Ocean Plastics: Coastal Activism and the Reopening of the Marine Pilgrim Route  113 6. Cathedral and Town: Movable Feasts and Adaptable Spaces  121 7. Reconstructing Rituals: Pilgrimage and Sainthood in Contemporary Norway  159 Epilogue  179 Notes  183 Works Cited  219 Index  229

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Ritual and Democracy (REDO) project gathered a group of scholars that began as strangers but became cherished colleagues and friends in the course of the research project. Funded by the Norwegian Research Council (NFR), it provided the opportunity for us to gather over the course of several years in multiple locations and give important feedback to each other’s work. The project also made it financially possible for me to explore the Norwegian pilgrimage network over several years and seasons. The project became a pilgrimage for me as a scholar and person. Using participant observation has meant encountering unexpected presences, omnipresent helpers, knowledgeable, kind, inspired, frustrated, wise, and passionate people in the pilgrimage network in Norway. My thanks go to Jone Salomonsen at the University of Oslo for inviting me to be part of the REDO project and the academic and personal journey it entailed. Among the many people who have inspired and supported this project, I am particularly thankful to my anthropologist colleagues in the REDO project, Sarah Pike, Michael Houseman, Graham Harvey, and Paul Tremlett, for their advice, support, and robust scholarly exchange. In pilgrimage and ritual studies, I found conversation partners in Kate Barush, Ronald Grimes, John Eade, and Anna Fedele. Vital support was provided by developmental editor Bud Bynack, whose skill is rare and precious. Special thanks to Jake Erickson and Linda Clader who provided crucial editorial feedback, and Janicke Heldal for several read-​throughs. I am grateful to the series editors and peer reviewers for the Oxford Ritual

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Studies Series for their critical engagement and support. Thanks to all who have given feedback, making the finished product far more readable and engaging. No pilgrimage network can function without the many visible and invisible professionals, volunteers, and activists who have put their love, time, and energy into sustaining and supporting this pilgrimage network. Each pilgrimage network is an interweave of interests, passions, thoughts, and beliefs that interpret, always, somehow, these paths and how they guide us back to understand our past, present, and, possibly, future. To all of them I give thanks, each a piece of a symbiotic network that contributes something to its existence and ability to function. In the Norwegian pilgrimage network, I want to thank Bernt Aanondsen, Anne Kristin Aasmundtveit, Øystein Ekroll, Birgitte Lerheim, Hans Morten Løvrod, Roger Jensen, Nanna Natalia Jørgenson, Mattias Jansson, Ingrid Meslo, Kjell Arnold Nyhus, Margunn Pettersen, Cathrine Roncale, Solveig Seines, Tor Singsaas, Rebecca and Vidar Solevåg, Einar Tjelle, Einar Vegge, Guro Berge Vistad, Vigdis Vormdal, Per Ivar Våje, and many others who contributed with insight, information, and wisdom. Last but not least, I want to thank my colleagues at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society in Oslo for conversations, support, inquiry, and a truly welcoming community.

Introduction

A RELUCTANT PILGRIM’S ITINERARY

Born and raised in southwestern Germany, with a Pietist and Lutheran background, I spent a formative year working in youth ministry in the middle of Norway, from 1989 to 1990, trying to figure out what my future path was. I worked as a volunteer intern, a youth worker in Christian youth ministry of the Norwegian YMCA/​YWCA in a village in northern Trøndelag, not far below the Polar Circle. After the gap year in Norway, I returned to Germany to study Protestant theology and English at the University of Tübingen and thereafter moved to the United States to earn my PhD. After completing the doctoral degree, I taught at the Graduate Theological Union from 2001 to 2015. While in the United States, my own Lutheran and Pietist background was challenged as I joined the Episcopal Church and taught at an Episcopal seminary, while ensconced in an ecumenical and interreligious graduate school environment in Berkeley. Whereas the Lutheran and Pietist background of my youth had little room for ritual, pilgrimage, or saints, I became interested in what it might mean to recover liberating and emancipating ideas of ritual, pilgrimage, and saints in a Protestant context and how this could be done with Anglican-​Lutheran generosity while avoiding Anglican romanticisms on the one hand, and Pietist rejections of ritual and sensory liturgical experience on the other. During the early 2000s, there was a growing buzz among people in my US church and academic networks about going on historic Christian Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity. Marion Grau, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197598634.003.0001

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pilgrimages in Europe. The majority of them wanted to walk the Camino de Santiago to Compostela in northern Spain. This pilgrimage route had become very popular among Germans and groups of American clergy, laity, and academics. Pilgrimage had become a mass phenomenon, and I was curious about it. Why, in a time of supposed increasing secularity, are staggering numbers of people setting out on pilgrimage, what is an arguably religious activity? If religious affiliation is waning, what do pilgrimages rather than long-​distance walks offer to those that seek them out? What geographies of spiritual power do pilgrimage network facilitate and generate? My interest in pilgrimage in Norway occurred simultaneously to my own migration back to the continent where I was born. In 2012, I became part of a research project on Ritual and Democracy (REDO), funded by the Norwegian Research Council, and began working on an exploration of the ritual network that pilgrimage practices in Norway produce. During the summer seasons of 2012 through 2018, I was able to do research and engage in participant observation that has allowed for a deeper exploration of the people, practices, landscapes, and rituals engaged in the redeveloping of pilgrimage in an expanding network of routes to Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, where Saint Olav, king of Norway—​in the pilgrim guides often described as the king who united what became Norway through his death in battle. I revisited territory that I had lived in more than twenty years ago, retreading paths of memory and refamiliarizing myself with language and culture. In June 2015, I became a permanent resident of Norway and began work as a professor of theology in Oslo. This book was written at a particular time and place in history, roughly between 2012, in the aftermath of the domestic terror attack of July 22, 2011, committed by the Norwegian white supremacist and domestic terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, and the year 2020 with pilgrimage seasons canceled and restricted due to the pandemic of COVID-​19. The study traces the transformation of pilgrimage networks in Norway in a time of challenged national identity and deep personal wounds in the lives of many Norwegians, followed by controversies around immigration, integration, and religious minorities.

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PILGRIMAGE AND THE AFTERMATH OF RIGHT-​W ING TERROR

In the immediate aftermath of the 2011 terror attacks, many Norwegians gathered spontaneously for public demonstrations that vowed to increase love, openness, and democracy. Norway’s public response to terror became iconic—​silent gatherings, the laying down of roses, invocations of love, courage, and care, of standing closer together against attempts to divide the society. Lifting up love as a response to hate became associated with the events, invoked especially around the anniversary of the attacks. Yet only a few years after the attacks, right-​wing voices on social media became more unafraid and vocal.1 Just after the seventh anniversary of the 2011 attacks, Aftenposten, the largest Norwegian newspaper, reported that some of the survivors have been bullied and threatened by right-​ wing hatemongers since the attacks and mostly suffered in silence.2 Like societies worldwide, Norway is afflicted by increased polarization and loud right-​wing voices. The lasting damage to the survivors, and work of challenging the hate speech and hostility toward Muslims and immigrants in the political landscape, are yet to be engaged adequately.3 According to the fascist ideology of the terrorist, the attack on the summer youth camp of the Norwegian Labor Party (AP) was meant to punish them for the party’s relatively open attitude toward immigration and integration. In fact, the attack fits into a larger pattern of xenophobic right-​wing, authoritarian, misogynist backlash against democratic, pluralistic societies throughout European and US-​ American populist movements. Jens Stoltenberg, then Prime Minister, soon named the real threat: that Norway experienced an attack on the core values of the entire society, and on principles of democracy, human rights, and religiocultural identities, as well as Norwegian assumptions about security, safety, and identity. The terrorist invoked medieval heritage, and crusaders in particular, to justify his attacks. The history of the crusades is inextricably linked to pilgrimages and to the dangerous memories of sacred sites and how they inform and deform collective identities.4 How we ritualize and narrate

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pilgrimages has political and theological consequences. In the aftermath of the attacks, some clergy and public theologians have asked for a thorough discussion of how Christian values embedded in Norwegian society, love of neighbor, care for the weak, and so on were to be expressed in the context of a terror that claimed Christian precedence and that challenged Norwegian practices of integration and pluralism, while threatening the status of ethnic and religious others within the country. Themes from the terrorist attacks were picked up, sometimes directly, other times indirectly in the pilgrimage network, and in particular through the Olavsfest,5 the multiday festival that follows the celebration on the saint’s day. There, themes of faith, interreligious relations, nation, identity, terror, and climate justice appear in sermons, plays, panel discussions, and other festival events. The anniversary of the attacks of July 22 is one week before Olsok, the feast of St. Olav on July 29, both now marking the mid-​summer calendar. Some actors in the pilgrimage network responded directly and indirectly to the attacks by framing democratic visions of community, promoting mutually respectful interreligious and intercultural relations, speaking spiritually and scientifically to experiences of trauma and fear, confronting alienation and xenophobia through the attempt to include refugees in pilgrimage-​related activities, critical approaches to St. Olav, and furthering local, international ecumenical and interreligious dialogue and cooperation. Thus, numerous actors in the network framed pilgrimage as a practice to strengthen encounters across difference, as a form of Christian peacemaking in action. Pilgrimage became an ecosocial way of envisioning connection and tracing a “geography of spiritual power.”6 For the pilgrim “the sacred is not entirely immaterial,” Rebecca Solnit observes. Rather, she “walks a delicate line between the spiritual and the material” in search of a spirituality pursued through the material, of places “where the Buddha was born or where Christ died, where the relics are or the holy water flows.”7 Tracing a “geography of spiritual power” in Norway, by some considered to be one of the most secularized countries in the West, could seem a futile enterprise. Routinely, when I told people I was working on pilgrimage in Norway, they would remark that they had no idea any pilgrimage routes existed in Norway or that one could go on

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pilgrimage in “secular” Scandinavia. People would point to the low church attendance and a skeptical distance to the institution of the church as evidence that Norway is a secular country. How then to explain the resurgence of pilgrimage in Norway in the last decade in particular? What does it say about religious practice, religious belonging, identity and heritage, and, indeed, piety in a seemingly secular, hyper-​Protestant context that is becoming a more religiously and ethnically diverse nation? More than 70 percent of the population of Norway are registered members of Christian churches, mostly the Lutheran, and recently disestablished, Church of Norway (Den norske kirke).8 In her classic text on Greek pilgrims to Tinos in the early 1990s, Jill Dubisch used descriptors that invoke similar dynamics as can be observed in Norwegian society: critical distance to religious authority, sparse church attendance—​even as Dubisch claims religion is omnipresent in Greek life and connected to national identity.9 Similar observations have been made in other ground-​breaking studies on Marian shrines by Orsi and Tweed in the 1990s, indicating that visitors to such places vary widely in terms of their expressed religiosity. Thus, many studies of pilgrimage touch on the wide variety of motivations, concerns, and beliefs of those who travel to a pilgrimage site. The resurgence of pilgrimage in Norway occurs at a time of tremendous transformation—​migration, climate, religion, and culture. Shifts in political landscapes occur in response to these crises, including in the responses of religious bodies and spiritual practice. Charles Taylor has suggested that we are seeing shifts in religious practices from more formalized to more informal and from standardized to selective, rather than an outright decline of religious consciousness.10 Pilgrimage can be seen as one way in which people with a variety of commitments articulate those informal beliefs, defying the binary between spirituality and religion, between sacred and secular.11As Nancy Ammerman has shown, dualistic secularist accounts of religion versus spirituality are generally unhelpful in accounting for people’s lived beliefs and practices. Ammerman herself suggests a more fine-​grained taxonomy that fits particularly well for the kinds of motivations and ideas pilgrims

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articulate.12 Skepticism toward traditional religious institutions does not prevent people from participating in spiritual practices, liturgies, prayers, and other meaning-​making rituals. Pilgrims in Norway often report a similar internal distance from religious institutions and display lower church attendance. Even so, they may have significant similarities with the pilgrims described in the classical studies by Frey and Dubisch, despite the obvious differences in religious history and context. Resisting the binaries of religion and spirituality and sacred and secular also challenges binary views of pilgrimage versus tourism.13 People’s lived and expressed realities show a more complicated picture, where motivations and interests are mixed.14 That is, going on pilgrimage is not a precise indicator of religiosity, spirituality, or adherence to ecclesial authority. And yet, as Frey proposes, pilgrimage practices can release a latent spirituality in even reluctant pilgrims by removing some of the obstacles to accessing forms of spiritual practice and ritualization that obtain in a more institutional setting.15 Many studies of Western Christian pilgrimages focus on sites in predominantly Catholic or Orthodox settings, or at least with roots in that history. In contrast, while the pilgrimage network in Norway arose during the religious networks of the Middle Ages, it is today, like the Camino, an ecumenical pilgrimage, hosting a great many approaches to the practice of pilgrimage.16 Like the Camino, the Norwegian pilgrimage network differs from modern Catholic Marian appearance-​centered shrines such as Lourdes, Fatima, Knock, and Medjugorje, and offers (a developing) infrastructure that supports long-​distance walking pilgrimage.17 Despite some similarities between pilgrimage sites across cultures and religions, it makes sense, as argued by Eade and Sallnow, to analyze each pilgrimage in its particular historical, social, and even environmental context.18 The term “pilgrimage network” signals that the relations that compose pilgrimage are expansive and include nonhuman actors such as landscapes, seascapes, places, and ecological systems. A pilgrimage network thus goes beyond mere routes or sites. The term also holds space for the complexity of a developing route system, which extends beyond the routes known directly as St. Olav Ways. The Norwegian network of pilgrimage routes is

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named after the patron saint of Norway, St. Olav (995–​1030), who is associated with gathering Norway into a Christian nation under one king. While much of my research does focus on the redevelopment of the St. Olav Ways from the mid-​twentieth century onward, there are other pilgrimage routes and sites that exist in Norway, and yet others are in the process of being redeveloped or revived. The resulting reconstructed sacred geography picks up on vestiges of medieval pilgrimage and redevelops it for contemporary Norwegian and foreign pilgrims. A sacred geography is constructed as actors in a pilgrimage network create a map of landscapes, historic sites, practices, artifacts, traditions, churches, paths, and other spaces that are considered to have spiritual or religious significance. The present study aspires to demonstrate how ritualizations produced in this pilgrimage network help instantiate critical, Protestant hagiographies, political theologies of pilgrimage, and foster ecumenical and interreligious relations.

PILGRIMAGE IN POSTWAR EUROPE

The pilgrimage routes of Northern Europe, and in particular in Norway, are among the lesser known in Europe. Norway is a majority-​Protestant country where pilgrimage was actively discouraged after the Reformation. While pilgrimage declined in much of Europe after the Reformation, pilgrimage began to rebound from the mid-​twentieth century onward. Pilgrimage on the Camino Santiago was revived in the postwar era, and it has been well studied, perhaps overstudied, as have other, more well-​known pilgrimage sites around the world. Numerous studies of pilgrimage to shrines dedicated to the Virgin Mary around the world explore how devotees reshape religion, place, and identity under the pressures of modernity.19 Fewer studies exist on Protestant pilgrimages, particularly outside of Anglican settings.20 There are historical reasons for this paucity, but even so, Protestant sites are being rediscovered for pilgrimage. After the near disappearance of pilgrimage in Protestant-​majority lands, including

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Scandinavia during and after the Reformation, when pilgrimages were forbidden or strongly discouraged,21 a slow trickle of Swedish pilgrims began to appear, as if out of nowhere, at Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim in the 1950s. Over the following decades and especially from the 1990s onward, structures for welcoming and accommodating pilgrims began to develop. On a purely instrumental level, one of the various aspects contributing to the redevelopment of medieval pilgrimage routes in Europe was the European Council’s 2010 designation of several historic pilgrimage routes among around thirty “cultural routes.”22 The St. Olav Ways in Norway is one of these route-​systems, benefiting from a joint effort to develop the infrastructure needed to support a long-​ distance pilgrimage. This includes a variety of actors, most notably among them grassroots pilgrim associations, the Church of Norway, and the Norwegian government. Marion Bowman and Tina Sepp argue that the pilgrimage to Santiago became a prototype for contemporary pilgrimages and flowered into a phenomenon they call “caminoisation.” Thus pilgrimage to Santiago has become a “metamovement” that helped create expectations for other pilgrimage networks in Europe. This includes replicating infrastructure, marketing passports, providing certification, and branding, so pilgrims can feel that they are walking in the footsteps of earlier pilgrims. Bowman and Sepp argue that St. Olav Ways represents a prime example of this development.23 While there are aspects where such similarities obtain, there are also significant differences between these pilgrimage systems. Some of these will be elaborated in the course of this study.

RECONSTRUCTING PILGRIMAGE IN NORWAY

The present study focuses on the reconstruction of Norwegian pilgrimage after the mid-​twentieth century and, in particular, the years 2012 to 2020. To date, only a few studies exist of the reemergence of pilgrimage in Norway, and even fewer are available in English. The present book is a study of ritualizations of place, text, narrative, and practice throughout

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Main pilgrimage routes in and to Norway as of 2019. Image by National Pilgrimage Center.

the Norwegian pilgrimage network, with a focus on its dynamic elements and the development of ritual practices within it. One purpose is to show how actors in this network construct narratives and rituals around sacred geographies and meaningful encounters, while reappropriating history, religion, theology, and spirituality to meet personal and societal challenges. The study seeks to offer a greater understanding of the role of contemporary reconstructions of medieval pilgrimages as a way of negotiating religious and cultural identities. In addition, the Norwegian pilgrimage network features contemporary ritual reconstructions of sainthood, nationhood, and sacred geography that seek to offer access to forms of ecumenical faith, liberating traditions,

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and ritual practices.24 While not all pilgrims or participants in the network are open to such frames and practices, these function nevertheless in how the pilgrimage network is presented, advertised, and promoted through the network’s participants. In a secularizing and increasingly multireligious context, actors in the network seek to present an open and productive, yet clearly reconstructive relationship to Norway’s Christian history and traditions. This becomes particularly visible in the framing of St. Olav, St. Sunniva, and St. Hallvard, the patron saints of Norway. In particular, hagiographic accounts and traditions connect episodes in the life of the saint to the biblical prophetic heritage and its visions of justice and just royal rule. Contemporary reconstructions refract medieval traditions that framed St. Olav as an ideal convert, moving from Viking blood thirst to Christian charity, serving perhaps as a mirror for the corporate journey of the population. Various actors in the network have critically reconstructed and ritualized local saints to reimagine a new intercultural and even interreligious Norway for which they can be claimed as ancestors. This first phase of redeveloping the network of routes put almost exclusive focus on the route through Gudbrandsdalen, land routes associated with St. Olav, linking these traditions with the cultural inheritance (kulturarv) and history of Norway. Meanwhile, pilgrim voices from other regions of the country reminded national administrators that the pilgrimage geography of Norway was more varied than merely this one route. Some argued that ocean routes along the western and northern coasts of this long-​stretched land should be included on maps and integrated in information resources. Others argued that pilgrimages did not only happen from the south up to Trondheim, but that the entire country of Norway needed to be brought onto the map, including routes from northern Norway, a region notoriously missing from maps of pilgrimage in Norway. How Sámi regions in middle and northern Norway could or should be included in this geography of pilgrimage is a discussion barely begun. Institutional support and local volunteer activism contributed heavily to expand the map of pilgrimage routes in and to Norway. Pilgrim groups

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in Norway and beyond have proposed, retraced, and rebuilt old and new routes: along the southern coast to Utstein, Selja, and Trondheim, via Stiklestad to Trondheim from Sweden, by ocean from the North, through the Western fjords via Valldalen, from Finland via Gotland and Sweden to Nidaros.

GEOPOLITICAL ASPECTS OF PILGRIMAGE

To get a better overview of the resurgence of pilgrimage in Norway, it is useful to situate the phenomenon in its historical and contemporary context. On the heels of a slow but steady revival of pilgrimage in Europe that reaches increasingly also into predominantly Protestant territories where pilgrimage has been frowned upon or virtually extinct for centuries, the practice of pilgrimage has made a comeback that, at least in Western Europe, occurs in the context of efforts to create a common European identity in the geopolitical space of postwar Europe—​a “transnational European identity, the precondition for lasting peace,” which the founders of the European Union (EU) knew would need constant work.25 Norway, though never a member of the EU, has strong ties to its structures and member nations. As a member of the Schengen agreement, Norway participates in many EU programs and adheres to many EU guidelines. As a founding member of the United Nations and deeply invested in the heritage of human rights, the World Council of Churches and other post–​ World War II institutions founded to provide for international connections that would work toward cooperation and a lasting peace, Norway has been committed to many international agreements and policies, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Pilgrimage, as it turns out, plays an important part in the ongoing “process of refiguring Europe.”26 “By moving as pilgrims across the European landscape and performing various rituals together,” Willy Jansen writes, “pilgrims enact basic spatial and moral connectedness and actively contribute to ‘the development of transnational networks’ and ‘cosmopolitan sociability,’ ”27and to personal and group identity construction, all the

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while helping to inform and transform ideas of religious, national, and European identity. Pilgrimage networks provide narratives and rituals through which “notions of gender and sexuality are expressed, discussed, and reconfirmed and contested.”28 This occurs both implicitly, by affirming or contesting notions of gender, as well as explicitly, by denying or granting access to people of different genders and sexualities to church spaces, pilgrimages, and other sites.29 Modern Maryan pilgrimages have been shown to have a tendency to affirm ethnocentric conservativisms that affirm patriarchal values, for which the veneration of the Virgin Mary has often been used.30 Others, like Saint James, have been more ecumenically and openly framed and inhabited. Pilgrimage is a particular mode of moving across territory, encountering and narrating place. Like much of human life, pilgrimage occurs in a dense dynamic where sedentary and itinerant practices alternate. The heightened popularity of pilgrimage in Europe31 and beyond coincides with an increase in the mobility of labor, capital and migration. This mobility is aided by the copious use of fossil fuel that contributes to accelerating climate change.32 A changing European sociopolitical landscape brought postwar nations closer together, yet their relations are challenged by economic inequalities, different forms of historical and political consciousness, disparate degrees of willingness to transition from “petroculture”33 to more sustainable economic systems, conflicts around refugees, migration, and changing demographics—​all dynamics that challenge to national, religious, and cultural identities.

PILGRIMAGE AND NATION-​B UILDING

At the northern periphery of Europe, and long in an ambivalent relationship to the EU, the Norwegian nation-​state is a relatively recent development. The region was under either Swedish or Danish rule since the death of St. Olav in 1030 until 1814, when Norway became a sovereign nation in the form of an independent, constitutional monarchy. The discovery of significant oil and gas resources in the North Sea in 1971 and

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the development of Norway into a major supplier of oil, gas and extraction technology in the region prompted soul searching in response to both the wealth that came with the oil and the migrant-​worker labor force that accompanied it. Norway was catapulted from a relatively poor nation dependent on fishing, agriculture, and trade into significant oil wealth. What it means to be “Norwegian” and therefore how persons whose ancestors migrated to Norway within the last fifty years can or cannot become integrated in Norwegian society has become a widely discussed subject in public discourse, especially since the terrorist attack of 2011. National, ethnic, and religious components to identity are being renegotiated since the postwar period and the emergence of the EU common markets and Schengen, which Norway is part of.

REFLECTIONS ON METHOD AND THEORY

People who visit pilgrimage sites, whether profound believers or agnostic tourists, eco-​wanderers or concerned religious conservatives, all contribute to the collective memory of a place and thus participate in the construction of particular identities within this European context.34 Given the troubling increase of xenophobic and right-​wing voices over the time of the study—​globally as well as in Norway—​attacking democratic values and structures, how do ritual practices contribute to the strengthening or weakening of democratic values? This question was at the core of the REDO research project. It is in the context of these tensions in Norwegians’ conceptions of religious and national identity that this book considers how participants in the network of the pilgrimage system of the St. Olav Ways construct personal and communal identities through rituals and narratives they assemble during their participation in the network as pilgrims, hosts, or tourists. This study seeks to highlight how network participants engage body, ritual, text, and history, especially religious and political history, and interpret their agency

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in terms of body, religion, culture, ethnicity, travel, and climate, often intertwining these narratives. Pilgrimage networks have a particular way of making these practices and discourses visible, allowing for types of performance that explore and express the values and narratives that inform participants’ practices. Eade and Sallnow have suggested studying each specific pilgrimage site by attending to person, place, and text.35 This approach is useful in the study of pilgrimage in Norway, where the particular expression includes the confluence of local saints, places, and routes that became associated with these saints, historical practices, and contemporary engagements, which reflect on saints, region, nation, community, and pilgrimage theologically. It should be noted that pilgrimage in Norway operates on a far smaller scale than pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela which looms large in public imagination when it comes to Christian pilgrimage in Europe. Annual registered long-​distance pilgrims number somewhere between 600 and 1,300 per season. During the period of research, the number of pilgrims across the Norwegian pilgrimage network has been modestly but consistently increasing and currently features nine official routes. This means, however, that practices of pilgrimage in Norway are not always economically sustainable. Even though government grants help with the maintenance of routes and centers, much of the work is done by volunteers, often by those who themselves have been pilgrims. Most of the hosts take in pilgrims on a part-​time basis, as the season is short and it is difficult to make a living by hosting pilgrims in this context. Another challenge is ecological sustainability as ecosystems are under increasing pressure due to environmental degradation and climate change. The Norwegian landscape of the Dovre Mountains, in particular, is a fragile high-​mountain ecosystem and could not sustain the volume of pilgrims that undertake the Camino Santiago route. Were pilgrimage in Norway to become a mass phenomenon, it would no longer be environmentally sustainable, as mass pilgrimage tends to damage environmental integrity.36 As the route network is developed further, these and other challenges must be negotiated.

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CIRCUMAMBULATING PILGRIMAGE: SACRED GEOGRAPHY, IDENTITY, AND SAINTHOOD

The research method employed in this text can be characterized as a practice of circumambulation. As an experiential act, circumambulation refers to a circular movement over time, often around a sacred site. The practice of circumambulating features repeated passage through a landscape or place at various intervals of time.37 Having the opportunity over the course of eight years to immerse myself in the various aspects of pilgrimage in Norway, I observed this pilgrimage network by shifting perspectives across time and space within the network. As a participant observer, I “circumambulated” the sites as a worshiper, as a researcher, as a pilgrim on foot and on boat, and as a volunteer, tourist, and spectator. In his study of Indian pilgrimage in the Golden Triangle, John Lochtefeld observes that while every “pilgrimage has an identity shaped by two important groups of people—​residents and visitors,” many studies of pilgrimage tend to focus on either the one or the other, but mostly on the visitors.38 I have attempted to consider “both pilgrims’ and providers’ perspectives” where possible and accessible.39 But beyond the human bodies are also the nonhuman bodies, artifacts, and landscapes through which pilgrims travel and in which people dwell. I have sought to include these in my framing of what a pilgrimage network might be and my accounts of pilgrimage as an experience. This circumambulatory method helped reveal the interdependence of the various layers of the research and the findings. It allowed constructing an account of the network that, in Dubisch’s terms, strives to be “polyphonic.”40 In a polyphonic account, the researcher is only one voice. Dubisch, for example, includes her landlady, various pilgrims, friends, and strangers as vital voices. As an academic “pilgrim,” I felt the need to avoid engaging in an academic version of tourism, or a conspicuous consumption of pilgrimage: consuming history, culture, and museums, along with the enjoyment of local foods while judging and assessing them. Being an ethically responsible and responsive researcher in this context meant to maintain a certain professional distance while forming friendly connections with

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people and places.41 I engaged, asked questions, and listened to accounts and opinions but resisted letting any single perspective dominate. Rather, I sought pieces in a mosaic that would allow for assembling a multifaceted array. I focused on participant observation during various organized events and activities to catch the small moments and interactions that occur when a researcher follows along with the flow of encounters that occur in the pilgrimage network. Participants mentioned by name are appearing by permission or by nature of their public positions within the pilgrimage network. This study is thus based on a mixed methodology that employs historical and textual research, ritual theory, anthropological theory, theology, and historical accounts of pilgrimage combined with circumambulatory fieldwork: walking, engaging in conversations, volunteering, forming relationships, attending events, and documenting in word and image. Thus circumambulations are a way of traversing both research territory as well as geographical territory, open to unexpected encounters. The resulting narrative blends fields and genres. Some passages recount vignettes from participant observation or personal experience. Others draw in historical, theoretical, or theological material, helping to contextualize the present case study. The material gathered is heterogeneous and relies upon the interdependence of the various techniques and sources, on prioritizing relatively informal and unstructured interaction and engagement from different angles over several years and summer seasons.42

PILGRIMAGE AS RITUAL

How does the discipline of ritual studies help analyze this polyphonic material? A key term—​and central practice—​linking pilgrimage networks as a system and pilgrimage as an experiential phenomenon is “ritual.” I have wrestled with the question whether pilgrimage is a ritual itself, or whether a pilgrimage network comprises a combination of various ritual practices. I have come to see pilgrimage as a network of relations that interact and intersect with ritualizations more broadly defined. As

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such, a pilgrimage network features both ritualizing acts such as mapping, narrating, signposting, and constructing routes, as well as discrete rituals such as walking and movement-​related rituals, liturgies, prayers, festivals, concerts, informal communal acts, and personal acts. Pilgrimage thus can be seen as a ritual complex with layers of rituals that intersect.43 It is difficult to apply the term “ritual” to any one of the elements by itself, though some actions involve more formal elements, such as a liturgy, a prayer, or a reflection, as well as persons and groups moving through a landscape. The ritual complex can contain multiple rituals, as, for example, a festival.44 In the case of pilgrimage, one could well say that the place (landscape, path, etc.) “drives” the ritual complex; that is, it is the focal point, physical and psychosociological, of the combined ritual actions. Thus, “a ritual is contained by a cosmos and located in one or more geography and ambient ecology,” embedded in “a system surrounded by and suffused with its ambient societies and constituent cultures.”45 Studying pilgrimage as ritual thus also includes the larger-​than-​human world in which geography and ecological relations produce and affect past and present manifestations of pilgrimage and the way in which pilgrimage in Norway facilitates social change. The pilgrimage network in Norway features ritualizations, some improvised and of the moment, others using more established forms as ways to fulfill these needs and desires.46 Pilgrims and hosts employ a blend of religious motifs from the history and contemporary practice of pilgrimage, local traditions, scientific and historical knowledge, and personal and communal biography to compose their own version of the pilgrimage.47Rituals operate in environments that are simultaneously biological, geographical, social, political, historical, and cultural,48 and they are used to manage the more problematic attributes of contemporary life. Pilgrimage as a network of relations and practices and as an experience involves complex negotiations with complex commitments and multiple priorities. Roland DeLattre proposed that ritual is the very “office of negotiation itself.”49 People employ rituals to negotiate—​and thus interpret and reconstruct—​“competing claims and attractions of various kinds,”50 claims on how to live, and differing, competing narratives of life and health.

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Tom Driver describes ritual as a form of “technology,” a method “for accomplishing something in the real world,” transforming relationships and narratives.51 Ritual thus actively interprets reality, celebrating and affirming, as well as critiquing, reinterpreting, and shifting things.52 Ritual agents reinterpret the self and other in the relationships in which they stand. In that way, ritual approaches political action as pilgrimage rituals interact with democratic principles and query critically the use and abuse of power, authoritarianism, racism, gender justice, and minority rights. A pilgrimage network represents a “ritual geography”53 that negotiates reality-​defining agencies via encounters with landscape, seasons, and climate, as well as religiocultural memory, and a variety of bodies and their assemblies. Thus, any particular ritual “is contained by a cosmos and located in one or more geography and ambient ecology.” It is also “a system surrounded by and suffused with its ambient societies and constituent cultures.”54 Because there are competing claims and attractions involved in every negotiation, any successful negotiation must incorporate and carry forward what occasioned it, the problems of life and identity that have defined the occasion. As a negotiation between such claims and attractions—​ competing reality-​ defining agencies—​ ritual is inherently ambivalent, preserving for the future what it lifts up from past memories. It does not so much resolve problems as make possible the shaping of countervailing personal and communal practices.

TRAVEL, CONQUEST, AND TRADE ALONG THE NORWEGIAN COAST

Coastal Scandinavians have been travelers, raiders, traders, and migrants for many centuries. The very name of the country refers to the way toward North, a coastal sailing route along what is today the Norwegian coast. With a superior ship technology,55 Vikings traveled far and wide, and came into contact with Christian and Muslim communities on the continent and around the Mediterranean. Vikings traveled far afield, to plunder, and later, after Norway had adopted a Christian law and church

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structure, their descendants were among the crusaders and pilgrims to the Holy Land and the significant site in medieval Christianity, Jerusalem. The wealth and power hoarded during Viking times did not, however provide for permanent wealth, as the majority of the population lived in poverty or modest wealth until the mid-​twentieth century. During the mid-​nineteenth century, many poor Norwegians migrated to the United States, with an especially large percentage of the population leaving due primarily to economic reasons. Long before oil wealth came to Norway, Norwegians and their ancestors traveled, conquered, traded, lived abroad, and migrated. At the same time, Norway remained relatively homogenous until the late 1960s and early 1970s. With the increasing wealth and need for skilled labor in the oil industry and increasing migration, the composition of the population has been changing so that a growing number of Oslo’s population are immigrants, most of them from EU countries and others from the global South. As the end of the oljeeventyret, Norway’s ‘oil and gas fairy tale’ of fossil-​ fueled economic rise, looms and climate change begins to “change everything,”56 the present text discusses a case study of a swiftly changing pilgrimage network in a nation confronting energy transitions, changing demographics, and shifting church–​state relations. Physically, pilgrimage occurs at the intersection of roads that are densely regional and local, but always leading further, beyond, to another, sacred place. In the case of Norway, the reemerging pilgrimage network’s primary destination is Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. This is the putative burial site of Olav Haraldsson (995–​1030), who soon after his death in the Battle of Stiklestad became known as St. Olav. Haraldsson was a key figure in the transformation of Norway into a united kingdom under a Christian law and ecclesiopolitical order, but he began his life as an itinerant Viking in the fast-​moving and tactically deployed Viking ships making intrusions into the British Isles. For most of his life, he was on the move—​a traveling king. That itinerancy is reflected in the spread of his churches and chapels erected or dedicated to his memory across rather great geographical distance, often related to the spread of Viking enclaves in foreign territories. The first known depiction of St. Olav, dating from around 1160, can be

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found in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem,57 likely due to the influence of pilgrims or settlers from the high North. This pilgrimage network initially arose shortly after the saint’s death in 1030 and continued throughout the Middle Ages until the Reformation around 1537. Pilgrimage practices to Selja, Bergen, Røldal, Valdres, and Nidaros went dormant during and after the Reformation in a country that instituted a Lutheran state church that frowned upon the veneration of saints. The annual liturgical rituals surrounding St. Olav occur around Olsok, the saint’s feast day, on July 29 and—​in its present incarnation—​ occurring just before the Olavsfestdagene, a two-​week arts, religion, and music festival. Today, however, as pilgrims walk from church to church, they also pass by sites of migration, instances of economic globalization taking over pastoral landscape and along a route that facilitates that other cognate of pilgrimage: business and tourist travel.58 Norway is a major “destination society”59 for tourists, a “tourism contact zone,”60 marketed as a place of pure nature and exotic Viking history, with cruise ships thick and heavy in harbors from May through October.61 Tourism traffic, economic growth, and the pilgrimage system intersect and mutually inform each other,62 all affected by motorized travel, logistics and engineering, and the management of the cultural landscape. And it is through these areas of light industry and suburbs of Oslo with a higher percentage of recent immigrants that the eastern pilgrimage route out of Oslo goes for the first day. The pilgrim progresses relatively slowly through these areas, past Christian graveyards surrounding the churches that are way stations on the pilgrimage but also the occasional Muslim graveyard. One moves through these networks of migrant connections, past the main port of entry, Gardermoen airport. Tracing the eastern branch of the pilgrim route from Oslo passing Gardermoen, the pilgrim walks largely along the same path the flytoget takes, the airport rapid transit, disgorging travelers into Oslo and ferrying Norwegians toward sunny or cheap shopping territories to the south and west. Thus, the eastern route of the pilgrimage toward Nidaros Cathedral (the site of St. Olav’s burial in Trondheim), more historic than the Western “scenic”

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route through ritzier neighborhoods and more picturesque sights, traces well-​trod routes of access, migration, and trade.

MOTIVATIONS TO MOVE

Pilgrims often name a complex set of motivations for setting out on pilgrimage. At least for some, a ritual revolt against the rituals of consumption and the strictures of capitalist entrapments. Others search for a break from the complexity of contemporary life and its relational strictures, or manifest a desire to reconnect with nature from an urban environment, and a first-​hand encounter with history, region, and religious culture.63 Like Nancy Frey’s pilgrims to the Roman Catholic site of Santiago de Compostela, some pilgrims in Norway articulate a desire and nostalgia for nonmotorized travel and insist that a legitimate pilgrimage must involve a certain amount of movement on foot or bicycle.64 Another way to put it is that a certain amount of effort and discomfort should be involved. This is the case even in Norwegian pilgrimage, where most long-​distance pilgrims will resist even a hint of pilgrimage undertaken as a form of atonement for sins. The Protestant rejection of pilgrimage as atonement, payment, or placating God for human action is rejected strongly by most pilgrims, including those arriving from Catholic contexts. Unlike Maryan pilgrims or the Indian pilgrims studied by Andreas Nordin, pilgrims on the St. Olav Ways do not, by and large, seek miraculous healing, atonement for sins, or spiritual merit from the practice.65 Instead, pilgrimage here involves a fairly strong physical component that involves disruption of the rituals of “ordinary time” and limits the range of sensations, thereby reducing stress and demands on the self, offering not exactly hardship, perhaps, but an ascetic practice that can produce insights, encounters, and spiritual experiences that are new or deeper for those who seek to deepen experience and deepen life or to live life to the fullest. I did not come across any outright articulation of the need for exorcism or painful release, nor have I come across pilgrims approaching Nidaros

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Cathedral on their knees or in a penitentiary mode as might be seen at Marian shrines. This is also actively discouraged by the theology of the Church of Norway as expressed through ritual means in the context of liturgies, in sermons, in prayers, and through framing sacred space and regulating access and movement to the cathedral sanctuary.66 By contrast, both local and foreign pilgrims often report that they experience the beauty and serenity of Norwegian land-​and seascapes as facilitating encounters with the Divine. Pilgrims often articulate a rejection of standardized tourist travel; instead, they prefer to work—​ or rather walk—​ through difficult life 67 experiences by this mode of movement. The therapeutic road (via therapeia) of the pilgrimage route engages complexes of nature-​culture where pilgrim-​tourists look for the healing of wounds of the past, seeking new layers of meaning, new identities, new narratives, and transitions to other phases of life. Frey describes this type of pilgrimage as addressing the pains of the suffering soul, rather than the suffering body.68 Many pilgrims in Norway, as elsewhere, employ rituals as personal resource and communal practice. Pilgrims to Nidaros show little knowledge about St. Olav; some mentioned to me that they expressly did not see their pilgrimage as honoring the saint in any way. Rather, pilgrims express skepticism about his biography as a violent raider and slaver. But as with the problematic history of the Camino, this does not seem to inhibit the pilgrims’ desire to be pilgrims on the St. Olav Ways. Others, when asked, perceive him as a person who sought to unify his people. For some, the claim that they are not going for religious reasons may be a way to express distance from the ambivalent or violent heritage of a saint or a pilgrimage route, or from penitentiary pilgrimages. Some pilgrims report struggles with work or relationships, or needing to focus on finding a new frame for their life story and seeking relief or a step forward toward some degree of resolution. They may be working through a divorce, coming to terms with mortality, or actively engaged in the dying process. They may struggle with a work life that is not satisfying, seek relief from stress, seek deep experiences they can feed on, or try to figure out who they are after their work lives are over. In this context,

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“emotions and sensory pageantry” may make rituals memorable and facilitate negotiation of liminal life phases.69

QUESTIONS ANIMATING THIS STUDY

The key foci of this study consist in looking at (1) practices and ritualizations of pilgrimage in a context of contested personal and national identity in an increasingly transnational and multicultural nation, (2) the pilgrimage network as understood through a variety of analytical methods and circumambulations, (3) the geographies of land and culture as reflected in ritual practices past and present, and (4) the framing and reconstruction of history, pilgrimage, sainthood, and engaged contemporary faith through pilgrimage and festival. Guiding questions have included the effect of physical movement through land-​and seascapes, how ritual negotiation of personal and communal identity occurs, and how it serves to renegotiate people’s relationship to the sacred and ideas of the divine. How is the figure of St. Olav understood and reimagined for the purposes of pilgrimage, and what does this set of practice contribute to the public discussion of Norwegian values and Christian aspects of Norwegian history and identity? How is pilgrimage employed to negotiate relationships to past, present, and future? How does ritual symbolism engage the ambivalent interactions and negotiations of narratives in this particular pilgrimage network? What sites, routes, movements, narratives, liturgical acts, and festival practices are involved in telling these narratives?

TRACING ITINERARIES: THE PLAN OF THE BOOK

Drawing on ritual, historical, ethnographic, and theological studies, this book concludes by sketching aspects of a political theology of pilgrimage. It considers the use of constructive hagiography in supporting social democratic values, a critique of power and of the abuse of religion by powerful

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actors, while lifting up possibilities of cross-​religious companionship. This political theology of pilgrimage articulates the ideals of shared wealth and power, of a just society that is built on equal rights for all genders, religions, and ethnicities, climate justice, and mutual respect for all inhabitants of Norway, including recent immigrants and refugees. The Introduction contextualizes time, place, and setting in which the study takes place. Chapter 1 discusses the concepts of sacred geography and sacred space and how they may be applied to better understand the landscapes pilgrimage networks generate. Chapter 2 traces the historical background of the Christianization of Norway and the stories of St. Sunniva and Olav Haraldsson, giving contour necessary to appreciate fully the contemporary redevelopment of pilgrimage in Norway. It begins with a brief overview of Christian pilgrimage practices and theological controversies around it in antiquity and their echoes during the Reformation as well as today. It gives particular attention to the role of saints in the Christianization and political and legal unification of Norway, and it shows how pilgrimage helped bring about transformation by constructing a Christian sacred geography. It traces the development of sacred geography in Norway and the patron saints of Norway and practices around their cult, including the history of pilgrimage. Chapter 3 describes the pilgrimage network in Norway -​its geography, sites, and participants -​and discusses the fluid boundaries between pilgrim and tourist and why some insist pilgrimage represents a particular mode of moving through territory. Chapter 4 considers motivations for and effects of pilgrimage on the bodies of pilgrims. Chapter 5 focuses on an alternative form of pilgrimage in the Norwegian network, waterborne pilgrimage, and how ocean pilgrimages on historic boats may be connected to ocean plastics as the inspiration for a new multireligious pilgrimage site, the Cathedral of Hope in Fredrikstad. Chapter 6 focuses on rituals in and around Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. Rituals are a conduit for the affective landscape and the relations of pilgrims, their hosts, and the landscapes and histories they engage. The chapter describes how particular liturgies offered to pilgrims and festival-​goers are both highly traditional and at times radically open to transformation and experimentation,

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with varying degrees of success. Hymnody, music, and concerts likewise engage the core content of the pilgrimage, from the historic heritage of the figure of Olav, the colonial histories of crusade and pilgrimage, the environmental destruction of land and sea, and transcultural communication. Walking tours of Trondheim, cathedral tours, public panels, and lectures offer pilgrims and tourists another way to engage history and heritage and reexamine it in the wake of colonial legacies and the specter of nationalist right-​wing moods. Chapter 7 examines approaches to theologies of pilgrimage and brings them into dialogue with political theologies of sainthood. The chapter discusses how pilgrims, hosts, religious actors, and churches produce rituals, theologies, and practices that develop political theologies of pilgrimage and sainthood in a context of postsecular spirituality and climate catastrophe.

1

Reconstructing Sacred Geographies Narrating Routes and Landscapes

NARRATING SACRED GEOGRAPHIES

In Genesis 28:16–​17, Jacob encounters God at Bethel—​the house of God—​ and proclaims God’s presence: “Surely the Lord is in this place—​and I did not know it!” Jacob exclaims, “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven.” The declaration that “This is God’s house and I did not know it” is a key moment in Jewish and Christian traditions on sacred place, namely human recognition and narrative of a sacred presence. Many synagogues have these words inscribed over the entrance: “Ma nora ha-​makom ha-​zeh” (How awesome is this place), a tradition that many churches have adopted. Church buildings may feature signs over the main entrance lettered “Haec est porta Caeli” (This is the gate to Heaven) identifying the parish church as an entry into a sacred place and marking it as a site of pilgrimage.1 A number of Norwegian and Icelandic churches also feature such inscriptions above the entrance portal, perhaps marking the parish church as a site for pilgrimage, as did Martin Luther.2 The category of land is central to the imagery of the Hebrew Bible, connecting identity and peoplehood to place. Land is equally central to the lifeworld of indigenous peoples.3 Land is remembered through narrative, Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity. Marion Grau, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197598634.003.0002

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and in oral cultures, routes through the land are narrated using landscape features. In The Sense of Place, Seamus Heaney suggests that landscape “is a manuscript we have lost the skill to read,” since we regard, as many tourists do, the landscape merely with an “aesthetic eye, comforting ourselves with the picturesqueness of it all or rejoicing in the fact that it is still unspoiled.”4 Thus, he argues, landscape stirs many only as a “visual pleasure unless that culture means something to us, unless the features of that landscape are a mode of communion with a something other than themselves, a something to which we ourselves still feel we might belong.”5 Once, “our sensing of place” was “once more or less sacred. The landscape was sacramental, instinct with signs, implying a system of reality beyond the visible realities.”6 There was a time when “much of the flora of the place had a religious force, especially if we think of the root of the word in religare, to bind fast.”7 Urban living has estranged many from these sensations and affective relationships, while embattled indigenous people fight to retain a deeper sense of place as shaping identity and memory. “Places,” as Northwestern Canadian anthropologist Allice Legat puts it, are not simply spaces where people feel good when they visit them. Rather, relations with places are initiated as soon as children first hear the narratives. [ . . . ] Through visiting, walking and performing tasks at a locale individuals both take something of the place with them and leave a bit of themselves. In so doing, individuals add their narrative to that of others while refining the deepest levels of their perception.8 This description of how the Tlicho Dene, an indigenous people of the Northern Americas, learn and experience places through narratives carries some similarities with the experience of long-​distance walking pilgrimage. Walking becomes a central mode of mapping and narrating landscape, essentially, of knowing it. Moving through a landscape thus facilitates affective relations to history, place, and people. Because many of the pilgrims are cultural or secular Christians, they can be starved for

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a sense of the sacred, of ritual, for the making significant of the ordinary that can be facilitated by a blessing, a prayer, a song, or a worship service. Some of the local pilgrims may relearn places and their histories by encountering them through different modes of walking through them, while those new to the landscape may begin to form or deepen an affective relation to the landscape and people. Connecting to places through moving within them and narrating them further involves caring for those places. Pilgrimages route through ecosystems and political landscapes, shifting over time and place in response to geopolitical and religious transformations. Pilgrimage practices mark sacred space as a movable network that is densely connected to mundane, embodied practices and stories.

WHAT IS A PILGRIMAGE NETWORK?

The term pilgrimage network describes intersecting, ritualized practices and places actors use to frame meaning, establish ritualizations, and construct a sacred geography. This involves narratives and transformed/​ transforming memories to articulate meaning. As part of a process of religious meaning-​making, it can be understood in Thomas Tweed’s terms as “confluences of organic-​cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and suprahuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries.”9 The dwelling and crossing characteristic of pilgrimage networks produce a “translocal culture,”10 a convergence of the flows of local and distant places that aid in confronting personal and communal suffering and help produce narratives of place and identity. The rituals and practices involved in this network also inscribe an “ethnoscape” by way of a “sacroscape”—​using Appadurai’s terms,11 meaning a pilgrimage network—​ its rituals and narratives—​generate sacred spaces that inflect religious, ethnic, and national identities. As we will see, actors in the pilgrimage network in Norway often weave ethnocultural and religious aspects together

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in ways that mutually reinforce each other, while reconstructing them in ways that meet societal challenges. In a pilgrimage network, space is “imaginatively figured” and “sensually encountered” and on a continuum between undifferentiated and differentiated.12 Edith Turner conceptualized pilgrimage as a “kinetic ritual,”13 as movement is crucial to the practices and narratives surrounding it. Such movement is embedded in narratives of past and present in a dynamic process in which ritual movements and actions where pilgrims and hosts “make the spaces that in turn, make them.”14 Hanna Engler writes thus in the preface to the second edition of her guidebook for the St. Olav Ways: The pilgrimage route comes alive through the stories on and around it. And not just through the history of the St. Olav’s path itself, but primarily through the stories found today along the wayside and regenerated afresh over and over again—​the stories of the owners of the hostels as much as that of the pilgrims that walk this path. And it is so easy to start a conversation in this friendly country.15 Pilgrimage networks are thus formed by a variety of ritual practices, interlacing various actors, groups, and places. Pilgrims, hosts, historians, and government and clerical officials participate in the ongoing rewriting of a map of sacred geography that overlaps and intersects with other routes and agents. The present study resists seeing pilgrimage networks as constituted merely by religious or ritual practice and also seeks to grasp aspects of what Bruno Latour calls the “seamless fabric [ . . . ] of nature-​ culture,”16 weaving together the multiple strands of political, social, ritual, economic, ecological, and religious aspects that inform and shape the narratives of pilgrims, migrants, and various other refugees from “modernity” and its various conditions of neoliberal capitalism, technological domination, climate change, social repression, economic and political decline, imperialism, famine, and warfare.17 Thus, an intersectional approach helps further a critical perspective on the histories of colonial, nationalist,

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patriarchal, and extractive capitalist frameworks that replicate themselves even in something so seemingly apolitical as pilgrimage in Norway. A pilgrimage network is also a ritual network, a trans-​species system of relations that display permeable boundaries in terms of time, species, and place. It is composed of landscapes, habitations, sacred sites, ocean and land routes, rising and declining over time and space. It contains human ritualizations, some of which are spontaneous and ad hoc, while others are firmly established forms, such as marked routes, markers, chapels, churches, liturgies, prayers, festivals, hostels and other places of hospitality, rituals around hospitality and tourism. Pilgrimage in Norway occurs in a seemingly natural landscape, but one profoundly transformed by human agency -​transformations that, in turn, affect the potential of the landscape and the sites that inhabit it to transform. The ritual geography involved in pilgrimage requires the crossing of physical and cultural boundaries, the circumambulation of both geographical landscapes and cultural landscapes, kulturlandskap. Wildlife encounters in Norway are generally restricted to domestic animals like sheep and cows, or bugs and birds. Geographies impact moving bodies by compelling passages and constraining other crossings in particular ways.18 For many Norwegians, the significance of the landscape is embedded in the myth of living close to and in nature. The Norwegian landscape and the species that inhabit it have drastically changed in the last half century, the result of a decline in small farms, glacier melt, forest overgrowth, warmer temperatures, and direct human action such as planting forests intended for timber production, which went along with removing grazing animals from open landscapes.19 This myth, Dag Hessen argues, has some basis in truth, since the ideal Norwegian cultural identity is connected to the idea of spending time outdoors.20 As with other ethnic groups, identity is defined by deep historic relations to landscapes and waterscapes. The early inhabitants of present-​day Norway, from what little we know about them, described their world as divided into three main realms, expressed in geographic terms: Asgard, the realm of the gods; Midtgard, the realm of people; and Utgard, the realm of the untamable chaos powers beyond the control of either humans or divine powers. Norse

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deities can be understood as personified energies and wills, as they are associated with particular natural phenomena and locations.21 Humans could enter into alliance with these powers to the benefit of persons or groups. Meanwhile, Utgard and the Jotuns remained powers outside of the reach of both humans and gods, as they stand even against Asgard.22 At the same time, the powers of Utgard are necessary for the world to be held together, as even the Midtgard serpent is a Jotun, holding the oceans of the world together. Utgard stands for the necessary, wildly uncontrollable forces of the world that sometimes can be brought into alliance for the benefit of people. In many trickster myths around the world, trickster figures are associated with the introduction of technologies, or negotiation with various powers. The trickster Loki was seen as the mediator between Utgard and Asgard, and sexual relations with Jotuns are a mythological way to name an alliance or bond between the forces.23 Cultural goods here had to be negotiated through intercourse with Jotun women to load them with the requisite power.24 Some of the myths aim to legitimate a particular line of rulers’ claim to power by indicating an alliance with a Jotun woman.25 The cultured landscape, which roughly corresponds to what the Norse called Midtgard—​the realm of humans—​has expanded and has resulted in an increasingly controlled and managed physical landscape under the cover of “efficiency,”26 of using the landscape to a maximum. A harsh climate often meant grinding poverty and a hard life in subsistence economies.27 Today, however, the challenges associated with land-​and sea-​scapes are remarkably different from those of the Norse. Overfishing in fjords and overfecundity of an “efficient,” overgrown landscape are compounded by the continued commitment of Norwegians to petroleum wealth and extraction. The relationship of increasingly urbanized peoples to historic lands and professions, the loss of identity many in the industrialized West lament, is also connected to the loss of connection with landscape and the loss of access to and interaction with land and sea. Blasting tunnels through mountains under fjords and razing hillsides are particularly stark in a country where so much human building has been shaped and restricted by rock and mountain formations. As relations to places are being

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transformed by environmental destruction and climate change, the sacred geography of the pilgrimage network is deeply affected. As Kari Norgaard, a Californian sociologist with Norwegian roots, discovered, Norwegians “live in one way and think in another” with regard to climate change. Her subjects learned to live in parallel realities of denial: “It’s a skill, an art of living.”28 As George Marshall puts it, “Norwegians have particularly good reasons for ignoring climate change. Norway’s cultural identity, Norgaard explained, is based around a mythic narrative that it is a small and humble nation that lives simply and close to nature. Norwegians pride themselves on being honest and conscientious global citizens and their government speaks often of being a world leader on climate change.”29 As a result, Norgaard found, Norwegians “chose not to know too much in order to maintain their cultural identity as responsible citizens.”30 But each Norwegian citizen and resident benefits from the oil economy, thanks to the massive state-​owned and state-​administered Oljefondet (oil pension fund), “which now includes a two-​billion dollar stake in Alberta’s tar sands. All in all, Norway is a spectacularly large contributor to climate change and, thanks to its egalitarian traditions, it has shared that responsibility across its entire population.”31 This study was conducted at a time when this dual legacy of petroculture and sustainability became increasingly controversial in Norwegian society and the public discussion appeared also in the pilgrimage system -​a reflection of its heightened presence in public discourse and politics. Yet the sway the oil industry holds over Norwegian political and societal institutions is ongoing.

LOCATING AND RECONSTRUCTING LANDSCAPE MEMORIES

Although the sense that God is not confined to some particular place or location can be liberating in some ways and focus the Christian’s energy on one’s neighbor and social service rather than merely ritual performances, it makes little room for the sense of special or holy places, both afar and

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nearby. But sacred spaces are not just physical sites; they also are mobile signifiers. Much of medieval pilgrimage was focused on Jerusalem, its maps and sacred geography, though “medieval texts show Jerusalem functioning not as a single place but as a series of images, each of which explores a different strand of theological understanding and devotional practice.”32 These images could be represented and referred to in various ways in other landscapes far away from Palestine.33 Thus, in Trondheim, both explicit and implicit references to Jerusalem and Mt. Zion can be found. Nidaros Cathedral includes architectural references linking the grave of St. Olav to the grave of Christ. This move associated a national saint not only with Jerusalem but also with Christ, as well as the idealized messianic kingship of David as a king uniting warring rivals, thereby invoking a large citational archive in the posthumous shaping of the figure of St. Olav.34 Indeed, Nidaros Cathedral is mapped onto the architectural outlines of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, through an octagon that surrounds the central altar space.35 Hagiographic accounts of Christian saints often show an ambivalent relationship to sacredness in nature. In several hagiographies, such as that of St. Boniface, we hear of him destroying sacred trees and wells, and there were times when “the assault on holy springs and trees was a central plank of the Christian platform.”36 However, in the case of St. Olav, sites associated with him are often natural features, specifically, wells (Olavskilder). Various mnemonic narratives connect remarkable features of the landscape to landmarks tracing St. Olav’s flight route, filling in gaps in Snorre’s royal saga.37 Local historians report that people supplied stories that were not mentioned in the sagas and possibly transferred pre-​ Christian narratives about Odin and Thor onto St. Olav,38 resulting in church windows that show him fighting trolls and dragons. Such stories were preserved by locals even after the Reformation, when the church was uninterested in remembering St. Olav.39 The framing of St. Olav as a saint of the people rather than the post-​Reformation Church is often repeated orally by guides and pilgrim priests. Of Korsbrekka, for example, where Olav is said to have established a standing cross (probably a site of worship in the absence of an actual church building) at an old gathering site

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and near pre-​Christian grave hills, the story goes that local farmers took care of the cross over the years.40 Further down the path, one of many Olav’s wells can be found. At this one, the story goes, the king washed himself and thereafter the water was found to be healing water.41 Thus, sacred geographies preserve local lore across generations and stay alive that way. And in this example, we can see the effects of pre-​Christian Norse narratives being woven together from one sacred geography to another, integrating both sets of narratives in creative ways and thus generating a local theology that maps theology onto the local landscape. Sacred geography in the oral lives of local people tends to read the sacred cosmology onto the local landscape of many places on earth. A pilgrimage network features spaces that are interrelated through paths and routes, forming nodes in a sacred geography. There, religious spaces feature elements of nature and culture, and boundaries between secular and sacred are fluid.42 Including geographical and interspecies relations in the scope of study, such as the environmental context that enables movements, rituals, and practices, brings to light a vibrant trans-​ species network of relationships. Human nature is an “interspecies relationship”43 that involves relationships with landscapes of various kinds, including post–​atomic waste areas, ruins of industrial forestry, and melting glaciers.44 Donna Haraway describes the “becoming-​with” that companion species—​“ordinary beings-​in-​encounter”—​engage in, as symbioses of many kinds: “The partners do not precede the knotting; species of all kinds are consequent upon worldly subject-​and object-​shaping entanglements.”45 What she calls “sympoiesis” indicates “complex, dynamic, responsive, situated, historical systems” that interact in often unnoticed and unnarrated ways.46 The following anecdote may serve as an illustration of the narrative reconstruction of such a cross-​temporal, trans-​species network. During a celebration of the eight-​hundred-​year anniversary of old Tingelstad Church I attended during the summer of 2020, one of the lectures was given by a geologist who talked about the geological history of the particular stones used in the building. He explained that they were “locally sourced” and different volcanic and ice age practices were involved in producing them.

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Pointing out fossil shells on the external wall of the church, he highlighted how the presence of ancient types of squid was typical of this kind of stone. A careful tracing of the timber used for the roof was included in the lecture and in the book published on the occasion of the church’s anniversary. While the place was celebrated as constructed by the faithful acts of local wealthy builders, the deep time of wood and stones was made visible and woven into the history of human piety, which remains less tangible than the materials and artifacts of the church itself. The care given to analyzing even the building techniques and materials of the site resembles a piety of sacred place, despite its seemingly secular disciplinarity, drawing on geology rather than theology. In a strange way, the material evidence of wood and stone provided a more readable text of this sacred place than the largely faded human histories and beliefs. Places are inflected with geological, ecological, historical, political, and religiocultural significance,47 all employed in the narrative reconstruction of sacred place and geography in Norway.

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MEDIEVAL PILGRIMAGES IN WESTERN EUROPE

Pilgrimage is an ancient practice in all three Abrahamic religions, but it is also present in Buddhist, Hindu, and other religious systems that honor sacred places and remember ancestral history, ritual, and spiritual practice. Some places of pilgrimage are shared by various religious traditions and often by different strands and groups within the same religious system. Jerusalem is one of them. Already a site of pilgrimage within Jewish faith practices, Christians, especially those from distant lands, sought to connect the narratives of the biblical texts to locations in the Holy Land. Jerusalem became the primary destination of Christian pilgrimage after Helena, the emperor Constantine’s mother, had visited.1 A new layer of sacred geography overwrites previous sacred sites and new ones, not unlike a palimpsest, where layer upon layer of writing is imposed on the same surface. One famous example is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which was erected at the site of a defunct pagan temple.2 Further afield, local sites were remapped as new Jerusalems, spiritually and politically, including Scandinavia.3 As the disintegration of the Roman Empire made long-​distance travel more challenging, local pilgrimage centers and shrines moved into greater focus. Christian regions in Europe and the Middle East developed local cults, “each possessing its own traditions and holy sites.”4 The networks of Christian pilgrimage often led to the graves or places where the relics of Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity. Marion Grau, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197598634.003.0003

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saints could be found, places where, for many in late antiquity, “Heaven and Earth” met “at the grave of a dead human being.”5 By the sixth century, such saints’ graves had become “centers of the ecclesiastical life of their region” in the declining Western Roman Empire.6 While there are parallels between pagan beliefs about the role of heroes, and the sense of ancestors being present even after their death, what is particular about martyred saints is that Christian writers insisted that “precisely because they died as human beings, [they] enjoyed close intimacy with God.” This intimacy meant a martyr, as a “friend of God,” had access and power to intercede for and protect their fellow mortals.7 Anthropologists also saw similarities with ancestor veneration elsewhere in the world. Victor and Edith Turner declared that “anyone who has lived in a society with a strong ancestral cult, as in tribal Africa, or China before the revolution, will find nothing unusual about this way of thinking.”8 In Christian contexts, patron saints, especially those of royal or noble descent, can also function as a way to form a protonational identity in settings where there are weak centralizing authorities or structures.9 During the eighth and ninth centuries, the graves of several apostles came to be located far outside where they likely ever traveled. St. James became associated with northwestern Spain and St. Andrew turned up in Scotland, while the Golden Legend (around 1260) preserves a legend of how Mary Magdalene, by some considered to be an apostle, traveled to, settled, and died in southern France.10 As former heartlands of Christianity were lost due to Muslim territorial gains, pilgrimage to Jerusalem after 638 and Constantinople after 1453 was difficult, if not impossible.11 Pilgrimage sites further north and west gained importance as the British Isles, Central Europe, and eventually the Nordic regions became Christian and gained geopolitical relevance. Some of the Viking raiders and traders, including Olav Haraldsson, made their way into Muslim southern Europe. It is not a coincidence that St. Olav is one of the saints depicted on the pillars of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the first known depiction of the saint. As a saint, he appealed most to the descendants of the Vikings that had settled throughout Europe.12

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Over time, the figure of Saint James became a narrative theological tool to promote the Catholic Reconquest of the Spanish Peninsula in response to Muslim Spain, and Saint James was renamed matamoros, or “moor killer.”13 Contemporary pilgrims often chafe at the historical inconsistencies and ethical complications of such medieval saints. Frey reports of the Camino Santiago that a “perplexing question haunts the pilgrimage”—​the unlikelihood that the historic first-​century St. James ever made it to northwestern Spain. This conundrum seems best understood through looking at the history of medieval piety, political intrigue, and Spanish geopolitics.14 Contemporary pilgrims on the way to Nidaros often confessed a considerable discomfort with the historical person of Olav Haraldsson, articulating disbelief and confusion that a violent warrior and king could end up a saint venerated for embodying Christian virtues. A number of pilgrims told me expressly that they did not walk to honor Olav and did not see how that could possibly make sense, given what they read about him in their pilgrim guides. Some expressed confusion about why this saint is honored, other than to recognize the historic importance for the national unification of Norway under a Christian king. This may be one of the reasons few pilgrims engage with the saint on a theological level, preferring the historical argument that he was an important figure in the Christianization and unification of Norway. These examples highlight the uncomfortable reality that saints have been and are politicized figures, employed in geopolitical religiocultural quests. The study will show that the dominant contemporary framing of St. Olav by the Church of Norway constructs him as an ecumenical and interreligious figure, a connector of peoples rather than a precursor to ethnonationalism. Thus St. Olav is constructed as a counternarrative to rising ethnonationalist and right-​wing discourse and lifting up democratic Christian values that affirm human diversity and collaboration across ethnic and religious difference. Whether or not most international pilgrims understand this is another matter, as they often lack exposure to these reconstructions.

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SACRED GEOGRAPHIES AND PILGRIMAGE IN SCANDINAVIA

Christian pilgrimage in Scandinavia as in Europe elsewhere hearkens to the ancient geographies of Christianity, the Holy Land, Jerusalem, Rome, and Byzantium. Pilgrimages from Norway to locations such as Rome, Jerusalem, and Santiago began, as they did elsewhere, as an upper-​class phenomenon accessible only to some, especially those who were traveling for other purposes, such as warfare, plunder, and trade. During the Middle Ages, there were four main pilgrimage sites in Norway, sought out by folk in the region primarily for the healing power of the saints associated with the location: Selja and Kinn (Seljumanna & St. Sunniva), Bergen (St. Sunniva), Nidaros (St. Olav), and Oslo (St. Hallvard). All these could be reached by coastal waterborne travel, and a pilgrim could visit all locations by beginning the ocean journey in Oslo and heading westward along the coast, toward Trondheim. Historic walking pilgrimage routes in Norway include the route from Seljord to the stave church in Røldal, the Valdres route, the coastal route from Egersund to Stavanger Cathedral and Utstein Monastery north of Stavanger, and the Valldal route. Sites near main travel routes and of more local significance eventually made pilgrimage more accessible to a larger population, especially those who could not travel far.15 These shorter pilgrimages grew over time while those to more distant locations decreased, showing that pilgrimage became an increasingly lower-​class phenomenon up until the Reformation, beginning in 1537.16 Some forms of local pilgrimage remained. People would travel to lovekirker, votive churches where gifts were given in thanksgiving for answered prayers for healing.17

THE ROLE OF SAINTS IN THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF NORWAY

As part of the Roman Empire, Western and central Europe had been exposed to Christian faith and institutions for centuries. Some peoples

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were Christianized by missionaries sent from other places, especially from Ireland, England, and Scotland. Elsewhere, it was the conversion of kings who introduced Christian laws, education, and mores in the territory of their rule. However, the spread of Christian ideas in the North was more complex and happened more slowly. In Scandinavia, “Norway was converted in several phases, all of them involving English missionaries,” but these did not arrive as agents from abroad—​rather, Christian faith, customs, and law were formalized by various potentates who brought it home after their travels to Christian lands. This after missionaries from the direction of the South, via Ansgar, “the Apostle of the North,” and Adam of Bremen were unsuccessful.18 Powerful Scandinavians, often those who had traveled afar across the ocean, understood the advantages of embracing Christian religiocultures of the continent and, with the help of bishops and missionaries, adapted them to their local contexts. Thus, Scandinavians did not convert because missionaries came to them and persuaded them of the truth of Christianity; missionaries came to Scandinavia because local chieftains saw a need for them and the religion they brought.19 In addition, there were multiple smaller local enclaves of Christians along the coast, likely having encountered Christian practices in the course of ocean travel. The Christianization of Scandinavia had a different political background in each country. It happened at the same time as radical changes in society and political organization and was itself a consequence of these changes. As “the kingdoms were unified, new structures of power and new forms of government developed.” Christianity “was intimately associated with the revolution in methods of communication, the transition from a predominantly oral culture to a written culture, that made the new system of power possible.” The church “implemented a comprehensive program of ethical, cultural, and religious education to teach people to understand their place in the new centralized order.”20 The effects of Christianization were multiple. The open continuation of pre-​Christian Norse rituals was forbidden, and the cultural shift of conversion to the Christian faith surely profound. The society, which had already on the coast been more in contact and open to other places

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across the seas, was connected to a common Catholic transethnic network of Christian kingdoms and in other regions of Europe and the Mediterranean.21 Christianization had the effect of connecting local Nordic imagery to places far away, such as Jerusalem and other sites in the Mediterranean, Christian identity constructions being rather more translocal than merely local. It is the building of graveyards, churches, and the emergence of local saints and pilgrimages to local sacred places that help localize these traditions and embed them in the landscape of what is Norway and Sweden today. The persistence of local pre-​Christian traditions that maintained myths and histories connected to the local landscape has often been noted. In Norway, as elsewhere, local religious motifs were routinely blended with Christian narratives, and many of these traditions eventually became interlaced with Christian images and rituals. One of the major aspects of a contextual theology is its ability to honor the traditions and places of the local people. Rather than locate the center of the world either in the local, as Norse mythology had done, or in far-​away Jerusalem, local pilgrimages map the holy both in the nearby, overwriting and combining pagan and Christian sacred geographies. This produced artifacts such as the Gosford cross, which merged the end-​time myth of Ragnarok with transformation into a new age through the tree/​cross.22 Theological bridges were built to make the person of Christ understandable in Norse terms, and other Christologies that could connect to local traditions were developed. Thus Yggdrasil, the world ash, became narratively connected to the tree in Paradise and Christ’s cross as trees of life and salvation.23 Although Norwegian coast dwellers and seafarers encountered Christian influences and presences long before a more formalized, uniting, and nationalizing form of Christianity under a Christian king, Christianization up North was a longer and slower process than is often narrated when focusing on the effect of Olav Haraldsson, later St. Olav. A web of relations and narratives contributed to the larger processes by which the saint’s life was fused with respected traditions and known sacred places. The legend of St. Sunniva is one key example.

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THE FIRST IMMIGRANT SAINT: ST. SUNNIVA AND SELJA

Naval traffic between the British Isles, North and Central Europe, and Scandinavia has a long history, some of it dating back to the Neolithic. During the Viking age, ocean trade and travel routes from Norway to the British Isles, the Hebrides, Scotland, Ireland, and other islands were key for all forms of communication and exchange between these regions.24 During this time islands were important as coastal mainlands.25 Traders, travelers, and pilgrims often share paths, then and now. Historically, the travelers tended to be male, as were traders, Vikings, and likely pilgrims. Though there were exceptions, high-​status women generally administered the farms and homes, which tended to strengthen their status and power, while men were often at sea or traveling for long periods.26 In Nordic Protestantism, shaped first and foremost by male figures, female presences are difficult to find. Therefore, the legend of St. Sunniva, a seafaring female martyr, is particularly relevant in Protestant Norway. Lisbeth Mikaelsson summarizes her story: Sunniva was the beautiful daughter of an Irish king who has succeeded her father on the throne. She was wooed by a Viking chieftain, but being a chaste virgin and devoted Christian she refused the brutal heathen. When he came to conquer her kingdom, Sunniva and many of her people fled by putting out to sea in three ships. Wanting to be led by God to their destination, they did not try to navigate the ships, lacking both sails and oars. Two ships landed on Selja, the third on Kinn, a small island further south. For some time they lived peacefully, until the natives on the mainland who used Selja as a pasture for their sheep accused the foreigners of stealing animals from their stock. When the fearsome chieftain and his men came to punish the intruders, Sunniva and her people gathered in . . . [a]‌cave. Sunniva prayed to God to save them from the heathens, and his answer came in the shape of an avalanche of rocks that killed them all. . . . Later on, sailors passing the island witnessed a strange column of light. There were also rumours that human bones had been found emitting a sweet scent.27

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Some scholars assume there is no historical kernel to the Sunniva legend and that it is a version of the Ursula legend (attached to Cologne), repeating the motif of the devoted virgin with a loyal following escaping a suitor out to get her virginity—​an oft-​repeated feature of the legends of virgin saints.28 Other parts of the legend repeat features familiar from St. Brendan’s naval pilgrimage, that of traveling with a boat without rudder, sail, or paddles,29 so that speed and direction could not be affected by the passengers, who then it would seem, were carried across the ocean by winds and waves and divine navigation only. More interesting than the putative “historical facts” contained in a saint’s legend, however, are the ways in which it is constructed over time, which narrative needs it fulfills, and which theological/​psychological expectations it meets. Historically, local saints give a particular tangibility and model of life to regions far away from the heartlands of Christianity. They often connect pre-​Christian lore of the gods with the life of the saints. Miraculous and great deeds are woven together, as in tales of St. Olav defeating the Midtgard serpent, as did Tor in Norse myth. Today, Sunniva is what one might call a #metoo saint, one of those women who have chosen to escape the designs of a toxic masculinity that seeks to domesticate them into submission. Like Brendan and other Irish/​Hebridean saints, she engages in a kind of holy navigation; she sets sail, or rather no sail, no oars, no rudder for her trip to wherever God directs wind and waves to send her and her companions.30 Her sign of martyrdom is a rock, and she is portrayed with a rock in her arms. According to legendary sources, holy men founded a monastery on the island of Selja, off the coast of western Norway. These so-​called Seljumanna are often assumed to have been monks from the British Isles.31 The narrative of St. Sunniva thus interweaves and is layered with those of the Seljumanna. These wandering monks traveled on a spiritual journey called immram by boats across the Atlantic to various places, including Iona—​they were scholars and travelers in a unique movement in the history of Christianity.32 They were revered in the Middle Ages, and iconographic representations of them were found throughout the land. The first episcopal seat on the western coast of Norway was established on Selja in 1068, confirming its status as an ancient sacred site.33

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However, in addition to having an accessible harbor between coast and ocean, the island of Selja itself had long been seen as a “thin space,” a numinous location. The site of Selja had religious significance before Christian presence: as in other places of pilgrimage, it is a site of layered narratives of sacred spatiality: in this case a mountain spring by a curative well, and a sacred tree hanging over a holy well by a sacred stone.34 Selja’s connection with royalty and the early Christianization process makes it a national symbol for a country with a fusion of national and Christian inheritance, perhaps especially in a time when this heritage is being reexamined. Selja, Anne Kristin Aasmundtveit writes, is the center of Norway’s “Celtic heart.”35 In a country where some Protestant actors resisted these old memories of the first Christian presences through an “Irish princess,” Sunniva and the Seljumanna symbolize and are reminiscent of the first presence of Christian faith. These traditions shift the narrative from the sole influence of male kings, and of violence, to a different, a more gentle kind of Christian presence.36 Two kings—​Olav Tryggvason, said to have built the first Christian church in Norway, in 995, and Olav Haraldsson (later St. Olav)—​reportedly traveled to Selja, where Tryggvason reportedly found Sunniva’s shining skull and built a church in her honor on the island.37 Tor Singsaas, former bishop of Nidaros, considers it significant that both kings appear to have paid their respects to Sunniva, representing the first presence of Christianity on the Norwegian coast, as they claim their kingship.38 The kings seemed to have needed to legitimate that they were the inheritors of St. Sunniva by paying their respects to the extant strong presence of Celtic/​Hebridean monastics and churches. Sunniva’s place of life and martyrdom maps the edge of the Christian world at the time, the boundary between Norway’s last pagan and first Christian rulers, and the shift from a world of suspicion, marked by violence, to one of faith, marked by miracles. From this point of view, other elements of possible source legends [such as Ursula and the Seven Sleepers underscore] the same idea: that of a dedicated Christian dying at what was originally a periphery of the Christian

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world but which becomes, through the saint’s relics, a central site of pilgrimage and holiness in a now-​Christianized realm. In this way, St. Sunniva’s legend reinforces powerfully the use which King Olaf Tryggvason and his English bishop Sigurd made of it in establishing Christianity in Norway. It is thus noteworthy that her original feast commemorates not her martyrdom (as is usual in such cults) but the date of the dedication of the King Olaf ’s church in her honor.39 Today, each year, pilgrims can catch a boat from the village Selje to the island of Selja for the celebration of St. Sunniva’s Day and experience firsthand the current rituals and celebrations around the first Christian monastery in Norway, founded by British monks of St. Alban’s, although the monastic ruins have stood empty since before 1537. In 2012, I traveled to Selja for the celebration of the Seljumannamesse, a mass in memory of the ‘men of Selja,’ St. Sunnivas companions. This form of pilgrimage, involving a combination of multimodal travel and attendance at the Seljumannamesse, felt like a very local event.40 On the feast day, the bishop of Nidaros arrived with a small group of pilgrims after a preplanned overnight trip on the Sunnivaleden, combining foot and boat journey. This smaller group was joined by other pilgrims, including some scholars and clergy, for the boat trip across the fjord and the short walk to the ruin of the medieval monastery. The actual site of pilgrimage, however, is a small, semi-​open cave higher up on the hillside above the ruins, and a well, the Sunnivakilden, where some pilgrims fill healing water to take along. A Eucharist and sermon mark the ritual of the Church of Norway on the feast day, while an acquaintance pointed out to me the Russian Orthodox priest and Roman Catholic presence on the island, participants who had their own connection to the site and had celebrated their liturgies earlier that morning, as if to lodge a contesting claim of authority. This type of posturing, the contestation of access by other religious communities, occurs on occasion off-​site or at off-​hours. Such ritual contestations are not unknown at sites that are contested or involve figures who are being interpreted in various socially and politically charged ways.41 These claims made by Catholic and Orthodox entities,

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at various sites related to the St. Olav tradition, appear to be one reason why the Church of Norway, denominationally Lutheran, makes a point of occupying the heritage of St. Olav itself.42 The island remains mostly uninhabited, apart from the sheep that—​incidentally—​also appear in the saint’s legend.43 Though the St. Sunniva legend and figure predate St. Olav and are important in Western Norway in particular, the Sunniva tradition never had an impact comparable to St. Olav in Nidaros and other regions of Norway.44 So how did the St. Olav tradition shape Christianity and the nation in Norway, and how did the medieval pilgrimage network emerge?

CONVERTING THE VIKING RULERS OF NORWAY

While St. Sunniva serves as a prism for events leading to the early Christianization of Norway, with Selja as the saint’s main pilgrimage site, Norse societies were starkly patriarchal, despite the fact that women ruled over the home and land when the men were on the sea for warfare, travel, or fishing. The story of St. Sunniva was soon appropriated by Viking kings who had come into contact with Christianity and had begun to see in it the advantages for their own project of nation-​building and national unification.45 In this long process of religiocultural change toward the adoption of Christianity in the far North, the world people inhabited became more international and connected to other regions, with certain local customs repressed -​including slavery and infanticide -​but it also became more centered on the emerging extended monarchies enabled by the importing of a universal religion to a particular group of localities. The kings who united Norway, Olav Tryggvason and Olav Haraldsson, had been baptized during travels and raids to the British Isles or Normandy and were subsequently instrumental in introducing expressions of Christian faith to places along the coast. Olav Haraldsson’s predecessor Olav Trgyggvason spent around five years trying to establish Christian faith in Norway, taking several English and German clergy to travel along with him. The choice before those he encountered was between baptism

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and war,46 and it is likely that Olav Tryggvason chose Nidaros/​Trondheim as his base because the nearby local powers represented a formidable resistance to his claim to royal power.47 Tryggvason later “imposed Christianity with great violence on the Trøndelag, the region around Trondheim,” and “broke the will of an entire society of independent farmers.”48 Yet only after Olav Haraldsson was proclaimed a saint did Christian faith become a force that brought together the various regions of Norway into a nation united by an idea of sacred kingship. The conversion of the North to Christianity began with plunder for easy wealth, enslavement, and the destruction of Christian lands. It was the material wealth of the Christian monasteries in Europe that brought Vikings into contact with the resources of the Christian religion, both spiritual and political. While contemporary accounts of the raids on monasteries suggest that Vikings attacked the monasteries due to a hatred of Christian faith, the Vikings’ actual motives were plunder and enslavement. The Vikings attacked religious communities principally because they were repositories of treasure—​not just their plate [offerings], vestments, books and so forth, but also the treasure of local lay society. It was another feature of the integration of early medieval monasteries into their social world that they played a role as places of safe deposit, bankers, for their friends and neighbors among the local aristocracy. Viking leaders needed treasure to reward followers, to prosecute ambitions at home, [ . . . ]. Pillaging a monastery was therefore not unlike robbing a bank.49 Such encounters brought Northern Europeans into contact with aspects of Christian faith and art. This began a slow process of mutual encounter, a kind of “long conversation,” as Jean and John Comaroff, anthropologists of Southern African mission encounters, describe such intercultural processes.50 In response to these experiences with the plunderers from the North, the 820s saw the first organized religious missions to Scandinavia. Through exposure to the Frankish Christian realm, British and Irish Christian influences, and the experiences of Viking raiders who came into

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contact with Christian clerics and rulers while abroad, the social and political advantages of Christian societal structures became more evident to Vikings.51 The Norse and Germanic notions of leadership involved the notion of a sacral warrior and a mixture of sacroeconomic bonds between warlord and warriors. The idea of sacred kingship in the male line was the bridge that allowed the fusion of Nordic identity to the Christian faith.52 With this fusion, “A new kind of regime turned up in Scandinavia, [ . . . ] the European-​style kingdom, which did not rely on personal relationships among small groups of warriors reinforced by gift exchange. Instead, it relied on formalized power relationships reinforced with a suitable ideology (some of which the church provided.)53 Baptism was fundamental to establishing this relationship. Hence Olav Tryggvason’s offer of baptism was coerced through the threat of violence. Conversion was institutional and political, a way for kings to form states in which they alone had power. This was accomplished by, among other things, monopolizing and controlling religion.54 The idea of sacred kingship helped solidify loyalty to a warlord when amassing raided goods was either too difficult or no longer sufficient to guarantee a loyal military following.55 Several Norse kings, especially Olav Haraldsson, employed the notion of sacred kingship to recruit a more loyal army that would help secure his claim to the throne.56 Andrew Winroth notes: “In the narrative sources, Olav is . . . portrayed as more of a missionary than a politician. Contemporary sources show him in a very different light, as a warrior chieftain willing to use any means, including religion, to gain a greater following and more power.”57 This indicates that motives for conversion were often mixed, and it shows the close integration of religion, politics, and social organization. The Battle of Stiklestad, where Olav Haraldsson died, was thus less a conflict about religion, but rather concerned claims to regional power. The powerful chiefs in the north of Norway had rejected Olav’s attempt to curtail their authority and went on to avenge his killing of one of their own. Tore Hund from the island of Bjarkøy battled Olav at Stiklestad

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in a fight that seems to have been caused by a combination of several factors: a generally troubled personal relationship, resistance to being curtailed and ruled from afar, and revenge for the death of an ally.58 The fact that the chieftains along the coast proclaimed Olav as a saint after his death suggests that their opposition was not so much to Christianity or to a united nation, but rather to his particular claim to kingship and the way he sought to win it by repression by asking powerful local rulers to submit to his rule.59 It is likely that Olav’s missionary bishop Grimkjell contributed to raising up as a saint.60 Grimkjell hailed from the British Isles and was familiar with royal saints; thus, he may have stood behind the canonization and the vita. He merged the notion of the royal saint with the Norse idea of the preordained death of the male leader. Indeed, Olav is only one of the many rulers of northern and eastern Europe who “came to be revered as saints after suffering a violent death.”61 The Anglo-​Saxon missionary clergy may have been seeking to present a narrative of transformation from the violent life of Viking raids and economy given their frustration with his violent mode of engagement.62 Grimkjell aimed to work with the locals to come to a more localized version of ritual and practice, something that was aided by the fact that the harsh rule of Olav’s successors and rule from abroad made him appear in a different, more sympathetic light.63 When the site of his casket became a site of reported healings, masses came to visit the location. A liturgical celebration of Olsok began in 1031–​1032 and quickly became the most significant pilgrimage site among the sites and monasteries that lay like pearls along the coast in the Middle Ages.64 These monasteries also served as guest houses and hospitals to nurse and protect pilgrims along the way, many of whom were sick and seeking healing at the tomb of St. Olav.65 Olav Haraldsson was fashioned as Norway’s eternal king, despite his preconversion cruelties and the resistance of local forces to his claim to a nation united under a king rather than under the powerful Knut the Great or Hakon, the earl of Lade—​both of whom were also baptized. Promoting him as a holy king strengthened the idea of Christian sacred kingship, and the Christian religion that was renowned for its connection to education,

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and philosophy at the courts of Europe. Andrew Winroth argues that shifting to Christian ideas of kingship served to solidify the notion of a transregional king, rather than a chieftain with primarily local power. Promoting Christianity was seen as bringing a sophisticated, enlightened way of ruling into the region, as “in Viking Age Europe, no ideology was more prestigious than the Christian religion.”66

FROM VIKING RAIDER TO MARTYR SAINT AND KING: ST. OLAV

With conversion to Christianity—​for whatever reason, forced, willing, or merely pragmatic—​Norwegians inherited a common pool of saints: the Apostles, the Virgin Mary, the more prominent of the early martyrs and bishops. However, there was always a strong countercurrent of localism. As Robert Bartlett puts it, When Christianity spread beyond the Roman world, the cult of the saints spread with it. This involved two things: the import of the existing features of Roman sainthood—​the names, feast-​days, cult practices, and books—​and also the emergence of native saints, Christian holy men [sic] of one’s own people, in the conversion period or later, whose bodies were treated in the same way as those of earlier Christian saints. From Ireland in the fifth to Saxony in the ninth to Russia in the tenth and Lithuania in the fourteenth, conversion of areas outside the former Roman Empire incorporated them into a common culture, a culture that included saint, shrine, and miracle.67 Local cults of holy persons intersected with the shared collective identity of the ecumenical Catholic Church as a whole.68 Ever since Late Antiquity, the Christian church had “presented to the pagan world an ideal community that claimed to modify, to redirect, and even to delimit the bonds of kin. The church was an artificial kin group.”69 This kin group, headed by a

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bishop, the earthly patron of the church, was often matched by presenting the figure of a martyr as the heavenly patron and supporter to which the local bishop had particularly close links.70 Eventually the patron saints are imbued with the qualities of the Greek daimon, the genius and the guardian angel, a protector of self and identity of the person that has their patronage.71 By localizing the holy at a shrine, “late-​antique Christianity could feed on the facts of distance and on the joys of proximity.”72 The transition to the translocal, however, was not an easy process, and there were not a great many obvious points of overlap or connection between pagan Viking culture and the Christian culture on which the kingdom was being erected.73 The transition involved substituting images of the Christian king and kingdom, transforming the warrior spirit of the Vikings into an understanding of kingship and regal power based on the heritage of Constantine in the aftermath of the Roman Empire and the view of Christ as pantokrator, the all-​powerful ruler of all and the successor of the biblical king David.74 The martyrdom of St. Sunniva became another way of transforming traditions. Her story both integrates and departs from a local tradition of strong female deities and women in leadership.75 Likewise, the figure of Mary was received not as meek and mild Virgin, but as “vår Frue,” our Lady, a woman of power.76 The narrative of St. Hallvard, too, represents a different version of masculinity as courage, protection of enslaved women, and of self-​sacrifice, representing different dimensions of sacred authority and Christlikeness to each of these saints that were patron saints of the first three Norwegian dioceses.77 Such sacred geographies of new saints and relics, argues Gro Steinsland, also shifted the perception of and landscape for people, marking the cultured landscape in different ways than pagan hill graves,78 providing a different set of ancestral and sacred figures.

THE EMERGING CULT AROUND ST. OLAV

The martyrdom of St. Olav merged pagan and Christian conceptions. Before the eleventh century, the title of martyr was only rarely given to

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persons killed in battle. There appears to have been a turning point after the year 1000, when it comes to Olav, who was “killed while trying to reclaim his throne.” Adam of Bremen styled him as “king and martyr,” which became the standard appellation for Olav in medieval liturgies. Some considered this a strange kind of martyrdom, and “cults of such fallen heroes were rare.” Rather, the typical martyr “was executed or murdered without putting up resistance.”79 So how could a king who dies by the sword be holy and not a failure? Gro Steinsland argues that as Christ’s death on the cross sealed the promise of Christianity’s blessing, the warrior king Olav, through his death, allowed a nation united by Christian law to emerge.80 This typology, combined with the story that he dropped his sword and prayed for his enemies, offered an account of Olav that satisfied both Christian and Norse ways of thinking.81 The dead king who becomes a saint brings Christ to the Northern soil and its people.82 Within one year of Olav Haraldsson’s death in 1030, occurred miracles at his coffin at St. Clement’s Church in Trondheim, and news of this spread quickly. By 1040 two skaldic poems spread news of his miracles abroad. By 1050 his cult had spread to England and can be documented in Iceland, Ireland, Novgorod, Constantinople, and Bethlehem until around 1400, when it becomes eclipsed by the Swedish St. Birgitta of Vadstena.83 But the circumstances of Olav Haraldsson’s death and the reports of miracles that followed it were not themselves sufficient to make him a saint and to make the sites associated with him sites of pilgrimages. The new cult provided also a form of political resistance to the harsh reign of unpopular kings, such as that of King Canute (Knut) and King Svein.84 This may have helped to cement St. Olav’s image as an ideal king, concerned with the poor and compassionate as a ruler, as the ideal king for the region. But when tracing the history of St. Olav and Nidaros Cathedral, it is impossible to get around Archbishop Øystein, a key figure in the reframing of the cult of St. Olav over 130 years after his death. The formalization of hagiographic elements helped to promote the importance of the saint as well as that of Nidaros Cathedral and the seat of the bishop,85

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supporting the establishment of the cathedral and in the framing of a nation to be unified under these narratives. A claim to represent the long-​dead saint was always one important way that the heads of churches, bishops, and abbots, could turn stubborn defence of the rights and property of their institutions into a heroic principle.86 Øystein thus crafted the narratives, wrote the hagiography, developed a liturgy, shaped the ideas for ideal kingship, and began building the cathedral. He further linked the notions of king and crown to what became the city of Trondheim. Although there are multiple authors and versions of the hagiography extant, to Øystein is attributed the authorship or the most significant parts of the Passio et miracula beati Olavi (The Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Olaf). In the version associated with Bishop Øystein, remarkable weight is given to his miracles (86 percent), as compared with his life (14 percent),87 and it is assumed that it was Øystein who added the miracles to an older version of the Passio Olavi, something that helped to make the point of the sanctity of an otherwise violent life, portray his deeds of charity and his mortal wound to the side as Christ-​like, and helped legitimate the claim of Olav as rex perpetuus Norvegiae.88 Øystein also enshrined his royal ideology and theology architecturally by including an octagon that refers to Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,89 in the center of which the king’s shrine and the high altar were placed. The octagon also leads the pilgrim in a circumambulation around the altar and past the shrine.90Bakken’s account shows how sanctuaries mark local pilgrimage, and in particular how Nidaros Cathedral’s architecture exemplifies this.91 The Passio Olavi disseminates ideas of what an ideal king is like and how it is possible to break with a violent past and transition to a life guided by a law to which the king can be made responsible. This royal conversion models the transition from tribal focus, slavery, and raids of territories afar to a legal structure that makes steps toward less extreme

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class differences among the people of the land.92 The figure of Olav is a rex iustus who dispenses equal justice to all people, rich and poor.93 This “fusion of royalty and sanctity” was particularly strong in some medieval saints, where the ideology of royalty connects the fortunes and the character of the monarch to the people and to peace, health, good weather, prosperity, and fertility.94 Rumors of healing miracles upon closeness to his corpse appear to have emerged right after Olav’s death and his body was moved to the first of several churches. Beyond the source text of the hagiography—​which may have been influenced by literature on the Anglican bishop Thomas a Becket—​little is known of pilgrimage practices in the medieval period. The cult of St. Olav became widespread in the North and Baltic Seas and other seaports and locations as far as Constantinople. The celebration of his feast day—​Olsok—​was an important church festival during the Middle Ages, but it was forbidden by Lutheran authorities after the Reformation.95 After the Reformation, Norway’s archbishopric was lost and the cult of patron saints, and pilgrimage repressed. A fire destroyed much of the cathedral in 1531, and the shrine was demolished and sent to Copenhagen. Olav’s relics were moved to several locations until they were buried in Nidaros Cathedral at an unknown location.96

PILGRIMAGE AS A CONTROVERSIAL MOVEMENT

Pilgrimage is not just a physical journey. Throughout Christian history, there has been a tension between the physical movements of bodies in pilgrimage and the movements of the soul in its journey through this world toward God. The resolution of that tension by depreciating physical pilgrimage often is seen as one of the characteristic developments of the Reformation, but in fact, the tension persisted even within Protestantism, and that persistence helps account for the reemergence of pilgrimage in countries such as Norway, where it had been suppressed and abandoned. Books 9 through 11 in Augustine’s Confessions famously portray human life as a pilgrimage between Earth and Heaven. Pilgrims seek the City of

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God, the Heavenly Jerusalem. For Augustine, the pilgrimage metaphor comments on the fleetingness of human life and the sense that there is no permanent home to be had on Earth. Not getting attached to the attractions offered on the route, or caught up in the “overriding ethic of the civitas terrena,” the earthly city, the “libido dominandi,”97 the desire to dominate, but rather to see the world not as the lasting city but remain strangers, pilgrims toward the heavenly city, civitas Dei. Augustine’s notion of pilgrimage, picking up the motif of being strangers in the world from Hebrews 11:13 and 1 Peter 2:11, facilitated a tradition of detachment from the strictures of life on Earth. The motif of the interior, mystical pilgrimage that focused on monastic stability, focus, and perseverance was particularly central to the likes of Chaucer, Langland, and Wyclif and has a long history in Christian spirituality both Catholic and Protestant.98 Thus a potential for the critique of relics and pilgrimage inherent in concepts central to Christianity, and critiques of the practices and rituals of pilgrimage, are far older than the Reformation. Jerome’s treatise Against Vigilantius witnesses to an early occurrence of the critique of pilgrimage. Jerome rejects Vigilantius’s complaints against the cult of martyrs and relics, as well as against the vow of poverty and clerical celibacy, arguing instead that nobody has ever worshiped the martyrs or saints, but rather the veneration of a saint is made to the honor of God and that the saints in Jerusalem should be financially supported.99 There, however, and in many subsequent critiques and defenses, the debate revolved more around the motivation for seeking holy sites, the type of pilgrimage one undertook, and how resources were handled around it than around the absolute merit or demerit of pilgrimage itself. As Graham Tomlin points out, the critique of pilgrimage began at least with Gregory of Nyssa and has been a common thread throughout church history, rather than something uniquely restricted to post-​Reformation theology.100 Pilgrimage stood in tension with a monastic life that was committed to a site, a place, and a community. In addition, varied were the critics who found pilgrimage a convenient way to get out of obligations, make amends, and repay debts.101 Some medieval authorities frowned upon those who abandoned monasteries and the accompanying responsibilities

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to embark on pilgrimages. Overall, “the medieval debate about the nature of true pilgrimage both echoed and illustrated wider disputes within Christendom,” in particular the relationship between external and internal forms of observance, theological understanding, and popular religiosity.102 Pilgrimage was often the only excuse for seeing the world, and some pilgrims were accused of undertaking it for the sake of curiosity—​in contemporary parlance, of being tourists. Some Lutheran and low church quarters may see pilgrimage as involved with problematic teaching about grace and forgiveness and healing, as well as saints and relics. Pilgrimage in the Norwegian context highlights the paucity of Protestant theologies of pilgrimage, saints, or relics that provide more than just a repetition of Luther’s more polemic stances on these matters or an appropriation of Celtic or Ignatian spirituality.103 However, in Luther himself, Tomlin detects an ambivalent attitude as the Reformer comments on the practice of pilgrimage to Compostela, Aachen, Trier, and Jerusalem in “fairly neutral tones,”104 in 1518, arguing that valid reasons for pilgrimage include “a singular devotion to the honor of the saints, the glory of God, and his [sic] own edification.”105 Tomlin argues that Luther’s understanding of pilgrimage, like Jerome’s, was primarily about the motivations of pilgrims, that is, about the quality of pilgrimage. The motivation and manner of a pilgrim were key for distinguishing acceptable from unacceptable pilgrimages. Pilgrimage, according to Luther, should not be undertaken for any kind of merit before God. This would make pilgrimage spiritually harmful.106 Luther valued edification and the spiritual growth of the Christian and lamented the fact that few employ pilgrimages to remember the suffering of Christ on the cross. Tomlin argues that it was only during his later controversies with the papacy that Luther’s discourse on pilgrimage becomes more polemical and negative, especially because of the connection of the practice of pilgrimage with a late medieval Roman Catholic theology of merit and works.107 Luther believed that “in focusing on particular geographical locations, it could end up distracting attention from the places where God had chosen to make himself known. Luther laments the fact that so many

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Christians of his day troop off to Compostela or Rome, as if they will find God there, and as if he cannot be found within their own local church.”108 And indeed, today, a popular quote within the Lutheran discussion on pilgrimage in Norway is the Luther saying that the most important pilgrimage is the weekly pilgrimage to one’s home parish.109 Luther thus empowered and emphasized the local, arguing that all that is needed is nearby. In the Letter to Christian Nobility, he writes: “Let every man stay in his own parish, where he finds more than in all the shrines of pilgrimage, even though all shrines were one. Here we find baptism, the sacrament, preaching and our neighbor, and these are greater things than all the saints in heaven, for it is by God’s word and sacrament that all these have been made saints.”110 In the same text, however, Luther suggested a way in which a veneration of a saint is useful, namely, that their holiness serves “to the glory of God and as an example.”111 Luther thus articulated a doxological and pedagogical theology of sainthood. All in all, however, in both Luther and Calvin “the attack on pilgrimage is [ . . . ] more strictly speaking an attack on the abuse of pilgrimage, rather than on pilgrimage itself ”112 and thus consistent with historical critiques of some pilgrimage practices throughout Christian history. Luther did, however, disapprove of curiosity as a reason for pilgrimage and hence takes sides in that perennial tug of war between pilgrimage and tourism.113 Some, especially also in the Norwegian debate on the issue, have taken Luther’s side on this, while others realize the difficulty in drawing a clear line between spirituality and curiosity, or simply do not consider curiosity an ethical problem, but rather a virtue, perhaps even a theological virtue. The contemporary rediscovery of pilgrimage in Norway occurs in a Protestant context that shows both similarities and marked differences from the mainly Catholic pilgrimages of much of Europe. It is resurging as a Protestant pilgrimage, in ways that contribute to rethinking pilgrimage in other Protestant contexts.114 How is pilgrimage on the St. Olav Ways in particular shaped by its Protestant context? The following chapters will help shed light on this and related questions.

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Mapping the Pilgrimage Network

The summer of 2013 was the first season of my research for the Ritual and Democracy project. I began by having informal conversations with people and looking at the various institutions that support pilgrims in Norway. At this point, there were few existing guidebooks—​one in Norwegian, with rudimentary maps, and an English one that was reputed to be seriously out of date but in the process of being updated.1 My first two-​day attempt at pilgrimage in Norway in June 2013 left me conflicted. I had committed to doing several shorter segments due to teaching an online class at the same time, so I could not be too far from a computer. I wanted to go alone on the path and avoid other pilgrims, reasoning I would be able to think more and write more. When I arrived at the pilgrim center in Oslo, one of the two places of support for pilgrims in Norway, to get my pilgrim pass validated for the route to Nidaros and Trondheim, I was drawn into communitas, the casual affective relationships typical for pilgrimage, against my initial inclination. After noonday prayer in Gamle Aker Church to begin the pilgrimage, a middle-​aged German pilgrim attached himself to me, changing his route to fit mine (going the eastern vs. western route). I was his hesitant guide during his first two days on the route to Nidaros. He, too, it turns out, shepherded me, and entertained me with stories of his previous pilgrimages and his life. His self-​portrayal resembled the prototypical reluctant serial pilgrim that Martin Sheen’s character in The Way introduces: hesitant to embark on a pilgrimage, resistant to let it affect one’s own self and process, uninterested Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity. Marion Grau, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197598634.003.0004

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in the historic roots and narratives, getting drawn into it against one’s own intuition, then being transformed by the encounters with other pilgrims, and finally ending one pilgrimage by embarking on the next. This German pilgrim walked to make connections that are intentionally loose: he loved to meet people on the route and talk to them, exchange tips and tricks for the journey, and then move on when the time came. It was a light, friendly, mutually supportive relationship for a relatively short period of time, even sharing a hotel room with a perfect stranger to save some money. Pilgrims often engage in a loose form of bonding, supporting and protecting each other, but easily parting company as well. This encounter is characteristic of the liminal communitas pilgrims encounter. One might say that part of the liminality of the pilgrim experience is that encounters with other pilgrims are often brief but intense. This pilgrim, like Chaucer, and some of the novels about pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, had a working taxonomy of pilgrims, the different types of personalities one encounters and how they manifest on the path. While I had to get off the trail due to blisters, he walked on, and I saw him weeks later moving into Nidaros Cathedral at Olsok in the midst of other pilgrims. He started off with minimal knowledge about the route and nothing about St. Olav yet ended up in Nidaros walking through a corridor of hooded torch bearers with the train of clergy and pilgrims celebrating Olsok, the annual midnight vigil in the honor of the saint. I was positioned as one of the torch bearers, having begun a stint as a volunteer for the St. Olav’s Feast that year. One of the effects of the circumambulating method I employed was that I was able to switch places, from being a pilgrim to being a host or volunteer. This allowed for a deeper sense of connectivity and an unforced sense of participant observation. Most foreign pilgrims I met knew next to nothing about St. Olav or Nidaros, except for those that had read and can remember the typical two-​to three-​page thumbnail sketch most guidebooks devote to the topic. Though there may be statues or signs along the way, it is often only upon arrival at Nidaros Cathedral that the building, the services, and the presence of guides invite pilgrims into the landscape of memory that Nidaros Cathedral and its surroundings represent.

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At Oslo airport that year, I came across a commercial promoting pilgrimage to Nidaros, in the form of a slide on the screens overhead. It suggested that “There are many ways to get to Trondheim. Have you considered walking?”, with a link to the pilgrimage website. At an airport, this message can seem counterintuitive, despite the fact that, of course, most pilgrims arrive by airplane, one of the main ironies of most pilgrimages, undertaken in many instances by white, relatively wealthy, often retired persons.2 In the summer of 2013, pilgrimage seemed to be in the air throughout Norway. There were interviews with pilgrims on the local and national radio, and in the Christian daily newspaper Vårt Land. While the topic appeared frequently that summer, the actual number of pilgrims was still relatively low. That may be due to several issues. The pilgrimage route to Nidaros lacked the infrastructure that facilitates mass walking pilgrimages such as the one to Compostela: maps, guidebooks in several languages, open churches along the way, hostels and places to stay, and easy access to amenities and food along the route. During the period of my research, the number of guidebooks in various languages increased sharply, and the marking of routes improved considerably. In addition, three-​sided wooden rain shelters that allow a few sleepers (Gapahuk) helped bridge the gap between hostels that are at a relatively large distance from each other. There are efforts being made to improve the infrastructure and make Nidaros an important pilgrimage destination in Europe.3 A number of regjeringspilegrimer, government pilgrims from Riksantikvaren, institutions that preserve the cultural heritage of Norway, have walked or driven parts of the various pilgrimage routes to explore the possibilities for development. While they hope to expand the possibilities for pilgrimage and expose more people to natural and cultural treasures, they also advocate shorter forms of pilgrimage that include car and train journeys (aka in Norwegian as bilegrim and toggrim, or, in Lars Verket’s case, a kayaker who attempted to paddle the coastal route to the island Selja, the legendary site of St. Sunniva’s life and death in summer 2014, padle pilgrim). Increasingly, there are options available for local or shorter-​term pilgrims

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who cannot spare the approximately twenty-​eight days for the entire hike from Oslo to Trondheim, but need to settle for shorter trips.4 During that summer, I was working as a volunteer for the festival day of the Saint in Trondheim, and participated as a torch bearer during the St. Olav’s vigil. During the following week, I worked in beverage sales in one of the concert arenas, tapping beer together with about fifteen other volunteers. The advantage of being a volunteer is access to any event with room enough without buying a ticket. Being a volunteer offers community, as well as the broadest and most flexible access to the festival. Indeed, festivalnorge, the Norwegian subculture of festivals, could not exist without the many volunteers who do the legwork and staff the festivals. In one of the first conversations I had with a person involved in promoting pilgrimage in Norway, we talked about the route becoming a space in itself, a space that was, according to my conversation partner, an enhanced room, a better room than the church space. The conversation brought up the question about the relationship between churches and the route that connects them. The Norwegian term kirkerommet describes the spatiality of a church in both a literal or metaphorical way. It is used to reflect both on the church building and its architecture and setup, and the mental, spiritual, and intellectual room the church gives to believers, seekers, and other members of society—​can thus be contrasted to the route or way itself as a space which gathers a more diverse group of pilgrims than the average sanctuary. The church as an enclosed space, both physically and doctrinally, professionalized and owned by clergy and other church officials can thus be contrasted to the pilgrimage movement as a lay practice that seeks to find its own access to faith and history apart from the church rather than through it. Others see the space of the path not in contrast but in continuity with each other, a space where church actors and lay and government involvement are constantly renegotiated. When asked why they were on a pilgrimage rather than a hiking trip, people arriving at the Nidaros Pilegrimsgard (NPG) in Trondheim answered in several ways: It was the fact that there was a definite goal, a destination that was fixed that allowed them to just concentrate on getting there. The path relieved some from having to make choices, which in turn

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allowed them to relax, calming their overstimulated minds. It allowed them to focus on the basic motions of putting one foot in front of another, the basic mechanics, movements, and feeling of the body (and for some, the soul). The fact that a pilgrimage has a set goal, rather than a hiking trip where they felt many more decisions had to be made around accommodation, what to carry, and so on, was a way for these pilgrims to lower their stress level.

AN ALTERNATIVE PILGRIMAGE: A MULTIRELIGIOUS VENTURE

In the summer of 2014, I entered into a form of participant observation that grounded my academic self in the body self in some profound ways. Engaging with what Ronald Grimes calls “alternative ritual entrepreneurs”5 (here people who may create their own rituals, itineraries, and offer them to individuals and groups outside more official channels), I set out to capture a particular form of ritual bricolage by signing up for a group pilgrimage.6 The trip was cosponsored by Areopagos (a nongovernmental organization promoting interreligious dialogue and understanding and events focused on ecumenical spirituality and retreats) and the Church of Norway, and it was led by a former businessman and spiritual guru, who had the idea of doing a multireligious pilgrimage. A self-​taught spiritual leader, he shared pieces of an esoteric theory he called Ennea, featuring nine body and character types.7 He offered various exercises in this particular way of engaging physically in spiritual meaning-​making during this guided pilgrimage. Intrigued by the ideas behind this pilgrimage, and unsure what exactly could constitute a multireligious pilgrimage to a Christian destination, I signed up for nine days of the organized trip from Oppdal to Trondheim, ca. 160 km. At the end of it, I would be qualified to receive the Olavsbrev, the certificate for completing the final 100 km of the route.8 The logistics involved a cook who drove a truck with food supplies and the pilgrims’ luggage, beyond that which they carried with them during the day.

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Experiences along the various Nidaros pilgrimage routes exceed merely following in the footsteps of St. Olav (in the case of St. Olovsleden from Sweden or the Valldalsleden in Western Norway) or the footsteps of earlier pilgrims to Nidaros. Many pilgrims profess little knowledge about the saint beyond what is written in the guidebooks, and they are not always interested in the historical details. During the group pilgrimages I participated in, pilgrims rarely mentioned St. Olav, apart from noticing that we passed a number of St. Olav’s wells, as they are well marked and their historical significance is explained.9 St. Olav barely made an appearance until we came to Nidaros and heard about the history of the cathedral and the mystery of where the body of St. Olav may or may not have lain or might be today. This observation was confirmed by arriving pilgrims in Trondheim. The churches along the way (that is, kirkerommet), and the history, iconography, and spaces they provided, offered focal points for the journey. Along the path, historical markers point to a pre-​Christian past, or the historical location of a religious sect. Some flight routes from Norway to Sweden used by Norwegian and Jewish refugees during the Third Reich intersect pilgrimage routes. The pilgrimage priest, who was our fellow wanderer and guide to local knowledge was possessed of an encyclopedic knowledge of history, hymnody, and culture along the route and a singing voice that filled the churches we visited with hymns. The majority of the pilgrims seemed to appreciate this material as grist on the mill for the rewriting of their narratives, often described as wanting to focus on “the inner journey,” a term I kept discussing with them throughout the journey. It seemed that the concept of “inner journey” helped narrate and deepen encounter with sites and sights for the pilgrims. This was the case despite the fact that some of them professed that they were estranged from the church, but interested in a spiritual way of life, whatever that meant. Over time, I gathered that though they articulated a certain skepticism of “the church” (meaning the historically dominant Church of Norway), they loved the hymns and church buildings, and they had no problem engaging in popular forms of Christianity and what to me as a theologian were clearly “churchy” things. I had expected the group to be more wary

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of priestly authority and narrative, and more resentful of not being able to access the sites in their own personal ways. Instead, despite the delays and the many words this meant into the silence that some also wanted to keep, it seemed to help these pilgrims process the deeper layers of the path. Many of the pilgrims were unprepared for arriving in Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, and many in the “multireligious” group were quite taken with the beautifully executed liturgy, presided over by the female dean of the cathedral. Meanwhile, every step I took brought some form of physical pain caused by skeletal and myofascial imbalances with radiating sciatic pain from hip to ankle and feet. The constant discomfort brought me quickly to the brink, both physically and emotionally. I thought about quitting every evening for the first few days. But I felt I had no choice but to continue or else lose all respect and credibility. I was unwilling to experience this much pain for something that was, after all, just research. At the same time, I gave in to the peer pressure not to quit and thereby lose credibility as a scholar who was unable to handle a little pain and who gave up at the first sign of difficulty. Norway is a small society, and I was concerned about how news of my failure would spread among academics and church folk, as I had already discovered several shared acquaintances with some of the pilgrims. The pilgrims in the group were sanguine and observed my teary, snotty, and pathetic passage through the liminal space with calm and compassion. One of the guides put a gel plaster on my blisters, another massaged my feet and back, other pilgrims brought me food and drink, one carried my backpack, and one gave up her single room so I could rest privately in a communal hostel. When I observed I was embarrassed to be so pathetic, they observed that I was going through a classic initiation process for the new pilgrim. This trip was intended to be research, but at least momentarily, I had lost all energy and patience for “observation.” My fellow pilgrims were seasoned by their own prior experiences. The pilgrim priest accompanying us suggested after a particularly grinding day not to decide to quit in the evening, but rather to see how I felt in the morning. I snorted cynically,

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resentful of his constant cheerfulness, seemingly unfazed by exhaustion. I felt better in the morning and tried to walk one more day. And that is how I made it through the first few days, and managed to complete the 160 km trip to Trondheim. Several pilgrims assured me that now that I knew the pain of it, I had actually entered fully into the existential shape of the ritual. I had shifted from an observer and questioning inquirer into pilgrimage to an actual pilgrim within the “existential communitas” of this particular group, which resulted quite palpably in increased trust, and several pilgrims opened up more deeply about their own lives and experience on the path. The “native informants” trusted me now. I still was not amused, though I appreciated the effect. This episode exemplifies how certain experiences, interactions, and rituals can help one transition into some of the particular experiences generally related to being a pilgrim, and that appear at the fluid boundary between the rituals and practices of pilgrimage and those of, say, hiking, day hiking, or being a tourist. I underwent an informal initiation rite that unsettled certain expectations and, in particular, disrupted patterns around comfort and pain, challenged ideas of independence, and proposed instead mutual interdependence with other pilgrims. Entering the pilgrimage experience was painful, and my weakness and need to rely on other pilgrims embarrassed me. Yet the reality of my pain and emotion, one pilgrim ventured, would gain me everybody’s respect rather than risk losing it. As an informal rite of passage, it helped an outsider transition to a more insider status, and it facilitated a process of disciplining an individual pilgrim into a greater fellowship of pilgrims. The only aspect of this particular alternative organized pilgrimage that could rightfully be named “multireligious” was the last few kilometers into Trondheim where the pilgrims were joined by a delegation from Trondheim’s Interfaith Council. This apart from a Buddhist monk who joined us for a day, ruining his sandals in the Norwegian bog, turning his eyes away from the crazy Norwegians bathing naked or scantily clad in a mountain lake, and confounded by pilgrims interrupting their walk

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randomly to stop and feed on mountain berries or sit in the hot sun, rather than in the shade. I, mind you, was in too much pain to ask my learned and critical questions about what the ideal of multireligious pilgrimage meant here, and who got to shape it, fill it with content, and who was invited to participate and plan, and who was not. Upon inquiry it emerged that the plan had been to have more pilgrims from other religious traditions, but little room was given to the question of how one would frame why people of other religions should come along on a walk to a Christian pilgrimage destination, or what that would have meant for interreligious relations on a more formal level. But as an experiment it highlighted questions around what kind of pilgrimage could be open for not only ecumenical but interreligious bridge-​building. For the last couple of days before the group arrived in Trondheim, we were joined by a Danish, a German, and a French pilgrim. It became clear that with their various languages they had unequal skills to understand the explanations and information we were given by our guides. If it was in Norwegian, only those speaking Norwegian and the Danish woman understood anything, the German may have picked up a phrase here and there, whereas the French pilgrim who professed to going on pilgrimage mainly for fitness purposes had only French and so even those of us who tried to translate into English did not accomplish much in the way of communication. He hung around in a looser, quieter manner, but clearly attached to us as long as it was both convenient and comfortable. The flexibility of bonds on the pilgrimage was well illustrated as he came close and yet remained distant and in his own world, illustrating the meandering nature of communitas as attachments appear, draw near, and dissolve effortlessly. This communitas extends both to pilgrims among each other but also includes, to some extent, those who encounter them. Pilgrims report that local people going about their own lives—​often without prompting—​help them find their way, invite them to sit, offer coffee or water, or make suggestions about facilities and routes. The pilgrim communitas involves a kind of implied trust, hospitality, and friendliness that appears removed from the relations that would be offered a

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tourist. While cruise ships and the hordes that are disgorged by them are increasingly finding resistance by the local population of tourist hotspots such as Bergen, Flåm, and Geiranger, pilgrims—​far smaller in number and traveling at an entirely different pace—​are often genuinely welcomed.10 Pilgrims often share the frustration with cruise ships and mass tourism with locals. During the summer of 2015, my perspective on the entire pilgrimage network changed radically. I moved from Berkeley, California, to Oslo, Norway, to change jobs and places of residence. From here on out, I was looking at pilgrimage in the land I am now calling home, not merely spending my summers in Norway to do research. My own chosen migration to Norway occurred at the same time as some of the worst of the refugee crisis in Syria. Bodies move across space, fleeing from terror that still is sponsored and funded by Western and Saudi sources and oil dependency. Just months after I moved to Norway, a New York real estate tycoon announced his plans to run for the US presidency. And discourses around migration and ethnicity became increasingly affected by neo-​fascist, divisive rhetoric. During the summer season of 2016, I was unable to pay more than passing attention to ongoing developments in infrastructure, other than a brief stint, taking the train to Trondheim and spending two and a half full days at the Olavsfestdagene. This time, I was neither a pilgrim nor a volunteer, but simply an observer floating about various city locations. By then, I knew enough people in the network that rather than making appointments, I assumed I would run into some and be able to engage in casual conversations. Being present during the two busiest days meant both the maximum possibility of running into people but also meant those involved in the festival would be at their busiest. During this quick immersion trip, I used the hours of travel to write and refocus my attention for a time on the Norwegian pilgrimage network. Like many pilgrims, I was entering and leaving the network, depending on my other obligations, doing pieces of the route, and sampling occasional experiences as I was able to.

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RECONSTRUCTING A PILGRIMAGE NETWORK IN CONTEMPORARY NORWAY

As we have seen earlier, establishing sacred sites was a way of consolidating the Christianization of Norway as a unified kingdom. As noted, Christian ideas and artifacts had already found their way into the territories that only later were officially Christianized, and Christian beliefs had been introduced on a smaller scale along the coast, where Christian ideas may have coexisted with traditional beliefs depending on the exposure and the particular history of the various communities.11 The churches established on these coasts were often built close to water, where row and sailboats could easily be drawn on land for church services and to celebrate the rituals of life. Geographical isolation posed problems for the project of national unification under a Christian monarch and Christian law. For this challenge “pilgrimage was the remedy,”12 a process by which the local became translocal via the creation of what the Turners called “interpenetrating ellipses” of pilgrimage sites, creating a unifying narrative of piety and national belonging.13 In St. Olav’s case, multiple pilgrimage sites emerged. According to the saint’s life, at the Battle of Stiklestad, Olav, mortally wounded, leaned against a stone, which is where, the story goes, upon two further mortal wounds, he dropped his sword and prayed for his enemies. The site of this stone, it is assumed, is where Stiklestad Church was built to mark the death of the king.14 Already by 1070, Adam of Bremen recorded the arrival of pilgrims from afar to Trondheim, hailing primarily from Scandinavia or places where Scandinavians had settled. London and York, for example, had a sizable group of Anglo-​Scandinavians.15 St. Sunniva, too, was known beyond local and regional context, and for a time there were a number of churches in Sweden that featured her iconography, including the German cities Lübeck and Cologne.16 Yet, St. Olav, for various reasons, reached a greater popularity both at home and abroad. The practice of pilgrimage to these sites declined sharply after the Reformation, and some of the sites and shrines were destroyed, while

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others remained. As previously mentioned, there was no shortage of critiques of the more problematic sides of pilgrimage, including from such figures as Meister Eckhart, Thomas a Kempis, and Johannes Tauler.17 But it is not until the Reformation that these critiques are focused not only on pilgrimage but also on the system of hospitality pilgrims depended on, namely the monasteries. After the Council of Trent, the developing confessional churches are distinguished from Roman Catholic practice, and being a pilgrim becomes a feature of the Counterreformation. Meanwhile, the combination of Reformation and the secularization of monastic properties led to an almost complete cessation of pilgrimage to most of the larger European pilgrimage destinations.18 From the mid-​ twentieth century on, a constellation of interests converged to reanimate the practice of pilgrimage and thus the pilgrimage networks in both Catholic and Protestant countries in Europe. In the case of Santiago de Compostela, this included the promotion of National Catholicism under Franco, the promptings of the Church itself, the sponsorship of New Age adherents inspired by the writings of Paulo Coelho and even the participation of long-​ distance hikers and cyclists, who are taking advantage of the ease of travel now available within the European Union.19 In the case of Norway, government efforts focused on bringing various sites in Norway under the umbrella of a single “pilgrimage system”20 focused on St. Olav and Nidaros. Prioritizing the St. Olav Ways increased the profile of pilgrimage in Norway in general, though other routes in Valdres, from Seljord to Røldal, to Selja, have been less prominent and are only slowly becoming better known inside and outside of Norway.21 More recently, members of Innovation Norway, a government think tank began marketing the St. Olav Ways and invited journalists and lifestyle bloggers on a guided four-​day trip of the tasty bits of the route. Dates for the first contemporary pilgrims to arrive in Trondheim vary somewhat. There are reports that a group of pilgrims departed from Selanger, Sweden, in 1958.22 Locations close to or with historic connections

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to Trondheim were the first to send out modern pilgrims.23 A change in the Swedish constitution that signified the Swedish Church’s disestablishment from the state sparked a pilgrim movement, marked with a long pilgrimage visiting all Swedish dioceses and recapturing Christian history in Sweden by walking from location to location.24 Thus, pilgrims from Sweden via the Rombo pilgrimage route started arriving during the late 1950s. More than twenty years later, in 1977, the first organized Norwegian group of seventy-​one participants organized by the Norwegian YMCA arrived. The Church of Norway became active in reviving pilgrimage, around 1980, to meet the demands of increased pilgrim activity.25 Norwegian pilgrimage activist Eivind Luthen had promoted pilgrimage from Norway, primarily to Compostela, since the 1980s, through seminars, lectures, and interviews.26 In 1991, Luthen published a book on pilgrimage to Nidaros,27with rudimentary information about the paths. In 1996, he founded Pilegrimsfelleskapet St. Jakob, its primary mission being the support of Norwegian pilgrims on their way to Santiago, but with an eye toward pilgrimage in Norway.28 After 1990, the Church of Norway began a project to redevelop the largely forgotten paths to Trondheim, and soon the Ministry of the Environment and the Directorate for Natural and Cultural History (Riksantikvaren) retraced and reconstructed the route further.29 A pilot project, Pilotprosjektet Pilegrimsleden, was developed and ran from 1994 to 1997. Its stated purpose was to introduce contemporary hikers to the historic pilgrimage traditions, and to seek regional cooperation for marking the path with milestones, markers, and signs. Project leaders proposed signed agreements with landowners whose properties the future trail would cross and who might be interested in hosting pilgrims.30 The development of a transregional trail with consistent signage needed cooperation from many local farmers and landowners. Much of the language used in the project description referred to pilgrimage as a part of Norwegian cultural heritage, framing pilgrimage in terms of the secular state, at the same time as church and state cooperated in the process.31

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Yet in official government documents, the vocabulary and terminology of tourism, cultural heritage, and the production of value (verdiskapning), an oracular term in Norwegian public discourse, indicates a strange blend of discourses and purposes, something rather common, as it turns out, for many pilgrimage networks throughout history. Arne Bakken was priest at Nidaros Cathedral and was present when the first pilgrims started to reappear and until 1998, and a permanent position as pilgrim priest was added. He was the first person to have that job in the Norwegian pilgrimage network, and he has contributed substantially to historical and theological reflections about it.32 Finn Wagle was the bishop of the Diocese of Nidaros from 1991 to 2008, and there are a number of staples in his writing and speaking of a theological appropriation of St. Olav that have percolated into contemporary iterations. During his time as bishop, Wagle articulated a vision of a “Nidaros-​spiritualitet”33 that that underlies and informs the religious and cultural programming of the Olavsfest. While Wagle does not often delve into the more difficult aspects of the tradition, such as the violence and the fight to extend Olav’s rule, some of the themes Wagle lifts up have become common in contemporary reconstructions of St. Olav. Wagle emphasizes the ecumenical nature of Olav’s heritage: his life’s travels connect three major church families -​ Eastern churches, Roman churches, and Irish-​Celtic churches.34 Wagle thus moves away from a narrow nationalist interpretation, arguing that Olav’s is a story that speaks about the local place deeply connected to economic, cultural, and religious exchanges that occurred during the Viking age, including Olav’s travels to Normandy, where Norse ancestors had first raided and then settled and intermingled with the local population,35 and to the British Isles, where Irish and Celtic heritages were strong.

VOLUNTEERS AND PILGRIMAGE ENTHUSIASTS

Volunteers are another group crucial to the functioning of the pilgrimage route network, providing support to pilgrims staffing the centers

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that support and receive pilgrims. Pilegrimsfelleskapet St. Jakob is primarily focused on helping Norwegian pilgrims interested in going to Santiago de Compostela. Eivind Luthen, the pioneer who founded the Pilegrimsfelleskap St. Jakob, an association that gathered Norwegians who wanted to walk the Camino Santiago, was crucial in the early period of the redevelopment of pilgrimage by Norwegians and in Norway. Luthen wrote one of the earliest available guidebooks for the contemporary walking route to Trondheim. As pilgrimage began to revive in Northern Europe, the number of pilgrim associations supporting pilgrimage in Norway grew. A few years after the St. Olav Ways began to be opened for a larger public, the St. Hallvard Association in Oslo, the St. Olav Association in Trondheim, and the St. Sunniva Association in Selje were established. The St. Olav Pilgrim Association functions as a type of umbrella. Most of the more newly founded groups have entered under this national fellowship as local groups—​such as St. Maria in Sarpsborg, St. Olav in Oppdal, St. Thomas in Valdres, regional networks such as those in Rennebu, Toten, and a pilgrimage network for the Østerdal routes based at Lia Gård. These groups strive to bring together the volunteer-​based work with the church’s work, paid staff, and government funding and plans. People involved in these associations reported some degree of conflict around whether these volunteer-​driven groups should be locally focused or gather under a national umbrella. Some organizers wanted to keep a local focus, whereas others sought to build national groups. Umbrella organizations offer a formalization that gives greater independence from trailblazer personalities who claim to speak for the entire pilgrim movement in Norway or who are perceived as attempting to police who is a true pilgrim and who is not. Most of the associations, however, have sought some degree of cooperation and exchange with other pilgrim organizations. A combination of volunteer and salaried work serve to make the network viable. It means many people are involved, and perhaps predictably, there can be personality conflicts and symptoms that suggest competition about the power to define and shape the direction of

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pilgrimage in Norway. Some volunteers have reached legendary status within the network, some being given the title of “pilegrimsledenes engel,” the angel of the pilgrimage route. Morten Dahler, for example, is a volunteer who has walked and supported pilgrims with food, transportation, and emotional support for at least twenty years.36 At the time of writing, none of the actors could maintain or support, much less grow pilgrimage activities, without the contribution of others. This does not mean the cooperation is free from conflicts. Other volunteers have been suspicious of the contributions of church and government, insisting it is the unpaid work of the volunteers that represents the true pilgrim spirit, suspecting other actors of professionalizing or commercializing the joint venture.

PATH-​M AKING AND NATION-​B UILDING

Over the course of its history, however, the Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT) has served an increasingly urbanized Norwegian population, who are the most vigorous users of its hiking paths. DNT has promoted institutions and reproduced a kind of “nationalised landscape,” prioritizing a particular form of activity and marketing and appealing to certain types of people.37 Similar challenges affect the pilgrimage routes, especially in this early phase of reestablishment. How much of this culture of pilgrimage is dedicated to fostering a kind of national romanticism that identifies certain types of religious expressions with national identity and can tend to foreclose certain other forms of meaning-​making? Pilgrimages tend to be deeply rooted in local history and local culture, as well as constructions of nation, religion, and culture. By including pilgrimage routes in the hiking maps the DNT publishes in a standout color and marked with a specific label, hike, pilgrimage, and secularized cultural heritage are blended together in interesting ways. In fact, the DNT has become a collaborative partner of those developing the pilgrimage routes.38 Pilgrims along the Gudbrandsdalen, the most used and most developed path in the network so far, can increasingly enjoy

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signs on matters of geology, natural history, cultural and religious history, folklore, and even art exhibits installed along the route. Hence, the inner monologue or the conversations between pilgrims are increasingly supplemented by additional input that helps explain the landscape and history one walks through, a kind of modern replacement of the oral history and folklore it reports on (etymologies of notable landscape features, etc.) and a surrogate for or supplement of the narratives of pilgrimage guides and priests. As with other pilgrimage routes, only a small number of pilgrims seems interested in the depths of historical context of the saint, the geography, or the history of a pilgrimage network. An informal inquiry among pilgrims arriving at pilgrim centers shows that many know only what the guidebook says until they arrive in Trondheim, where they might pick up some more details, depending on how involved they get in the services at the cathedral or whether they arrive around the saint’s day, where there is more explicit mention of Olav Haraldsson. A German pilgrim sought conversation with other pilgrims about St. Olav, but, reported that only about 10 percent of those he spoke to knew anything or showed any interest in the subject matter. Most of the pilgrims I spoke with know the basic information given in the guidebook. What historic information pilgrims pick up along the way is generally incidental, informal, and basic. The sacred geography pilgrims traverse in the wake of those that have mapped the route communicated through maps, signs, guidebooks, and occasionally through live interpreters and guides.

STEPS TOWARD A NATIONAL NETWORK

Olav Tryggvason attempted to introduce Christianity to the Trondheim region, but eventually failed. Placed at the intersection between a large fjord and the slow-​flowing river Nid, Trondheim was a well-​selected location for the logistics of trade and transport. It provided a defensible location with water on three sides, as well as a political counterweight to the local center of power in Lade, and the holder of great regional influence,

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Ladejarlen. Tryggvason is credited with having given Trondheim the rights to a market and built a royal seat as well as the St. Clement’s Church, the oldest church in Trondheim. It is also the first site of pilgrimage to St. Olav, whose shrine was initially located there, before the building of Christ Church in 1080.39 The founding of Trondheim is dated to 997. In 1997, Trondheim’s millennial anniversary energized many to push for the redevelopment of the pilgrimage to Nidaros. Numerous events during the celebrations focused on pilgrim themes in music, film, city walks, and the like.40 By summer 1997, the trail from Oslo to Trondheim through the Gudbrandsdalen was mostly prepared and marked, and the trail was opened that summer. A sustainable maintenance plan, however, had not yet been developed, and a national initiative that oversaw the whole length of the trail fell through. Thus, parts of the trail grew over due to tensions about how the trail out of Oslo should be developed and maintained—​along the historic trade routes, or through a region that included a site important in St. Olav’s life. Unclear responsibilities and tensions that were worked out publicly in newspapers left some pilgrims insecure.41 In the absence of clear national support from various agencies, the Church of Norway stepped in to support pilgrimage centers and priests regionally, especially in the Diocese of Hamar and Nidaros. A new pilot project, supported by the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren), was launched to promote verdiskapning –​ the creation of value -​a keyword that signals the development of value in terms of natural and cultural resources. Its purpose -​was to promote increased use of the path, to upgrade the path, and to develop the possibility of increasing the economic benefits to local communities (who were often hesitant to embrace the responsibilities of maintaining the route). Trond Giske, then minister of culture, who had himself walked the Camino Santiago,42 said that he would like Nidaros to become the Camino of the North.43He commissioned a report on the theme of pilgrimage,44 which featured a study—​the so-​called Uddu report45 The report proposed to develop the infrastructure of the various routes and

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sites from Oslo to Trondheim. Per Kvistad Uddu’s optimistic report recommended that Norwegian pilgrimage be built from the bottom up, integrating the work of local activists with that of government and church stakeholders.46 This report was sent to Giske, who picked up the impetus of Uddu’s report, seeming to accept it nearly in full. Giske’s speech in May 2008 seemed to signal a quick implementation of Uddu’s suggestions. Some of these developments combine economic, social, religious, and cultural aspects and refused to make a strong distinction between pilgrimage and tourism. This engaged the ire of pilgrimage pioneer Eivind Luthen, who felt that it betrayed a more narrowly defined notion of the term pilgrim.47Historian of religion Lisbeth Mikaelsson suspected that the Trondheim-​based Uddu was too biased toward the Trondheim and Trondelag region, and inclined to promote a narrative that put Nidaros at the center of pilgrimage activity in Norway—​to the detriment of sites like Selja, for example.48 Others hold, however, that many of Uddu’s suggestions have, in fact, been implemented by Giske and subsequent ministers of culture. Meanwhile, Uddu’s hopes for the pilgrimage to be economically viable have not yet come to pass. Many volunteers in the network suggested it would be difficult to maintain the network without the labor of love of many unsalaried enthusiasts each summer. In summer 2016, the National Pilgrimage Center (NPS, established in 2013) was made a department under Nidaros Domkirkes Restaureringsarbeider (NDR—​Nidaros Cathedral Restoration Workshop). This a move surprised some as it further cemented Trondheim as the primary location for pilgrim practices in Norway.49 Though those working in Nidaros Pilgrim Center and NDR may have found this solution to be natural,50 others worried that the reaffirmation of the primacy of St. Olav and of Nidaros would overshadow other regions and pilgrimage sites in Norway. Over the time of this study, though, more information and infrastructural resources have become available, and the geography of the Norwegian pilgrimage network is expanding and becoming more decentralized.

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HIGH-​P ROFILE PILGRIMS

Norway continues to be a constitutional monarchy, a democracy with a monarchy that functions as a symbol of unity. Pilgrimage in Norway increased further in public profile in 2002, when Prinsesse Märtha Louise and her husband-​to-​be Ari Behn went on a short pilgrimage, just days prior to their televised wedding in Nidaros Cathedral.51 In their co-​written book Fra Hjerte til Hjerte (From Heart to Heart),52 the couple reflected on their pilgrimage. Although symbolically they walked toward the resting place of St. Olav, Norway’s eternal king, their itinerant narrative, like many accounts of pilgrimage, is multi-​layered. As they narrate the path, they weave together many impressions -​pre-​ Christian, Christian, pagan, scientific, and historic material. The text weaves together pilgrim life, Norwegian folklore, biblical texts and the sermon preached at their wedding in Nidaros Cathedral.53 One section describes the journey as “a pilgrimage towards the cross in Nidaros and a meeting with a forest troll and a magician.”54 In the book, they thus emerge as “post-​secular pilgrims,”55 unafraid to blend religious and secular elements in their journey. Like most pilgrims, the royal couple seems to have been seeking an inner balance in harmony with nature and tradition, with Christianity providing mostly an aesthetic context for the pilgrims’ experiences in a way that is distinct from prior forms of pilgrimage.56 At least for some, pilgrimage in modern Protestant Norway manifests as a search for religious and national roots, and a focus on the “inner journey.” Even professed atheists or secular persons may set out on pilgrimage, rather than just a hike or walk, and find that the distance covered is not just one in kilometers but contains an inner movement of thought and experience. During summer 2013, Knut Olav Åmås, then culture and debate editor for Aftenposten, a major Norwegian newspaper, wrote an editorial about his participation in an eight-​day long guided pilgrimage in Valdres.57 In an interview with the Christian newspaper Vårt Land, Åmås, a self-​identified atheist, noted that he was so profoundly affected by the pilgrimage that he cried at its conclusion. He further commented that he

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and his partner signed up right after completing the trip to do it again the year after.58 His story echoes the many narratives of new pilgrims, starting in a cynical mode followed by a kind of “conversion experience.” The experience of walking pilgrimage may crack pilgrims open, not so much to any doctrinal content of faith, but to the effect of the experience. They may experience the physical impact of walking on the body, what the Turners call “existential communitas,” the encounter with landscape and cultural history, or entering into layers of narrative, path upon path. Aasmundtveit writes: “The pilgrim moves through history as they walk the path in the present. Perhaps one might imagine that history is tied to place, to the places where particular things have happened. That these places are something more than themselves, more than ‘beautiful’ or ‘ugly’, but that they are bearers of their own narrative.”59

SUPPORT SYSTEMS OF THE PILGRIMAGE NETWORK: GOVERNMENTAL AND CHURCH INFRASTRUCTURE

Further afield, Denmark, Sweden,60 and Norway have established pilgrimage centers, staffed by pilgrimage priests and tasked with information, promotion, and support of pilgrimage and pilgrims.61 Sweden now has several pilgrimage centers, such as Masthuggskyrkan in Gothenborg, the St. Birgitta Monastery in Vadstena, and the Stift at Lund. Increasingly, routes are connected visually and narratively through guides and pilgrims who have traveled them. People do not only take the “standard route” through Gudbrandsdalen, and shorter, local pilgrimages are proliferating, offering different angles and perspectives. The Norwegian government, especially the Department of Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren), was key in formalizing and promoting the Norwegian pilgrimage network. Groups or persons who want a particular path recognized and included in the network are free to apply for support and make a case for a particular route to be included. This process is often preceded by a study and by the designation of government

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project money to execute such a study. During the time of my study, the number of officially recognized paths has grown, with yet others still going through the government approval process.62 This has meant that the official route map from 2012 looks different from the route map in 2020. Remapping the pilgrimage system reopened historic routes that were defunct, linking them up to other routes and making them accessible to a larger public. A central aspect of government support for pilgrimage has been the establishment of pilgrimage centers. The NPS acts as a clearinghouse and hub for the threefold work of the development of pilgrimage: environment—​ the physical structure, nature, cultural heritage, landscape, and outdoor life; the church—​pilgrimage routes as an idea: traditions of pilgrimage, pilgrim life, and church life; and economic sustainability—​(pilgrimage as a resource for local businesses and tourism, housing, feeding, and transport of pilgrims, etc.).63 Staff members have the mission to stimulate, guide, and promote the governmentally approved pilgrimage routes and oversee the regional pilgrimage centers.64 They also produce the statistics and annual reports that gather the available data. This approach shows that the government framework treats the religious and secular aspects of pilgrimage as interlaced and related, although the official rhetoric often highlights the cultural heritage and economic development possibilities involved, sometimes even to the exclusion of the religious history or present. Thus pilgrim centers and priests often become the liaisons between various local stakeholders interested in the development of pilgrimage as a way to strengthen local infrastructure, churches, economics, and communities.65 Trondheim is by some seen as the “spiritual capital” of Norway.66 Therefore, it made sense to a number of stakeholders to locate the NPS in Trondheim. It is a purely administrative office and is not open to the public. It was established permanently in 2013 but at that time was still administrated by the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren).67 In 2014 a board was established and staff were hired. Initially, the route through Gudbrandsdalen, was promoted to the exclusion of other routes related to St. Olav. This means that pilgrimage sites in

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Selja and Røldal became sidelined. This repeated the historical overshadowing of St. Sunniva by the already dominant royal saint St. Olav.68

PILGRIM CENTERS AND PILGRIM STATISTICS

In addition to the NPS, there are six pilgrimage centers in Norway (Oslo, Hamar, Granavollen, Dale-​Gudbrand, Dovrefjell, Nidaros-​Trondheim, and Stiklestad). Their mission is to provide information and support to pilgrims, helping them to plan and mark their journeys. Pilgrims receive stamps in their pilgrim passports there, documenting their progress. Three of the centers (Hamar, Dale-​Gudbrand, and Nidaros-​ Trondheim) also offer accommodation to pilgrims. Two of these are located along the most popular route through Gudbrandsdalen. All centers are staffed with one or several pilgrim priests and administrative staff running the operations. During the pilgrimage season they are supported by summer volunteers, often experienced pilgrims, who receive, register, and offer hospitality, often including conversation to pilgrims who come through. The Nidaros Pilgrim Center (NPG) in Trondheim is one example. It was established in 2008 and is housed in a building near Nidaros Cathedral and facing the river Nid.69 In 2018, NPG offered forty beds, twenty-​seven of which are reserved for pilgrims at a reduced rate of 300 NOK per night, while additional beds are available for 800 NOK, via an online booking website.70 The need to pay rent means the center has financial pressures to perform and receive high occupancy rates, and in order to operate near capacity; the center caters to tourists as well as arriving long-​distance pilgrims. Over the years, employees have expressed concerns about the center’s financial challenges and pressures, having to do with needing to be available to incoming (and possibly not preregistered) pilgrims for a cheap rate while filling up as many beds as possible to break even.71 In 2005, Knut Andresen reported that there was no registration of pilgrims coming to Nidaros until at least that time, except for sporadic entries into the guest book inside the cathedral.72 The establishment of

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NPG , the Nidaros Pilgrim Center, in 2008 and a crew of volunteers to staff the pilgrim’s office created a more viable and structured interface with pilgrims. Various forms of statistics over pilgrims were developed and refined over time.73 NPG’s statistics may not capture all pilgrims, due to the variation of types and distances. All may not get their final credential and Olavsbrev, the confirmation that they have walked more than 100 km.74 It is often assumed by both staff and volunteers that they only see a fraction of the pilgrims: those that want a stamp and an Olavsbrev (Olav letter) as a credential for their trip.75 Others may stay at hostels and hotels around town. In addition, not all pilgrims check in at the same center. This means the statistics kept by the center are most useful for tracking trends and rough, rather than exact, numbers. Statistics, though often made for administrative and funding purposes, track the growth or lack thereof of the pilgrimage system. Since the route system is relatively new and continues to be under development, numbers are also used to assess further planning and funding. Given these caveats, the number of long-​distance pilgrims, putatively “authentic pilgrims,” increased slowly but steadily over the years of this study to around triple the number. However, the scale of Norwegian pilgrimage is rather different from that of the Camino; that is, we are talking about far smaller numbers and a large increase of pilgrims during the time of the research. Hence, in 2012, 165 long-​distance pilgrims departed from Oslo, and in 2019 there were 618. From 2017 to 2018, there was a 28 percent increase in long-​distance pilgrims (from 408 to 524) and a 12 percent increase in credentials for having gone at least 160 km (from 1040 to 1170).76 When taking together both long-​distance and short-​distance pilgrims, the numbers go from around 900 in 2012 and 2013, slowly increasing to 2,674 in 2017, and to 2,971 in 2019.77 One of the most useful numbers is the number of Olav credentials for long-​distance pilgrims and the demographics attached to that.78 The number of Olav letter credentials rose from 580 in 2012 to 1,276 in 2019; i.e. the number more than doubled during the research period.79 A consistent majority of pilgrims, around 70 percent, use the Gudbrandsdalen route, and around 20 percent use St. Olav’s Path, which departs from the eastern coast of Sweden.

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While there was initially a concern that most pilgrims were of over fifty, the year 2015 saw a noticeable increase in pilgrims under thirty. This seems to indicate that pilgrims are getting younger and the popularity of pilgrimage is spreading across different age groups. The increased use of short-​distance pilgrimages appears to lower the threshold for other age groups. Shorter guided pilgrimages in the Trondheim region gather between 1,000 and 1,500 additional pilgrims.80 From 2015 through 2018, the numbers show a slight numerical majority of women (55 percent) to men (45 percent) who use the center, but data on gender are not consistently recorded and absent from the documents I was able to obtain for 2019.81 When it comes to nationality, most pilgrims who travel via Oslo come from Germany (40 percent), Norway, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, and around 5 percent from the United States. Numbers via Sweden have Norwegians as the highest percentage (53 percent), thereafter Swedish pilgrims, Dutch, German, and American pilgrims. Why these countries in particular? One possibility is that these are countries that are either majority Protestant and Western European, or that these are pilgrims who have access to the languages the existing guidebooks are written in. In 2016, 20 percent of all pilgrims timed their pilgrimage so that they arrived on or before July 28, in time for Olsok, the feast of the saint.82 Most pilgrims traveling alone were under thirty, while other pilgrims appear to prefer to travel in groups of two.83 In addition, many pilgrims meet others along the way and form small, informal groups for mutual company and support—​one of the ways in which the communitas the Turners described is palpable for walking pilgrims. The summer of 2020 was strongly affected by COVID-​19, and the health and travel concerns reduced numbers to a trickle, despite the fact that, unlike the Camino Santiago, the St. Olav Ways system did not have to come to a complete standstill.84 Observers so far report an increase in Norwegians who are choosing long-​distance pilgrimage as one of the options for in-​country vacations during COVID-​19 travel restrictions, as well as Danes and Germans who entered Norway after initial travel restrictions were lifted.

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LOCAL STAKEHOLDERS AND HOSTS

Pilgrims are not self-​sufficient, but must rely on those who abide along the way, those who remain in place in order to offer hospitality to those who journey.85 They require the support of people, institutions, and informal arrangements to make their travels possible. Many forms of support—​ providing food, shelter, and other necessities—​overlap with those of tourism. Others are dedicated to supporting pilgrimage as such. Just as during the medieval period an extensive network of support for pilgrims developed, today, a number of institutions, pilgrim associations, and individual actors exist to support modern pilgrims. The network includes government agencies, the Church of Norway, retreat centers, local and regional governmental units and businesses, nongovernmental organizations, religious communities, politicians, teachers, activists, farmers and ranchers, volunteers, activists, immigrants, guides, and pilgrimage priests, centers and offices, festival planners, local hosts, tourism providers, guides and interpreters, researchers, cultural agents, artists, musicians, and many others. Pilgrim priests and centers assist in framing pilgrimage as a ritual, facilitating the exposure to services, blessings, and a general atmosphere where religion and spirituality, faith and the lack thereof are able to be thematized and engaged. Farmers, ranchers, and those who own local businesses that benefit from the added customer base that pilgrimage brings, including those who host pilgrims as they pass through local areas, are also involved in sustaining the pilgrimage and making it feasible by agreeing to let the path go through their lands, by maintaining signs and paths, and by offering various other kinds of services. Among participants in the pilgrimage network, hosts play a crucial role. They are the persons who, face to face, receive and materially support pilgrims on their way. Eduardo Chemin proposes that “hosts are instrumental in the creation and maintenance of the ethos of the pilgrimage, as they are often influential (charismatic) persons in their own right.”86 Such persons can also be found in the pilgrimage network in Norway, some of them hosts, others volunteers, and others guides, priests, and

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leaders. Most hosts provide hospitality to pilgrims in addition to other professional duties. Some are experience that they are expected to perform certain “genuine” experiences for people seeking a simpler, purer life.87 Hosts may wonder whether the workload involved in hosting pilgrims pays off in the end. Several hosts I encountered in the network spoke openly to me and other pilgrims about the financial stresses of hosting, including subtle pressure from some pilgrims for what they called a “tourist” level of service, as some exploit the pilgrim hosts’ hospitality with expectations of something approaching hotel service. In rare cases hosts that provide beds for both pilgrims and higher-​end tourists appear to prefer the higher-​paying tourists, while other hosts prefer the ethos of modesty and thankfulness associated with pilgrims over the transactional demands they associate with tourists. Taking pilgrims in during the season provides many hosts with additional, if generally modest, income. Some offer only a place to sleep, while others include dinner and even breakfast, warm beverages, and general emotional support. While some hosts enjoy the aspect of having a full house with people in it, it can be a challenge to protect their private time and sphere. Several hosts find it challenging to develop a good balance between work, the pilgrims’ needs, and one’s own needs. Some find it easier to relate to single pilgrims or small groups, while large groups can create stress, especially for hosts who have other day-​time jobs. One host grew up with deep roots in formal and informal Christian milieus and sees her role as that of a Christian companion to pilgrims. At the same time she struggles with the classic tensions between pilgrim and tourist and how that affects hosts in particular. How, for example, should one take care of pilgrims that have expectations more reminiscent of tourists, and thus test the limits of a host? Pilgrims may act as though they are in a commercial hotel or restaurant, rather than displaying the more modest ethos expected of pilgrims, thus pushing the boundaries and breaking an often unspoken code of pilgrim hospitality. While hosts often appreciate the added traffic and income, they grapple with the sporadic, yet intense demands, question the economic sustainability of their efforts, and can experience hospitality fatigue.88

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Studies of hospitaleros on the Camino have identified hospitality fatigue as a phenomenon that appears to be increasingly common with consistently high numbers of pilgrims that can be perceived as annoying and unwelcome as tourists, taking over resorts and cities throughout Europe.89 Since pilgrimage in Norway is seasonally restricted and limited to the summer season from May through October, hosts are dependent on other forms of income throughout the year. In contrast, the numbers of pilgrims in Norway are relatively low, and for those who host pilgrims, hospitality fatigue manifests itself as stress that pilgrims’ needs are a burden on top of one’s primary work and social relations. The tension between pilgrim and tourist plays a significant role in pilgrimage discourse. The next section takes a closer look at this dynamic.

A PERSISTENT AMBIVALENCE: PILGRIMAGE AND TOURISM

When faced with the complexity of the contemporary Camino, the categories “pilgrimage” and “pilgrim” seem to lose meaning.90 The conceptual boundaries between pilgrim and tourist are notoriously blurred. One might even suspect that pilgrimage’s haunting double is tourism. During the summer pilgrim season of 2016, while sitting in the coffee shops of Trondheim’s Bakklandet during the Olavsfestdagene, overlooking a historic neighborhood on the far side of the river Nid within viewing distance of Nidaros Cathedral, I looked out at tourists and pilgrims intermingling on the streets of the city. The scene very much resembled the opening passage of Nancy Frey’s 1998’s Pilgrim Stories, where she looks out on the plaza in front of the cathedral in Santiago, observing how locals, tourists, and pilgrims intersect in a setting where a medieval pilgrimage site had experienced a contemporary revival.91 Churches and cathedrals are some of the major sites for tourist visits in Norway, where the primary attraction for visitors is views of nature, rather than history and architecture. Who can say if, when, where, and

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how tourists are also engaging in religious learning and transformation, and pilgrims are learning about history and doing things that are typical of tourists during their quest to deepen a spiritual life? The ambivalent relationship between pilgrimage and tourism is hardly new. It is not just associated with capitalism, or neoliberalism, or modernity. Historical accounts of pilgrimage suggest that some pilgrims’ accounts focus on the religious experience, while others are more mundane and more observant of landscape, people, and culture other than religious sites.92 A number of scholars have discovered that early Christian pilgrimage reveals a world whose discourses about movement bear some striking similarities to contemporary debates about tourism, relating to such issues as the moral contamination of host populations, struggles over markets, association of travel with sensual license and the relative valorization of some places over others.93 Both pilgrimage and tourism can threaten to destroy the local economy and cultural legacy, or prompt a type of cultural reinvestment to preserve traditions and architecture,94 and this was as true in medieval times as it is today. One of the more oft-​repeated phrases from the Turners’ classic text Image and Pilgrimage is “a tourist is half a pilgrim, if a pilgrim is half a tourist.”95 The two modes of traveling are not mutually exclusive to each other, but often coexist, often within the same person, and in fact, persons shift modes from tourist to pilgrim all the time, or can be both at the same time.96 The phrase “religious tourism” registers the combination, and the variations are many.97 Nancy Frey has shown that on the Camino the line between tourist and pilgrim can be powerfully policed by pilgrims and hosts alike.98 Some of the pilgrimage routes in Norway are located on the coast and involve boat travel, thereby challenging the bias toward long-​ distance walking pilgrimage. And since short or day pilgrimages are far more accessible for people of all ages and incomes, websites recommend

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those for Norwegian residents who can take a weekend to do a part of a longer route. Michael Stausberg argues that, in fact, tourism and pilgrimage often enhance each other and feed into each other, that “far from being the other of religion, [tourism] is a major arena, context, and medium for religion in the contemporary global world.99 Michael DiGiovine further suggests that “travelers are often able to shift their identities based on the level of importance they place upon the peoples, places, or practices with which they interact at the moment.”100 Thus, “spiritual or sacred tourism may be religious, secular, or a combination of both” and “an increasing number of non-​religious tourists are going on pilgrimages.”101 Travel, tourism, and pilgrimage facilitate encounter with an other that often mirrors the self in one or several ways. Otherness can be seen as seductive, whether it is through an encounter with an imaginatively represented or narrated past, or a mediated ethnic and cultural Other.102 Those engaging in travel can participate in a complex series of projections where seductive forms of alterity are conceptualized, prompting one to reimagine the personal or corporate self. For pilgrims, as for tourists, these seductive others that facilitate a “temporary disruption of social order” offer “ritual inversions”—​similar to carnival and festivals—​so as to better allow pilgrims and tourists to return to and thereby continue their lives back home, a kind of incorporation or reintegration as might conclude a rite of passage.103 Certainly, what can be said about tourists, that “the journey is a success when they return as transformed beings”104 is, if anything, even more true for pilgrims, perhaps particularly for non-​Catholic pilgrims who are generally not looking for miraculous forms of healing. This does not mean they are not looking for healing, but generally it is imagined in different ways, for example through experiences, encounters, and reweaving and retelling the narratives of their lives. Cultural heritage sites and the accompanying “heritage tourism” often “allow tourists to evoke realms of a shared historical past that presumably has continued a hidden social life in the Self and it revealed through the contact with the authentic origin or through evocation by means of a convincing copy.”105

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The fact that tourism and pilgrimage are often difficult to differentiate, however, does not prevent some pilgrims and some hosts from drawing distinctions between real and “tourist-​type” pilgrims, those who sleep in hotels or find other ways to make the journey easier, presumably to avoid the deeper effects felt by long-​distance pilgrims, who experience the full range of effects on body and mind and who can invoke the claim of authenticity versus other pilgrims, despite the ethic of humility known as Los Mandamientos del Peregrino posted in the pilgrim hostels along the Camino.106 And in places where tourists and pilgrims mingle, the locals have their own way of distinguishing between them. Anne Kristin Aasmundtveit quotes a German proverb: “Der Tourist verlangt, der Pilger dankt.”—​“The tourist demands, the pilgrim gives thanks.”107 The difference in attitude can translate into different forms of welcome given to pilgrims, who often enjoy greater respect by locals than tourists. This is confirmed by the narratives of some of the pilgrims themselves. That means, even though the boundaries can be fluid, there is a relational dimension that is experienced as a real difference in quality of how pilgrims and hosts relate to each other from how tourists and their hosts engage with each other.

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Many pilgrims seek the protection and temporary communal structure of groups. These flexible connections can provide creature comforts and a sense of basic human togetherness with previously unknown people. This kind of community is easily entered in and easily left behind. The group dynamics of pilgrims are an interesting blend of “easy come, easy go”; that is, people bond quickly, support each other, and help whomever is experiencing difficulties, because they realize that the same could happen to any one of them. One Norwegian pilgrim priest told me that one of the things he enjoyed about the Camino de Santiago in Spain was not making new friends, but exactly this kind of loose bonding. This allowed him to relax more fully into the chance encounters, without the need to hold on to something. Encounters that did not require the obligation to form lasting bonds were preferable, so that he could enjoy the temporary grace from intense but fleeting bonds. When people talk about communitas, this type of fleeting, flexible but strong temporary bonding is often described. Many feel that there is a particular form of immediate trust that is given to fellow pilgrims, something that unites pilgrims. This seems also to be what some have described as a possible attitudinal difference between pilgrims and some tourists. It is consistent with the stereotype of the humble, grateful pilgrim against demanding tourists, and consistent with Lindström’s key principles of pilgrimage ethics. The focus on a mode of being is in tension with the focus on particular distances or particular experiences of hardship. Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity. Marion Grau, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197598634.003.0005

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Discussions around pilgrim authenticity continue to inform and sometimes structure the pilgrimage networks, bringing with them other implicit or explicit hierarchies. Gender is a key aspect of pilgrimage studies, an “important analytical frame for understanding pilgrims’ participation, aspirations and experience,” especially given the “overall predominance of female pilgrims across all religions [ . . . ] and the predominance of male custodians.”1 Gender only appears sporadically in the available pilgrim statistics in Norway, though my observation would be that numbers are consistent with those in other networks, and women compose a slight majority of pilgrims. Local pilgrimage goals are more feasible for locals and the nonwealthy, and they are safer for women and youth. Historically, women were likely a small minority of long-​distance pilgrims in the Middle Ages, yet a majority of local and regional pilgrims.2 Today, the majority of pilgrims in Europe are women of European descent, choosing activity over passivity, which historically has been a quality ascribed to women.3 For some women, taking up the challenge to become a pilgrim can be a form of empowerment. Gender plays a role especially on the Camino and in other pilgrimage settings where women come for empowerment, to get out of the good, strong, nice-​girl role, and find “solitude, autonomy, and self-​worth.”4 Two women from Germany told me that they appreciate Norway as a country that is safe for single female travelers. They had met on a previous pilgrimage on the Camino Santiago and had planned their pilgrimage in Norway together. Another German pilgrim told me that her husband had left her after she was diagnosed with cancer. Down to skin and bone as the cancer had returned, she described her pilgrimage in Norway as a way of coming out of the shadows and a form of healing. The labor of walking pilgrimage, she mused, allowed her to discard the emotional ties that held her to her disloyal ex-​husband. Class aspects affect the financial affordability and the access to cultural institutions that publicize and inform about pilgrimage in Norway. Pilgrimage is easier to undertake if one need not worry about the cost. Age and class are often intertwined in the pilgrims observed. Well-​ off pensioners are strongly represented among the ethnic Norwegian, German, and Dutch pilgrims on long distance pilgrimage in Norway.

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They have time and resources. For others, more economically and socially vulnerable, becoming a volunteer allows participation in the pilgrimage system. While for some, pilgrimage challenges experiences and lives of privilege, for others, pilgrimage can be a fuller expression of the privilege one already has access to. This is visible when it comes to volunteer involvement in the network. Some volunteers I encountered were persons on disability and needed government support, or they had spotty educational and employment histories. Being a volunteer participant in the network allowed them to be socially engaged and gather experience for future employment. Others were able to work their way through a difficult time in their lives, and feel that they are contributing to society and being useful to people around them. One volunteer told me she needed the volunteer job so she could receive a recommendation letter from the organizers of the Olavsfest, in order to apply for a permanent job down the line.5 Issues of national origin, ethnicity, and religious diversity arise among pilgrims but also among other participants in the Norwegian local network. Minority populations and recent immigrants to Norway also participate in the network. Some do so primarily in the context of interreligious dialogue at the Olavsfest, as volunteers at the Olavsfest or as participants in interreligious pilgrimage to raise awareness of climate change. Young international students and immigrants are especially present among the volunteers for the Olavsfest, where they are able to find traces of connection and integration, though for recent immigrants and refugees there can be a language barrier. One main distinction among the pilgrims in the Norwegian network is between foreign pilgrims, who for the most part are long-​distance pilgrims, and local pilgrims, who tend to go shorter distances at a time. A not insignificant number of the foreign pilgrims report that they have come to Norway to avoid the crowds of pilgrims in a smaller, more remote setting. Many of the foreign pilgrims that come to Norway seek a quieter, cooler experience, mentioning more often nature rather than culture as a reason to take this particular route. Some German pilgrims were blunt in saying that they felt there were few cultural highlights to visit in Norway,

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apart from some stave churches. They winked and hinted that Norway cannot compare to other European locations when your main interest is historic buildings and museums. Being pilgrims in Norway, however, meant that they were able to get away from the masses of pilgrims on the Camino and experience a quieter, more serene walk. Several German and Dutch pilgrims told me that they sought solitude, and they either walked alone or with one other person. Some foreign pilgrims carry tents as the rates for pilgrim hostels are steep for foreigners. Norway is, after all, one of the most expensive countries to travel to, so most foreign visitors—​apart from well-​heeled and luxury tourists—​tend to avoid expensive overnight stays. Other pilgrims were adamant that staying in the hostels is a vital, if not central part of their pilgrim experience. The interaction with fellow pilgrims and especially with the hosts gives great enjoyment and adds a depth of experience on the human side of things. Some pilgrims who began carrying a tent told me that they ended up dropping the tent on the way and ended up staying in hostels. One pilgrim on St. Olav Ways from Sweden told me that she just dropped the tent along the path. Others reported that they had considered tents but after a day or two felt that the tent had become dead weight. Many pilgrims crossing the Dovre mountain range, where cold wind and rain make sleeping in a tent unattractive, report that staying in hostels there was critical for their comfort and for getting a sense of connection to land and people.6 Domestic pilgrims are harder to grasp, since they come in many shapes and sizes and are not necessarily registered or included in the official statistics and may not use the pilgrim centers or do long-​distance pilgrimages. The Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT) has added a number of pilgrimage routes to its regular repertoire of routes in the maps they publish, further blurring the distinction between hiker, tourist, and pilgrim. This blurs the boundary between hiking and spiritually inflected pilgrimage in Norwegian popular culture, where strong secularist tendencies can make it seem as if religious practices are little more than quaint, mostly consigned to history and merely an expression of traditional, if outdated Norwegian culture. In many communities in Norway, churches are some of the few public buildings of any historical age, so they serve in particular

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as a marker of the community’s history, common identity, and focal location. Tourists and pilgrims often find few, if any other accessible building or cultural reference point in the Norwegian landscape.

ON WHAT MAKES PILGRIMS MOVE

As common with other sites of pilgrimage, there is no single reason that motivates contemporary pilgrims in Norway to go on pilgrimage. The rise in pilgrimage for some may be a “slow mode” of traveling that disrupts demands to be present to all and everything. Since 2009, Norwegian media have produced sakte-​TV, popularized as “slow-​ TV,” generally featuring marathon coverage of slow movement via a camera onboard a train or ship. Slow-​TV is essentially broadcasting live feed from a journey or a marathon event, such as choirs spread throughout the entire country singing the entire new Lutheran hymnal in a 2014 broadcast that lasted several days around the clock.7 There are those who set out after a loss, a life transition, a divorce or end of a job, or retirement; others seek convalescence after a health crisis or perhaps to prepare for death.8 We might call them “pilgrims of liminality.” I have met pilgrims who said they lost a close person unexpectedly and walked both to honor them and their memory. At the same time they realized that life can end at any time and wanted to do this while they still had the physical ability to do so. Stepping out of the stress of loss and the grind of daily life, people seek time to think, to be alone, to not have the claims of others weigh upon them, to get clarity, to think about life, death, and mortality. Others undertake pilgrimages to seek the simplicity of a limited set of things to worry about or at least to mark the passage of life by engaging in it more meaningfully, thankfully, more fully, and more deeply. A middle-​aged German woman, reporting back after her pilgrimage, shared that she had gotten permission to go on pilgrimage from her oncologist after her condition was stable enough to be able to withstand the physical strain of pilgrimage. Her cancer had come back and metastasized into her spine and bones. Her husband had left her after

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thirty-​five years of marriage. She reported an increase of self-​confidence as she tackled things she would never have done before: climbing up mountains and going through a dark forest alone. Healing came to her in a different way: being able to do this journey on her own, even if it meant that she felt her lost love each and every moment. Though she had not healed from anything, she felt a new inner strength. Activist pilgrims go on pilgrimage in order to raise awareness of a particular issue, such as increasing dialogue between religions, raising awareness of climate change and consumption habits,9 highlighting the lack and necessity of hospice care in Norway,10 guiding recovering addicts or prisoners on the path to facilitate their reintegration and healing,11 or promoting open borders across Europe.12 Some claim pilgrimage is a journey that questions the basis of modern capitalist consumer societies and the speed and preoccupation of its modes of travel, offering concrete opportunities for spiritual and theological reflection, and a lived ecological theology.13 Others find the entire concept of “modern” pilgrimage to be disingenuous and not much more than a new branding of tourism. While pilgrims today often do not look for miraculous healing as associated with the pilgrimage site, they articulate other forms of healing associated with the process of pilgrimage, rather than the destination. Health itself is a polysemous term and is one thing many pilgrims seek, though not via the healing effects of relics, as in the Middle Ages. Healing in this case may not mean leaving relations, work, or sickness behind, but finding a way to cope and engage the challenges in one’s life differently. Some researchers have found that walking in nature as opposed to urban walks results in greater observance of nature as well as greater awareness of our inner processes.14 Nanna Jørgensen suggests that there are three main factors that positively affect health when on pilgrimage: the physical act of walking, movement through landscapes and seascapes, and the social connections to other pilgrims. These generally result in better physical and emotional health.15 Many of these health benefits seem to kick in after at least two weeks of long-​distance walking, when the walking can become a habit or even an addiction.

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The two weeks leading up to hitting what several pilgrims described as “the zone”—​a state of flow and ease that long-​distance pilgrims report on—​are by many experienced as rather painful and tortuous. My own experience of a ten-​day, long-​distance group pilgrimage from Oppdal to Trondheim provided mostly pain, emotional upheaval, and certainly no sense of flow,16 more resembling metaphorical locations like “hell” or “purgatory” (as some locations on the Camino are called, as well as St. Patrick’s purgatory) and so forth, where perhaps an inner landscape of pain is projected to the outer.17

WALKING ALONE, WALKING TOGETHER: CROWDS, ROUTES, AND GUIDES

On the Camino, virtually overpopulated with walking pilgrims, other pilgrims are often the main reference point for engagement and relationship. A South African proverb goes like this: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others.” It captures the struggles of many human beings suspended in the tension between individual and group. Some pilgrims distinguish sharply between going with others and going alone, at times expressing a certain relief that some fellow pilgrims had to drop out because of body issues. This, so they argue, allowed them to have a completely different experience of pilgrimage. When going with others, the other pilgrims and their stories take up most of the headspace, and many report they are less attentive to their surroundings while being in conversation. When going alone, a pilgrim may be better able to notice things along the way, take in the soundscape and landscape, and focus on relations other than those with other humans. Some observe that for various reasons they cannot go alone but need the support of a group. Those pilgrims mentioned with appreciation when their group leader created a frame for silence, such as, for example, suggesting that people spread out and keep silence for the morning, afternoon, or the entire day. On a path like St. Olav Ways, the single pilgrim has a greater chance of connecting with local people, perhaps meeting the farmer at whose

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cabin one is staying, occasionally perhaps even being invited to a family meal. Going with a group changes this dynamic, giving other modes of access while foreclosing yet others. Pilgrims who go alone routinely report that they find closed churches, while pilgrims traveling in organized groups often have guides that have contacted local church personnel or volunteers from locals engaged in preserving historical buildings and small museums, and it is more sustainable for these volunteers to open churches and other local attractions if a group comes through. The sociality among pilgrims and hosts can take on many different forms dependent on the number of people traveling together and how they interact with those providing local hospitality. As in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, pilgrims can be talkative, sharing long, deep life stories with strangers they perhaps will never meet again. Social barriers are lifted; one speaks with people one would never have met otherwise and not in such possibly intimate circumstances. The small miracles many pilgrims report seem to be “Emmaus moments”—​encountering Christ unrecognized—​that have to do with surprising synchronicities of human kindness, of being given a bottle of water, receiving some kind of help, a kind word, some physical or spiritual wisdom that makes the journey just a little bit easier. Pilgrims steeped in the Christian tradition may mention the original fellowship of the apostles where things were held in common. Inserting a leader into the dynamic may decrease the stresses of travel and infrastructural access but also means less individual freedom to roam in thought and body. Fedele reports that various pilgrims in her study show a “reluctance to accept the leader’s discourse, criticizing and reinterpreting spiritual theories and practices,” showing that even when there is a guiding narrative provided, pilgrims can add “considerable reinterpretation,” and add their own twist to it.18 Unlike in a liturgy, the extended context of a group pilgrimage gives them the possibility to voice those differences of perspective and share it with others, thereby taking more firmly change of their own faith expression than they might have in the context of a liturgy.

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Critical engagement with the schedule of a tour, or the guide’s framing of the tours, also occurred on tours in which I participated. Though the narratives provided by the pilgrim guides were hardly as controversial as those in the route of Mary Magdalene,19 some of the pilgrims during Pilegrim i Nord’s boat pilgrimage in 2017 had strong opinions about the scheduling and itinerary of the pilgrimage when given the chance to voice them. Several of them felt that they had visited too many churches and had grown tired of them. I offered that I had trouble finding a quiet space for myself when confined on a smallish wooden fishing boat with virtual strangers around the clock for ten days and therefore needed to take off a night and go for a walk on my own. A pensioner pilgrim told me that ever since she had gotten hard of hearing, she entered into a quiet space simply by not turning her hearing aid back on. Several of the older women on the boat commented that they would have preferred more time to articulate their own theologies and spiritualities. At the same time, they would have liked to have the opportunity to be in conversation with other pilgrims and less commentary from the guides. On guided pilgrimages where there is a narrative frame given, pilgrims editorialize, read, and listen selectively. They are active interpreters with minds of their own. Good signage along the route can be central to the experience of pilgrims, much more so than for the hiker, who more often carries a detailed map and compass, and often has the (generally shorter) trip planned out in detail. This greater dependence on the route and the ability to interpret the signs along the route correctly can take up a significant amount of the consciousness of the pilgrim. This matches my own experience of a four-​day solo hike in Denali National Park in Alaska in 2004. I had previously hiked a lot in US National Parks, but always on an established path that allowed the hiker to stop worrying about where to go at least until the next intersection. This resulted in a relaxed experience that allowed me to focus on walking and enjoying the scenery. I could raise my head above just the next few steps. Hiking in wayless wilderness, however, with no real goal other than hitting the access road again after four days to wave down the hiker’s bus to get out of the park was indeed far from a “walk in the park.” Walking in “wayless wilderness” drove home sharply the amount of

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energy required by finding one’s own path walking through a territory. The excitement and freedom soon wore off as I found myself hacking through willow saplings that looked calf-​high but turned out to be hip-​deep and higher. The cultural artifact of the path, whether dictated by the landscape or trod by animals, or maintained and cared for by humans, is a significant physical and emotional support. It makes the trip less dangerous in terms of getting hurt on the path and enables people to find you on it, should you ever need help. All this did not obtain in Denali, where if I stuck to the plan I had jotted down in the book at the ranger station, I could be found two days in this quadrant of the map, one day in another, and one day in yet another. I had to find my own way through hills and vales, and was completely dependent on the maps I carried with me to know where I was and what was ahead. But I was in Alaska as a hiker, not a pilgrim. Hiking in wayless Alaska was in some ways a direct opposite of a historic pilgrimage, putting in relief that a pilgrim never truly walks alone. There are people that have gone the route before. They have marked it, described it, and cleared it, if temporarily, so the past labor of those preparing the way can be seen as one part of the communitas of the route. Pilgrimage routes are by their very nature neither trackless nor wilderness, but rather pilgrims follow marks in the territory, printed-​out maps, signposts, and detailed descriptions in guidebooks. Walking pilgrims in Norway often traverse a landscape with several possible route options. In more populated areas, the modest signs have to compete with other signage, and are thus less visible. Indeed, the intersection of paths and signs is one of the places where the distinction between tourist and pilgrim gets blurred in Norway. The DNT was initially founded to make Norwegian nature more accessible to those who did not live there, which from the beginning included foreigners. In the mountains, terrain is more easily navigated even by those without a map, due to the ubiquitous red T of the DNT. On DNT maps, the hiking route is often the only passable foot path, or the only route traversing a territory, while pilgrimage routes often intersect or coincide with agricultural routes, forest paths, gravel roads, or asphalt multiuse paths parallel to main thoroughfares. Several pilgrims dramatically recalled their

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emotional reaction, including tears and curses, when they lost their way or could not figure out which direction to take in an intersection. Pilgrims told of experiences of intense momentary despair when being unable to locate the next way marker or sign, or when having to backtrack. This, they said, felt especially demoralizing as each step on asphalt felt painful and drained the pilgrim of energy. This despair, they said, vanished immediately, as soon as they knew they were on the correct path again. This suggests that some pilgrims highly value a certain kind of predictability in terms of a well-​marked path that is reliable and does not turn into an orienteering task; in fact, this is often described as a key component of a good experience.

MEDIATING PILGRIMAGE: PROMOTION AND SELF-​E XPRESSION

Pilgrim narratives in book or film have inspired many to go on pilgrimage. A German woman told me that she thought of herself as a pilgrim already before she ever had the opportunity to go on a physical pilgrimage. Reading pilgrim literature, both guidebooks and pilgrim narratives such as popular entertainer Hape Kerkeling’s account of the Camino in his book I’m Off Then, or Monica Peetz’s popular German bestseller Die Dienstagsfrauen, which was later made into a TV series, left a big impression. She and her husband also explained that their immediate reasons for going at this time was the sudden loss of near friends and the realization that life can be over anytime. She is one of many that first were drawn in by mediated Camino pilgrimages such as the Martin Sheen movie The Way or Paulo Coelho’s The Pilgrimage or The Alchemist, which many Brazilian pilgrims name as their inspiration. Beyond the fictionalized personal accounts, guidebooks are key to helping pilgrims navigate the relatively uncharted Norwegian pilgrimage network. Pilgrims who cannot use guidebooks due to language barriers were invited to download maps from the main website. Yet, since these routes lack information on the infrastructure of route systems like the

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Camino de Santiago, guidebooks have been of key importance, especially for those pilgrims who are dependent on overnight accommodation.20 Prior to the proliferation of guidebooks for the St. Olav Ways, Eivind Luthen’s basic guidebooks in Norwegian, with hand-​drawn maps that showed only the path itself but not the landscape around it, were the only useable guidebooks available.21 Over the period of this study, and especially from 2015 onward, a number of updated guidebooks for the various routes have been published. Most of them cover the Gudbrandsdalen route, most popular among pilgrims, going south to north to Nidaros. The St. Olavsleden -​from the Swedish east coast to Trondheim -​remained without a well-​documented guidebook until 2016, and the Swedish guide was subsequently translated into English, German, and Dutch. Thus, by 2020 the main two route systems had guidebooks translated into the most common Western European languages. Each time a guide appears in a new language, it increases the appeal of the route to new groups of pilgrims. Oslo Pilgrim Center staff suggested in 2018 that Alison Raju’s 2010 guidebook in English, the first foreign language guide to appear, was too out of date to be used effectively given the changes in the network. Among others, the beginning milestone of the pilgrimage in Oslo was moved due to construction, while signage and accommodation had changed. German guidebooks appeared in 2014 and 2015, respectively, and a completely revised new Norwegian guidebook with topographic maps, images, and updated descriptions appeared in late 2015. The Gudbrandsdalen and St. Olavsleden guides are available in the languages that correspond to the main countries of origin of pilgrims: Norwegian, German, and Dutch for the Gudbrandsdalsleden and Swedish, German, and English for the St. Olavsleden out of Sweden. Hanna Engler’s German guide and a Swedish guidebook for the route from Selanger to Stiklestad were published in 2016.22 Engler’s 2016 German guide was already updated in 2018, and it was heavily used by the German-​speaking pilgrims I encountered. Guidebooks can be a key reference for a traveler, so much so that the book becomes an interlocutor in conversations. In 2017, a female German pilgrim in her early thirties told me that “Hanna”—​the author’s first name—​had become a companion to her. She recounted how she would talk to other pilgrims

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as if the guidebook author was among them: “Hanna says . . .”23 this and that about this part of the trail or this hostel. The guidebook had become another conversation partner along the path. Several German pilgrims reported to me having developed a kind of relationship to “Hanna” through her excellent and extremely thorough descriptions covering every eventuality of the route. The pilgrim centers sell some of these guidebooks but generally recommend using the downloadable maps exclusively as they are updated with any changes. Increasingly, some pilgrims suggested to me, it appears possible to navigate using only the downloaded maps, which is a significant development since 2012. In the summer of 2020, Margunn Pettersen, the main force behind getting the coastal route established and documented, published the first documentation on the newest official route, the Kystpilegrimsleia coastal route.24 Despite the pandemic summer, the first edition of about five hundred sold out within weeks and a second one was already underway. Other routes still await a guidebook or a translation from Norwegian. The number of visitors from a particular country appears to show a correlation to the strength of pilgrim movements in that country, as well as the accessibility of a good, up-​to-​date guidebook in the language of the country. Another factor appears to be the proximity of the country, the availability of direct, affordable flights, and how popular Norway is as a vacation destination in the country of departure. Beyond the guidebooks, there are also pilgrimage narratives and blogs, some self-​ published as books.25 Print, video, and social media provide important communication lines not just for pilgrims but also for hosts and providers. While many pilgrims profess they want a break from regular life, including the constant communication of contemporary media, many of them proceed to document their pilgrimage and in ways that share it with others, often immediately. Thus the sense that it is an individual journey one takes to get away from one’s regular surroundings is counteracted as pilgrims share this event with their new and old relations far and wide. The use of social media during pilgrimage makes visible and intensifies the degree to which an individual’s pilgrimage is in fact also a social ritual, carried on in relation

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with others, those who have undertaken it, are undertaking it, or may be undertaking it in the future. Social media accounts have become an integral way in which participants in the pilgrimage network share up-​to-​ date information about experiences along the trail and invite others to participate. Pilgrims use websites to find basic information about the dynamically developing route network and facilities. The Pilegrimsleden website (pilegrimsleden.no) is the main site for information about the various pilgrimage routes in Norway and arranged, guided group pilgrimages. During the first few years of my research, this website was constantly changing and felt overengineered for mobile users. Even so, it was the main source of information available for foreign pilgrims with no knowledge of Norwegian. Today, the site includes descriptions of the routes, downloadable maps, packing lists, and general information about the history and facilities of the paths. In addition, it advertises arranged tours, group pilgrimages, and other resources. Various features allowing pilgrims to prepare for departure improved markedly over the time I studied the network. Maps for the routes are not available for sale. Instead, pilgrims are encouraged to download and print out the maps they need from the website. Many of the newer guidebooks feature maps that are quite reliable and as the signage along the route has improved, some pilgrims report being less dependent on guidebooks and maps. This affects the way in which pilgrims can engage in walking and experiencing places and encounters on the path rather than having to spend much of their time checking maps. The Norwegian site also offers suggestions for shorter and longer hikes, in an effort to make the routes more accessible to a diverse local public, not all of which can take weeks off to walk one of the routes. Volunteers and employees at the pilgrim centers maintain Facebook and Instagram pages for the routes. These sites post updates and upgrades of the route, and new signage, as well as renovations in churches, buildings, new shelters, and maintenance. They also show some of the activity along the route. Pilgrims preparing a future pilgrimage ask a variety of questions, while veteran pilgrims, volunteers, and those maintaining the pages answer with up-​to-​date information that printed guidebooks cannot provide.

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Such pages also feature updates on the state of the trail, needed equipment, and challenges, such as, for example, the lack of water along the trail due to a major climate-​related drought in 2018 or updates on pilgrimage during a pandemic in 2020.26 In addition, individual pilgrims may post pictures and descriptions to their friends’ timeline or take over posting images and observations on a particular Instagram account during the time of their travel. While some pilgrims report wanting to get away from the news cycle and social media, most still carry a smartphone, if only to make reservations at the next pilgrim hostel. Many also post extensively to enable friends and family at home to follow their travels step by step. Instagram accounts regarding pilgrimage in Norway started appearing more prominently during the summer of 2016, perhaps inspired by an account posting compelling black-​and-​white portraits of Compostela pilgrims, landscape images, and more. Instagram accounts focus on the aesthetic, on landscape, places, and buildings, adding only few words and tags. Depending on the season, they give updates on routes, context, and local history. At times, select pilgrims are given access to the official account of the path and are invited to post their own pictures as they travel, so that others can follow their movement and see the sights.

ROUTING BODIES: AFFECTS AND EFFECTS

Pilgrim bodies are in dense communication with the places, landscapes, and seascapes through which they move. The ground interacts with bodies as they move, while walking, cycling, sailing, and driving. Pilgrims encounter soil, the land, the landscape, weather, water patterns, coast lines, and ocean streams. The physical relationship with asphalt and other surfaces shapes the experience of the walking pilgrim. Blisters, as well as foot and leg pain, due to the power of gravity on the pilgrim’s body, are major factors affecting the journey. People walk with pain and through pain. Many pilgrims reported to me that their hopes of quiet, peaceful reflections about God, their spiritual path, their faith, and enjoyment of the landscape and other people were pushed aside by the forced focus

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on the body’s functions and pains that invade every thought and care. Asphalt can feel like the force of the devil to the pilgrim. Gravel, like a form of grace. Soft forest soil, like bliss. Such concrete experiences on the pilgrim’s way show time and time again that physical movement affects the inside of the pilgrim—​that bit by bit, they present opportunities for the pilgrim’s identity. Aasmundtveit suggests that the physical experiences are strong enough to change a person’s attitude toward themselves and their surroundings. Likewise, the inner pilgrim is constantly challenged to interpret the external, to let the surroundings be affected by the colors of internal perceptions.27 As Judith Butler notes: the body is less an entity than a living set of relations; the body cannot be fully dissociated from the infrastructural and environmental conditions of its living and acting. Its acting is always conditioned acting, which is one sense of the historical character of the body. Moreover, the dependency of human and other creatures on infrastructural support exposes a specific vulnerability that we have when we are unsupported, when those infrastructural conditions start to decompose, or when we find ourselves radically unsupported in conditions of precarity.28 As Aasmundtveit suggests, many (walking) pilgrims articulate a particularly poignant set of psychosomatic affect that heightens their experiences of this particular form of travel. Yet it is not only those who walk who speak of a particular way in which pilgrimage embodies something central within themselves. The sea-​kayaking pilgrim Lars Verket, for example, uses the word kroppstro (body faith) when describing his experience paddling the southern coastal pilgrimage route in 2014. Likewise, he uses the phrase in reference to his experience of staying four days and nights alone on the island of Selja, a place he describes as special.29 Kroppstro might describe a kind of embodied faith, where the body might be both the vehicle of expression of faith but also the interpretive instrument with which the experience of pilgrimage is perceived and then narrated. This

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embodied faith traces the tracks of previous pilgrims, real and imagined, with stories real and imagined that become reframed and reconstructed in the pilgrims’ imagination. Others may not choose the term faith, but instead describe it as a particular way of being present with human and other-​ than-​ human relations in place. A Norwegian psychotherapist I walked with spoke about the “inner journey” and finding a kind of spiritual inner self as the main purpose of pilgrimage, paying attention to the inner landscape over the exterior. Others articulated similar goals, using terminology that distinguished the internal processing from the physical walking in ways that could indicate that the walking was grist on the mill of the self-​development they sought. Many pilgrims report that their relations with fellow pilgrims participate in the healing of relationships, but to self and other. Anna Fedele observes that even her bus-​traveling pilgrims engage in sharing their stories with each other, thereby bringing some healing to their own life narratives.30 Yet for many pilgrims, the journey is made on foot, and for long-​distance pilgrims, walking becomes an extensive form of labor. Secular walking is often imagined as play, however competitive and rigorous that play, and uses gear and technology to make the body more comfortable and efficient. Pilgrims, on the other hand, often try to make their journey harder, recalling the origin of the word travel in travail, which also means work, suffering, and the pangs of childbirth.31 While many contemporary pilgrims, especially those within a secularized or Protestant context, frown on the embrace of pain for the forgiveness of sins or atonement, or even to plead with the saint for healing, they understand that pilgrimage often is an intense, often painful body experience that has transformative potential. There is a starkly physical relationship that shapes the experience of the walking pilgrim. The casual walker may feel greater connection with the places they amble through, able to think and encounter landscape and people. But long-​distance pilgrimage has a quite different effect on the body, relegating the conscious

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reflection process to the background and foregrounding the noises of the body when exhaustion and pain take over.32 The soil, land, landscape, and weather affect us as we walk or sail. There is a starkly physical relationship that shapes the experience of the pilgrim. People walk with pain and through pain. Expectations that they were going to think about God, their spiritual path, and their faith can be harshly pushed aside, and the body’s functions and pains invade every thought and care. Walking all day tends to focus the pilgrim’s perception of the world on the bare necessities. Our range of emotion goes not much further than the physical range of motion. The noises of our bodies, and the gear we carry, do indeed seem to take up more of our consciousness. The body speaks, at times drowning out any attempt at reflection. For those dealing with trauma and loss, this disruption of painful thought cycles can be experienced as grounding and healing. At the same time, it makes it more difficult to actually see and encountering what surrounds the pilgrim, beyond the immediacy of the body. Yet experienced long-​distance pilgrims report that this intense preoccupation with pain and body recedes after about ten days, making room for sensations of flow. My own experience of pain and discomfort during walking pilgrimage pushed me toward the other pilgrims. Conversations distracted me from the pain, and I found that at least sometimes distraction seemed to make the pain vanish, or at least banish enough away from my awareness that I could relax and was glad for company. In need of compassion and company myself, I ultimately became more understanding and compassionate with the pilgrims I was with. After the immediate pain was gone, I was able to interpret this process as one form of spiritual transformation, one that arrived in an unexpected way. Emotional and physical pain was thus a part of the spiritual path. Heightened sensations of radical embodiment furthered awareness of the limitations of the body and the here and now. Aasmundtveit writes that the existential dimension of life becomes more intense during pilgrimage. The path itself works on the pilgrim, is an actor in the pilgrimage. Further, she suggests a pilgrim attitude includes the effort to take things as they come and not to worry about tomorrow (echoing the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount).33 My frustration about

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the inconveniences experienced when walking served only to increase the pain I felt. To resist clinging to that pain meant to receive help, to admit to weakness, to admit to needing help, to let go, and in fact to receive undeserved grace, “sola gratia,”34 This exercise is perhaps one of the hardest for people who have worked to be strong and independent in their lives. But it offers also a profound reminder of the need for community, and how dependent on others our lives are at any moment, whether we choose to be aware of it or not. Aasmundtveit writes: “during a pilgrimage you can experience that the inner journey learns from the outer journey—​the soul harvests experiences from the body. And vice versa: the inner journey is influenced by the body as the body is inseparable from the processes of the soul. They are connected. Altogether, each part can be healing for the other.”35 As mentioned earlier, my own participation in a guided pilgrimage in 2014 was overwhelmed by “body noise” so much so that pain significantly shaped my experience of the pilgrims as well as my relationships with them. Indeed, my body pain became an agent itself that galvanized and deepened relations with the others and stripped away all my defenses. I was disturbed by this experience and found myself relieved to find hints of this stripping away of distance in the writing of others on the topic. It served to drive home questions about what one sees, discovers, and relates to depending on how the body engages in the pilgrimage network and especially in movement along the path and at sites. Some pilgrims come off the route in what some in Norway call “pilegrimsrus,”36 a kind of drunken euphoria. Whether a response to physical exertion, transformative experiences of communitas, and shared intimacy and empathy that comes through the workout/​exhaustion and intense engagement of body and soul on the route, there may be aspects of adrenaline addiction involved. One Norwegian pilgrim shared with me that pilgrimage was a way for him to compensate for a long-​standing drug habit, replacing the drug of choice with a less harmful habit. He talked about the pain as something he loved and enjoyed, and that made him feel alive. For some of these pilgrims, it may be hard to remove themselves from the internal pressure to a particular distance per day or to

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not feel pain or exhaustion. Other pilgrims considered this kind of pain-​ seeking close to the stereotype of the self-​flagellating pilgrim, something they rejected strongly. Contemporary pilgrimage to Nidaros carries the markers of a pilgrimage where healing, if explicitly sought, is more about what happens on the route, through encounters and experiences, rather than at the sacred site that is at the end of the path. There are no extant, known relics in Nidaros Cathedral that focus pilgrims’ attention; the invocation is more to do with the way the cathedral architecture, personnel, and liturgies present the history of St. Olav. Because many pilgrims, especially those from abroad, are not familiar with the history of the pilgrimage other than its most generic terms, each pilgrimage can also be a journey of learning, an encounter with history as well as encounters with places, landscapes, and people along the way and once arrived. Still, the motives and themes are generally a mix. Some pilgrims begin in their individual liminal spaces, but then get interested in the sites on the way and the history of the land, perhaps even the goal of the pilgrimage. If healing is taken as one of the effects of pilgrimage, whether explicitly sought or not, it remains a question what “healing” in this nonmedical context can mean. In the spring of 2016, the Oslo Pilgrim Center held a conference on the topic of health and pilgrimage, an emerging topic in Norwegian pilgrimage. Elsewhere, a group of scholars have attempted to map the “therapeutic value of pilgrimage” through a “constructivist grounded theory study.”37 They found that pilgrimage can give people who feel that their personal spiritual and physical needs as they are ailing and aging are not given space in the liturgies of the church elsewhere a “narrative framework for coping with their past pain.” After the pilgrimage, some “reported that they experienced emotional healing regarding their previously silenced pain.”38 It is thus in the social interactions along the journey that much of the therapeutic value of a pilgrimage lies.39 Winkelman and Dubisch have described healing in the context of pilgrimage as “biopsychosociospiritual”40; that is, a complex intermingling of healing that may affect each pilgrim differently and thus contribute to the cacophony of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage can facilitate self-​transformation,

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be a form of “popular empowerment,” facilitate healing processes, and address “social suffering” (such as poverty, economic, intergenerational trauma, and political forces). Pilgrims engage in “symbolic healing and metaphorical processes” (working with myths, narrative, and symbols), process “meanings, emotions and stress-​reductions,” or manifest “faith and the power of belief.”41 Nanna Jørgensen describes pilgrimage as a form of self-​therapy that allows for pilgrims’ internal healing, lessening dependency on medication and institutional therapeutic services.42 Jørgensen, writing within the field of psychology and in the context of the Norwegian health care system, points out the advantages of pilgrimage as a practice that could lessen the reliance of patients on the public health care system and provide a kind of relational healing that is difficult to provide in other therapeutic settings. Jørgensen describes pilgrimage as a practice that contributes to “emotional healing,” where pilgrimage can facilitate “empowerment and well-​being,” elicit “self-​discover, self-​regulation and self-​transformation.”43 Jørgensen operates with an idealized version of pilgrimage and seems to be looking for it to lead to permanent and continuous changes, so that “true pilgrimage begins upon one’s return home, implementing the lessons of the journey.”44 As a form of “self-​therapy,” Jørgensen proposes pilgrimage as a cheaper, more efficient health care option that would save the Norwegian state a great amount of resources, and she attempts to articulate it as a “semi-​religious space” (an interesting concept in itself) to accommodate the postsecularized public discourse in Norway.45 “Healing,” like “happiness,” is an affect and an effect that escapes rigorous definition. As the historian and philosopher of medicine Georges Canguilhem remarked, a doctor can tell a patient “You are cured,” but only the patient can say “I’m healed,” and the two are not the same.46 For many pilgrims, though, the effects of pilgrimage seem to come through being forced into the microworld that is directly in and around them: their body, its processes, their inner processes in handling their body, their experience of other bodies and the landscape through which they travel. Pilgrims report “various facets of connecting with the self, others, history, and the environment.”47 In particular, phrases that reappear are

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“making meaning; making a decision; connecting with others; feeling welcomed; connecting with history; becoming aware; marking time; figuring out priorities; reflecting; being comforted; contrasting; gaining knowledge; gaining perspective or witnessing serendipitous events.”48 “Being moved” while traveling along the path is a common theme in pilgrim narratives. The pain and exhaustion can bring forth an emotional liminal stage where it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to control one’s emotional response. Pilgrims have shared with me that they screamed out in anger when not finding the next sign, slamming their walking sticks into the ground, cursing. Difficult relational patterns might come to the surface in couples and families that walk. Some are relieved at hearing these stories, thinking that they are bad pilgrims if they have feelings of anger and annoyance. Being brought back to focus primarily on our body’s functions and pains, strengths and failures can be experienced as humiliating, not just as humbling, and at least in myself, this experience of limitation brought out anger and frustration. Introverted pilgrims can grind at being restricted by being in groups, while extroverts love the instant closeness of engaging with all kinds of people along the trail. Some give up, some curse at their own decision to go on pilgrimage when the going gets rough, some walk through it, and for some it is pure pleasure. Most pilgrims I spoke to during the summers of participant observation did not see pilgrimage as vacation, or as some kind of relaxation. While there may be aspects of relief from mental stress, the experience is often too hard on the body to be considered a vacation. In terms of the social effectiveness of pilgrimage, there seem to be many possible ways for effectiveness, of effecting “social and cultural transformations” through “movement as performative action.49 Mapping space; facilitating regional and international friendships and collaborations; celebrating liturgies; preaching; lecturing; staging panel discussions; sorting trash and recycling; providing food, drink, and shelter; giving advice; offering hostel space; lifting up issues like identity, body, environment, and the heritage of St. Olav and Christian culture in Norway and elsewhere; bringing international and local musicians to perform in the Archbishop’s courtyard; staging medieval markets; leading

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guided tours through medieval Trondheim; leading processions and multireligious day pilgrimages; and so forth—​all of these contribute to the transformation of society in ways great and small. People rub up against others or seek to stay far from others; they walk together or walk apart. For some pilgrims, the best and worst of their own personalities become painfully visible. It is an uncomfortable truth, and socially effective perhaps in such a way to remind pilgrims of their own vulnerability and fragility. People talk about their knee pains, their hip replacements, their shoulders, their cancer, and of course, their blisters. Several pilgrims spoke about coming to terms with the precariousness of life and accepting the body while pushing its boundaries. Other pilgrims told me that completing an annual pilgrimage helped restore their emotional balance after an exhausting year as a nurse or teacher, and named it as an important way to balance mental and emotional health when returning to the everyday grind. Some could never imagine dealing with and leading a group of pilgrims; others go home and write guidebooks and give lectures about their travels. For others, coming off the path can be a severe turn down, a cold turkey withdrawal of sorts. Yet other pilgrims become addicted to the pain and to pilgrimage itself. For some pilgrims one pilgrimage does not end with a complete reincorporation as if to complete a rite of passage, but can simply transition into a temporary quiet period before the pilgrim sets out again. One serial pilgrim who confessed to addictive tendencies found in the physical pain and heaviness that pilgrimage represents a way to manage his addiction. For some, the intense pain and exhaustion of pilgrimage can result in a mere shifting of addiction onto pilgrimage rather than a break with or release from addictive behavior. He embraced the pain, even sought it, and at least to him, that welcoming of pain seemed to soothe some other existential pain. My own experience of pain and pilgrimage was quite different. Feeling betrayed and let down by my body, I experienced walking the 160 km as intensely painful and therefore as disempowering rather than empowering. If there was a therapeutic effect, then it was being forced to take seriously the pain as something not to be welcomed, but as a symptom of somaticized stress that needed to be

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addressed. Thus my experience of long-​distance walking pilgrimage triggered the need for sustained muscle therapy, making the therapeutic effect of pilgrimage one of diagnosis, rather than healing. In that sense, the pilgrimage meant for me to become more embodied and maintain healthier habits of movement and stress reduction, something that is an ongoing practice for me. One middle-​aged German man compared the experience of pilgrimage to being a refugee, of being homeless, of being weighed down by the physical experience of being just a body with very little power and access, something he noted was not equally popular with all of the pilgrims he shared these thoughts with on his way. The subject is more controversial in these years, as anti-​immigrant rhetoric has increased throughout Europe under the cover of antiglobalist rhetoric. While for some, pilgrimage challenges experiences and lives of privilege; for others, they are fuller expressions of it. The physical interaction with a walking route brings intense experiences for the pilgrims, offering them ways to rethink their own life. Walking challenges the body in particular ways, but how would a waterborne pilgrimage affect the body?

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Ocean Pilgrimage and Ocean Plastics Coastal Activism and the Reopening of the Marine Pilgrim Route

The reopening of the coastal pilgrimage route was initiated and conducted by a group of volunteers and activists mostly from the coastal town of Stavanger.1 On the opening day of Olsok in 2016, a group of sea pilgrims arrived by way of sailboat coming from Bodø to Trondheim, this time moving north to south, part of an increasing recognition that in Norway pilgrims traveled by sea, as well as over land, and came from the north as well as from the south. While today the pilgrimage to Nidaros occurs primarily by foot, in the past, most pilgrims used a combination of travel by water and land. The churches marking the coast are in themselves part of this coastal pilgrimage route, a beacon and lighthouse, marking a safe harbor.2 Boat pilgrimages are generally planned to arrive in time for Olsok in Trondheim, moving on land to walk the last few kilometers to Nidaros Cathedral, the final destination of the pilgrimage. That same summer, a pilot project to promote pilgrimage along the northern coast was launched as a group of church employees, pilgrims, and vintage fishing boat enthusiasts embarked from Bodø toward Trondheim, stopping each day at historic coastal churches. The all-​male

Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity. Marion Grau, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197598634.003.0006

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crew provided the means of transport for the voyage serving the pilgrims onboard without remuneration.3 The eleven passengers, mostly mature women from various regions of Norway, and one man, pioneered this journey as part of a pilot project designed to seek future funding from the government to develop the infrastructure of a coastal pilgrimage route. It may be the case that waterborne pilgrimages like these focus the pilgrim on a motor-​driven ship more on resting from burnout by providing the ability to relax, read, and just watch the landscape as they go by. Fair weather meant a calm, sunny journey where pilgrims were able to unlatch from routines and cares, finally read the entire Brothers Karamazov, and be silent or chatty when desired. The pilgrims reported that the locals taking care of their churches felt a sense of ownership, care, and pride. Due to the frequency of coastal storms and lightning, many of the churches dating back to the Middle Ages had burned down one or several times. The pilgrims were impressed with the fact that locals simply rebuilt the churches over and over again. Though these feelings are certainly not shared by everybody in the village or town, churches often represent a part of the collective history and space that carries great emotional, historical, and cultural value for the locals, perhaps more so than other places in Europe, as the church is often the oldest building in a village or town, and one of the few historic public buildings that is neither a private building nor an often more contemporary public service building. In this focus on the building, faith often comes to be represented by the physical presence of an artifact from the past, in contrast with the seeming lack of faith in the contemporary world. The pilgrimage experience came close to being reduced to visiting one church after another, as many as possible, while one skips by the natural history and sights relegated to providing a scenic background to Norway’s picturesque old wooden or stone churches. Ironically, it was the 1980s Borge Church placed in the middle of a windswept height in a historic Lofoten area that won the hearts of several of the pilgrims who agreed that it was the most spiritual place of the churches visited. Rather than the museum-​like energy of some of the older wooden churches, this, the fifth church raised on this site, had a certain presence and energy that stood in contrast to the others on the journey.

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The architecture reflected a more contemporary faith, still focused on Christ’s resurrection depicted on many of the more historic altar pieces (along with a strong post-​Reformation focus on the Eucharistic feast and the inclusion of the local community in that fellowship) or a focus on saints. The simplicity, brightness, and openness of the space spoke of a different space, and it gave a sense of a parish whose energies and resources are not being spent maintaining a historic structure but rather benefit from a contemporary parish church building matching the needs of its people. Boat pilgrimages from the direction of the northern town of Bodø southward to Nidaros thus offer a different kind of pilgrimage experience. Initially there were three boats, the historic fish trawler Faxsen and two sailing yachts. One of the yachts accompanied the convoy until Brønnøysund, and the two others continued on to Trondheim. One of the pilgrims described the experience as a floating retreat, an opportunity to experience nature without the constant distractions of aching feet, to relax, to give time for reading, and to just see the coast and the landscape. The group had excellent weather and was able to spend most of their time on deck, not worrying about much but turning over the next page, walking to the churches in harbors along the route, and eventually getting to a sacred goal. The physical exertion of walking is absent from this journey, though traveling on water and sleeping in tight quarters on a ship offers its own challenges. The application to officially recognize the coastal route from the southwestern town of Egersund to Trondheim was successful in 2017. In 2018, the first journey with the historic fish cutter Faxsen celebrated and marked the newly opened route, including marked anchoring places, churches, and other historical sites and the first use of credential stamps at each location.4 The Kystpilegrimsleden is a coastal route that can be traveled by boat, or planned as a multimodal pilgrimage, combining walking, bus travel, and boat travel in order to move along the coast. The body’s interaction with the waves or the path resonates in its own language. Pilgrims’ own internal voices are often as strong and loud. And even if there is silence there, the pilgrim’s interaction with the path

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communicates in many ways: weight on the feet, hips, and shoulders; hard or soft surfaces, wet or dry, hot or cold; all these communicate. Beauty, silence, animals, insects, light, and shade. Pilgrims described waterborne pilgrimages with different sensations: the sound of the water under the keel, the crashing of waves, the hypnotic quality of wave motion. Pilgrims on the water, often including older and disabled persons, note the importance of vision and sound that dominate the sensory experience of pilgrimages on water. The size of the vessel plays a key part in this experience. These are not cruise ships, but often historic or museum boats, as are found plentiful along the coast of Norway, lovingly maintained by local volunteer skippers and mechanics. In 2017, I had the possibility of participating in one of the exploratory trips to map sites going north from Bodø to Trondenes and ending up at Moskenes on the Lofoten Islands. Ocean pilgrimage engages the body differently than does walking. As Pär Lagerkvist writes in his book Pilegrim på havet (Pilgrim on the Sea), “The ocean knows more than anything else on earth, if you can get it to tell you about it. It knows all old secrets, because it is itself so old, oldest of all. It knows also your secrets, don’t think anything else. [ . . . ] What are you looking for in the Holy Land when the ocean exists. The holy ocean. [ . . . ] Yes, the ocean has much to teach you. It can teach you how to live.”5 The rhythms of water can be heard, seen, and felt. The sound of the water rushing by, being split by the keel and gurgling by the bow of the fishing boat. Water reacts visibly and noticeably to the air movements and to the fire of the sun, reacts to it dynamically. Winds change and are affected by land masses. We pass by fjords acting like wind channels. When passing a fjord or a gap between coastal mountains, our small, retired fishing vessel was strongly affected by wind and water. We sensed the wind picking up as we entered the channel, and as soon as we entered the shadow of an island off the coast, waves and wind noticeably dropped off. This made the task of navigating large swells just so much more possible. It would have been the winds both hindering and aiding sailors before the advent of the steamboat and the petroleum-​based engine. The fire of the sun allows for long nights on the ocean and makes the winters dangerous with the cold,

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dark waters. Several pilgrims mentioned that they developed a healthy respect for those who sailed these coasts before the advent of motorized transportation. On this journey, narratives of St. Olav were distinct from the more sanitized versions one can find near Trondheim, where he is remembered differently. The oral history accounts shared on the pilgrimage portrayed him as an enemy to the life and people up north during his life time, a southern pretender to power that infringed on local power and independence.6 In short, it was an image more fitting Olav Haraldsson’s power politics and the attempt to break local and regional power strongholds that would resist his vision of more centralized power, including those based in the rich northern Norwegian region around Trondenes and Harstad.7 During an enforced extended stay in Bodø delayed by a broken motor part that had to be shipped from elsewhere in the country, members of our Pilegrim i Nord –​pilgrims up north -​group reflected on the fact that the city had been bombed by Nazi forces during World War II. Some days later, while walking the grounds around Trondenes Church, it was impossible to ignore the various markers for Russian soldiers and other prisoner-​of-​war camps; that is, while treading the grounds of more ancient history, other layers of time and their narratives intervene and interact with those the pilgrims primarily seek to engage in. Hence, pilgrimage narrativity is a weave of various layers of time across and through each other. Similarly, although one could say that geographical pilgrimages are all about “location, location, location,” none of these locations exists in isolation from others. This was especially paramount in northern Norway, a place that can seem marginal, except to those who inhabit and know of its deep connections through time to other places through the exchange of goods and travel of people.

INTERLUDE: PILGRIMAGE, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND OCEAN PLASTICS

While some with the means and time may walk all the way from home, this is not always possible and raises the question how an appropriate

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earth ethics of pilgrimage can be practiced. Bodies traveling in a landscape and bodies living in a landscape interact during pilgrimage. They move by way of burning ancient energy forms extracted and produced by petroleum industries. Pilgrims participate in conventional economic systems and impact ecological niches through their presence, including the ways in which overheated pilgrimage practices threaten to destroy local ecosystems. It is often forgotten that pilgrimage just like forms of tourism and travel produces trash and represents heightened use of resources.8 Compared to the often invisible carnage of the cruise ships that wind their ways through Norwegian fjords in increasing numbers, the impact may be relatively small, but it does exist. Large pilgrimage sites can be veritable ecological superfund sites in the landscape. Pilgrimage that is not ecologically sustainable can generate large amounts of human waste, travel emissions, and trash.9 The summer of 2015 saw the culmination of Climate Pilgrim 2015 (Klimapilegrim 2015), an arrangement that aimed to raise awareness for climate in the summer leading up to the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting in Paris. Knut Hallen and Per Ivar Våje from the Ecumenical Council of the Church of Norway dreamed up the initial idea over coffee and then proceeded to involve a variety of nongovernmental organizations in the action. The three main organizations in the coalition Creation and Sustainability (Skaperverk og Baerekraft) involved were Norwegian Church Aid, the Norwegian Ecumenical Council, and the Church of Norway. Other related actors were the pilgrimage centers and several Christian youth organizations.10 Climate Pilgrim 2015 began simultaneously at Selje and the Nordkapp in June. Bottles of water with drops from various wells, watersheds, and rivers were gathered and were passed from relay to relay, marking the importance and sacrality of the element of water. The water bottles were carried via the hands of many people to the COP meeting in Paris, together with a list of signatures demanding just climate politics and action from the Norwegian government with less emissions and more investment toward sustainability.11 The pilgrims covered together around 60,000 km and moved through Norway, then Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and France, all the way to Paris.

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This complex activist pilgrimage involved around two hundred events, seven thousand participants, and collected nine thousand signatures. It combined pilgrimage and the work for political change to address climate. Significant also for our topic here is the fact that one of the bottles was filled at the St. Sunniva well on Selja,12 rather than one of the many Olav’s wells. Selja is seen by some as the real cradle of Christianity in Norway, rather the solidification of church structure and law that is associated with St. Olav and the other royal and church leaders. Various arrangements across the country, including various arrangements during the St. Olav Festival that summer, moved the bottles of water along various routes in the pilgrimage network and arrived in Oslo on August 15 for an interfaith event. The convergence of various groups of faith in Oslo was perhaps one of the first truly interreligious pilgrimage arrangements in Norway, with a significant presence from Muslim and Sikh communities during a short pilgrimage from the Grønland neighborhood of Oslo, a center of immigrant culture, to the city center, where the Norwegian Parliament is located.13 During the summer of 2018, volunteering at the place where most pilgrims begin and end their travels, at the Pilgrim Centers in Oslo and Trondheim, brought home the diversity of motivations to go on pilgrimage and the concreteness of each and every story and life along the route. Engaging in casual conversations while registering pilgrims is a privilege and, though lacking the formality of interviews, provides its own richness. During that season, plans to revive the climate pilgrim actions were launched, with the result that members of the Interreligious Climate Network planned and executed a pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Hope in Fredrikstad in May 2019. The group, departing from Oslo City Hall after welcoming speeches by the mayor, Bishop of Oslo, and the group leaders and taking the ferry to Nesodden to walk on from there, included members of six different religious groups and nonreligious persons. The Cathedral of Hope takes the form of a barge built by traditional Norwegian shipbuilders, launched in June 2019 with the sanctuary on top of the barge completed summer 2021.14 The vision for it came from artist Solveig Egeland, while working

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as an administrator for the Bishop of Borg in Fredrikstad. Its motto is Cathedral of Hope: Together against Ocean Plastics. The Cathedral of Hope began as one artist’s response to ocean plastics. Ocean plastics, a consequence of our common dependence on petroleum, are in some ways more visible and tangible than climate change. The larger pieces that form the roof are made on site from gathered ocean plastics. This creates a symbolic shelter made from trash, transforming dangerous refuse into a ritual site. This, the creators propose, represents a symbol of hope for cleaning up polluted oceans and for honoring the oceans that connect all of humanity. Cathedral of Hope is a site of ritual creativity—​ the act of building and creating is itself a ritual, communal act—​pulling the community into making it possible. This case represents how new pilgrim destinations can be created and integrated into an existing pilgrimage network. The creators of Cathedral of Hope have invented and built a new sacred place from the discards of petroculture. A community effort pulled together numerous volunteers, from school classes to multireligious groups, to build a floating sanctuary. It attracts various types of local enthusiasts, boat builders, retired men who like to keep busy, students, and all other kinds of pilgrims, providing a moveable feast. The building process itself creates a liminal community on the way to establishing a common place of worship. Initiators envision towing it to other sites around the Oslo fjord, a floating cathedral that would travel to the pilgrims, instead of the other way around. The project invites cooperation “across national identities, ages, and faiths,” to work together in efforts to clean the ocean, thus building both peace among people of faith and no faith, and the ocean.15 Care for the ocean unites religious and nonreligious people in building, supporting, and visiting this emerging pilgrimage site. Hope Cathedral seeks to engender respect for the ocean as “life-​giving [and] our collective heritage.”

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Cathedral and Town Movable Feasts and Adaptable Spaces

NIDAROS: FROM PAGAN TO CHRISTIAN GEOGRAPHY

The conversion of large parts of the population of Norway was accompanied by the remapping of the country as a Christian landscape. Where before legendary material linked landscape features to Norse gods such as Odin or even Loki, a sailing competition, a struggle with the Midtgard serpent, and a fight with trolls, these were in some cases becoming associated with Olav Haraldsson. The king associated with the conversion of the people was thereby associated with the greatest of the gods, Odin, in sagas that show an ambivalent relationship between the figures of St. Olav and Odin.1 That St. Olav impersonates Odin in the saga material functioned as a missionary strategy, showing that the power of Christ in Olav can find and expose even the most secret pagan offering. It is likely that through this narrative technique Olav is shown to both inherit and supersede Odin and reinterpret the sacralized Norse royal ideology into an ideal Christian kingship.2 In the hagiographic texts, St. Olav’s travels include significant encounters, miraculous acts, visions, and dreams, often associating them with concrete places and events. Olav went on land on Selja, where St. Sunniva arrived on the Norwegian coast. Thus he picked up the mantle of Olav Tryggvason who attempted to bring Christian faith practices to Norway, Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity. Marion Grau, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197598634.003.0007

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and who had done so by visiting Selja and paying homage to St. Sunniva.3 With the tighter framing of Christian morals and law, and the travels of a saint that connected landscapes near and far, a certain remapping occurred. Thus, “landscape, which was regulated and arranged by law, also became a carrier for common morality, and its religious meaning was deeply connected to its geographical shape. Hence, the spiritual and ritual center, represented by Nidaros cathedral and its surroundings, became the knot in a web of intertwined travel and migration routes.”4 Trondheim was founded by King Olav Tryggvason (968–​1000) around 997. The city’s claim to power is strengthened after Olav Haraldsson’s death in battle at Stiklestad when his body is transferred to Trondheim.5 In order to bring the relics close to their own royal palace, subsequent kings moved St. Olav from St. Clement’s Church to St. Olav’s, then St. Mary’s, and then eventually to Christ Church, the first version of today’s Nidaros Cathedral.6 Through rituals, historic city walks, local pilgrim walks, liturgies, narrative, and embodied sensing, pilgrims navigate these layers of history, meaning-​making, and relationship. What follows is drawn from observations of contemporary rituals to mark these principal sites. Rituals help locate and mark these nodes in the sacred geography of the pilgrimage network and imbue them with meaning for new generations of pilgrims while reconstructing them for contemporary concerns and questions.

APPROACHING AND CIRCUMAMBULATING THE CATHEDRAL

Trondheim is located on a fjord and at the mouth of a major river, providing access to both fresh water and saltwater. This location on the edge between ocean and inland river has made it a transport hub for the region Trøndelag. Today, numerous cruise ships stop in Trondheim. Nidaros Cathedral is the main attraction of the city, and many visitors disgorge from cruise ships and buses to visit it. Pilgrims are a niche group in

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the context of the tourism industry, given they are far outnumbered by package tourists. In some studies of pilgrimage, the geographical destination of the pilgrim journey remains “a largely empty vessel in the text,”7 compared to the processes of pilgrimage itself. Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, however, is the site of an annual festival that provides a key focal point and one of the more compelling aspects of this pilgrimage network.8 The long-​distance walking pilgrim’s first view of Nidaros Cathedral is from the Feringsbakka, the hill of joy, the first point at which pilgrims see the goal of their journey. In its present form the cathedral dominates the view, despite the urban sprawl that now surrounds it. To the visitor arriving by ship or boat via the fjord, the monk’s island Munkholmen and the cathedral towers provide a focal point as boats more toward the harbor. On a sunny but cool day in July, the square in front of the cathedral was quiet but busy. Asian tourists are posing for a photo with a selfie stick, while others use their phone to take pictures of the west front of the cathedral. Tourist guides ask a group of French-​speaking tourists if they recognize any of the saints on the west front, sounding like catechists providing basic religious education to the visiting crowds. The French tourists laugh and groan after one smart-​mouth guesses two of the saints correctly. They chatter and move on. The tourists are more ethnically diverse and international than the average pilgrim, who comes primarily from neighboring Northern and Middle European countries. Despite the tenuous distinction between tourist and pilgrim, most visitors remain in tourist mode, while pilgrims often go in and out of tourist mode. They linger, they seek contact, and they are generally respectful of people and land, and appreciative of its culture. Many pilgrims indicate that they seek the deeper connections, the powerful memories and experiences that they hope a pilgrimage offers. One pilgrim told me that he by far prefers a walking pilgrimage over a tourist experience, which is often so superficial it seems better and cheaper to watch a travel documentary. Some pilgrims are not satisfied with surface experiences but seek to be in nature, connect with people, and reflect deeply on their lives. The end point in Trondheim offers a chance to reconnect with people

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encountered on the way, check in with the volunteers in the center and talk to other pilgrims about their experiences, attend services dedicated to arriving pilgrims, engage with a pilgrim priest, shake hands, see the city, and affirm the reasons for their pilgrimage. Pilgrims stop at the cafe, chatting in the sun and eating ice cream. Everybody else snaps a picture of the west front, more or less aware of theological code encrypted in the iconostasis of the cathedral’s west front. Some recognize a couple of biblical figures and saints, but some are lesser known, and others that are specific to the history of Christian faith in Norway.9 Many can spot a few they have heard of; at least Adam and Eve are obvious, because they are the only ones naked. Crucifixion, judgment, and Christus victor at the very top of the central panel seem standard issue. Cathedrals often occupy a location that is both “sacred space and common ground,”10 something that is particularly notable with Nidaros Cathedral, being the only cathedral in Norway that has this particular public profile. As “adaptable spaces” that are expansive enough to room many different types of events, cathedrals can be as expansive and multipurpose as medieval cathedrals were.11 They can be hospitable to transient visitors and communities, to tourists and pilgrims alike. Like pilgrimage, cathedrals as an institution were interrupted through the Reformation and have been making a comeback as spaces that can gather communities.12 In a time when personal religious affiliation is declining, cathedrals offer exposure to “vicarious religion,”13 where a committed minority performs for a more or less committed majority, and where the uninitiated can observe and merely be present. In some studies of pilgrimage, the geographical destination of the pilgrim journey remains “a largely empty vessel in the text,”14 compared to the processes of pilgrimage itself. Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, however, has become the site of an annual festival that provides a key focal point and one of the more compelling aspects of this pilgrimage network.15 Like some Anglican cathedrals, Nidaros Cathedral has played a particular role in nation-​building,16 and, some have said, has waxed and waned along with the fate of the nation.

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The staff at Nidaros Cathedral plays an important part in framing and guiding the experience of pilgrimage on the St. Olav Ways for those pilgrims who arrive in Trondheim, particularly during the summer and during festival time. Like other cathedrals, it provides a space for many different engagements with the sacred: as art, as music, as architectural space, as history, as heritage, as social and cultural engagement, and as faith. Around the cathedral and Olsok, the saint’s feast day on August 28, pilgrims and festival attendants gather for a week of concerts, lectures, and conversation. The first celebration of Olsok after the Reformation was not until 1898 and occurred in the setting of increased feelings of national distinctiveness, and Olav was framed as a symbol of national independence.17 This turn toward the medieval past by a strictly Lutheran national church also led to a theological change of attitudes toward medieval practices, such as notions of sacred space and pilgrimage,18 so that today many in the Church of Norway see pilgrimage as a valid form of spirituality and an opportunity to engage in ministry.

EXPLORING THE CATHEDRAL

Visitors generally enter the cathedral from the west front, proceeding, as if back in time, toward the eastern part, toward the altar and the octagon, the oldest part of the cathedral and the most likely location of the relics of St. Olav. Free entrance is reserved for pilgrims and worship service attendees, while a state-​of-​the-​art building on the side of the cathedral square offers tourists toilets, entrance tickets, a gift shop, and a cafe.19 The cathedral services are well organized, the guides professional, friendly, and knowledgeable. It is a relatively quiet, dark place, even when it is sunny outside. It seems almost brighter at night when lights are on. A German pilgrim told me that at Compostela, the noise of the tourists, pilgrims, and the sheer mass of people milling about was overwhelming. The noise, he said, was only interrupted at relatively frequent intervals by announcements asking people to preserve the silence of the place, but

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without much success. Silence, meditation, and reflection, he said, were impossible at Santiago, adding how grateful he was that silence prevails at Nidaros Cathedral, where crowds are far thinner, photography is not allowed, and parts of the church are often roped off to the public. Tourists inside the cathedral can take a guided tour led by the many young and enthusiastic guides in red usher robes. Many cathedral guides were, by their own accounts, recruited from among the students at the nearby technical university, NTNU, who are working a summer job. They hail from all kinds of areas of study—​history, archaeology, chemistry, really anything—​a young guide reports. They have in common that they speak several languages and are interested in history. There is also a religious mix among the guides; some are Christian, secular, Jewish, and Muslim. A group of them told me that they enjoy meeting people from many places, serving as hosts and answering their questions about the cathedral and St. Olav. When there are no guided tours, guides are trained to linger invitingly in various places around the cathedral. As tourists approach, the guides make eye contact and smile, to encourage conversation. They are thus available for people to engage on an individual basis. Some guides commented that they find Norwegian visitors aloof, uninterested, and seemingly unable to appreciate the cathedral in the ways that other European tourists do. Their theory was that tourists from further afield had presumably seen a number of other cathedrals throughout Europe which they use as comparison, such that they can appreciate the specifics of this particular site. Whether this is due to the fact that, as a full-​fledged gothic cathedral, it stands entirely on its own in Norway and thus has no real comparisons within the country, or the disinterest of Norwegians traveling abroad in church architecture, is difficult to know. In its current version, the cathedral is rather young, its west-​facing facade was not completed until the postwar years of the twentieth century. Nidaros Cathedral mostly speaks through its architecture, giving the feeling of a cool, quiet sacred space, without elaborate artwork. The architecture has an unadorned gothic style. The only color in the sanctuary is provided by the (quite dark) stained glass and some well-​placed

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art pieces in side chapels. Inside, there are no statues. The side altars keep to Christological imagery and adornment, crosses, and Christ figures. The west front faces an open square, drawing the eyes of visitors to its gothic-​style iconostasis, a spectacle that generates a great deal of interaction and conversation from passersby. Tourists and pilgrims alike use it as a photo motif or for a family picture or selfie. It draws the eye upward and invites interpretation. People stop in front of it and try to identify the many statues of biblical figures and saints, each marked by their own attributes. The architecture of the cathedral is marked by historic tensions in the circumstances of its creation as a pilgrimage site sacred to St. Olav. Functioning as an icon of national unification under a Christian king, the site also invokes regional rivalries that date back to the very founding of Trondheim by Olav Tryggvason. As a way to counter the power of the regional economic powerhouse of the Ladejarl on the other side of the mouth of the Nid River, it provides a link between fjord and agricultural land. Other regions of the Church of Norway have had reservations in their relationship to both Nidaros Cathedral and the tradition of St. Olav. In order to lower the threshold and allow for it to become a more common heritage, Trondheim organizers have invited bishops from other dioceses to participate in the liturgies and in the Olavsfest. Some of this reluctance to engage in the festival as something that has meaning also for other regions in the country has to do with the rather unpopular move of the seat of the presiding bishop’s office to Trondheim. Some officials in the Church of Norway were against this move, preferring the church’s official presence to be primarily in the capital city of Oslo. One of the factors may also be a wariness of what the presence of a saint and of the major—​ really, the only—​cathedral in Norway represents within a Lutheran and weak church environment. Others have articulated worries around the “Catholicization” of the Church of Norway through greater focus on the St. Olav heritage. But in Trondheim, the new clock tower of the Catholic church in Trondheim located just across the street suggests that if the Church of Norway does not claim the St. Olav heritage for itself, then

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Catholics will do it. Over the last few years, several of the other bishops of the Lutheran Church of Norway have been invited to Trondheim to experience the Olavsfest, to show that the festival could be a church and church music festival for more than just the diocese and region. The octagon on the eastern side of Nidaros Cathedral is one of the oldest parts and the place near where St. Olav’s body is assumed to be buried. Depending on the liturgical schedule, the octagon that cradles the high altar is not always accessible to visitors. Designed by Archbishop Øystein, it represents his royal ideology, centering the altar on the royal saint and emphasizing his position as Norway’s eternal king from whom subsequent kings merely borrow royal office. By superimposing Olav and Christ on the high altar, the octagonal shape references the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, suggesting Olav’s Christlikeness.20 Generally, this area is not accessible to visitors. Thus, there is no access to the area where St. Olav’s shrine stood, and under which he is suspected to be buried, perhaps also to discourage any form of veneration. During the celebration of the Eucharist at the high altar, ushers generally rope off the entrance and exit for the ambulatory surrounding the high altar, which leads past the Chapel of Thanksgiving (the site where archaeologists think is the most likely site of the body of St. Olav) and passing by the St. Olav’s well, a narrow chute on the south-​facing church wall inside the octagon. When the chapel is accessible, pilgrims are invited to walk in a kind of pilgrimage within the pathway of the octagon, circumambulating the altar. Guides often point to the marks near the steps up to the ambulatory, the soft stone marked by the warmth and sweat of many pilgrim hands. Long-​time pilgrim priest Arne Bakken’s contemporary reading suggests that the architecture makes room for medieval pilgrims by providing them with access and a way to come close to the place of healing.21 Today, when pilgrims have access to the ambulatory during Olsok and after, they are invited to write prayers on pieces of paper and place them onto the small table in the Chapel of Thanksgiving. These prayers, which can be read easily by passersby, generally do not address or invoke St. Olav but are prayers of thanksgiving to God or Christ. They are another way

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in which the Protestant framework guides the space and activities inside Nidaros Cathedral. Medieval archaeologist Øystein Ekroll has studied the stones and architecture of the cathedral in detail and reports that the only part that has not been archaeologically explored is the octagon, the oldest part of the cathedral, where the body of St. Olav could still be present underground. There are no plans to find out what is hidden under the cathedral. Lutherans might want to avoid having to deal with an actual reliquary or shrine in a Protestant cathedral, and Catholics might want to avoid finding out there might not be a body there, or that it might not be identical with the relic of and arm bone of St. Olav stored in a shrine in the St. Olav Catholic Church in Oslo.22 Notably, the relic is kept in a Catholic church, not in the Protestant Nidaros Cathedral, nor would officials in the Church of Norway be likely to invoke the saint in prayers or blessings, other than to portray him as an example of a Christian king who sought to bring justice to society and helped create institutions to take care of the poor and sick. At Nidaros Cathedral, it is the absence of a visible presence of the saint that appears, at least to some, to generate somewhat of a mysterious aura. The celebration of Olsok occurs in a blend of presence and absence. Some suspect that narratives that emphasize mystery may be connected to attempts to introduce more traditional features of Roman Catholic veneration of a saint, something that most Protestants would be suspicious of. Depending on the church official, there are various levels of discomfort with the figure and narratives around St. Olav and the particular details of his biography and hagiography. Many have trouble reconciling the violence and power politics of Olav Haraldsson with the overly idealized Christian virtues of the saintly King St. Olav. They find it difficult to engage the story theologically and ethically, and some may touch upon it only briefly in sermons. Others have expressed to me discomfort with some of the dramatizations of his life and especially how it may affect younger audiences. There are consequently many ways of packaging St. Olav. Sermons at the St. Olav Vigil, for example, may skirt around him or give only very basic and general references to him. Or they might use the idealized postmortem version to highlight general Christian principles,

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such as Luther’s focus on the ethics of the love of neighbor, which is attached to the ideal of the righteous and just king, an encouragement to all attending to work for righteousness and justice. This discomfort or ambivalence with the figure of St. Olav has a long history. It is also visually represented in one of the iconographic traditions for St. Olav, the Olavsunderliggeren, where the saint is depicted standing on top of various enemies or animals. One motif displays St. Olav on top of a creature with animal features, but bearing the saint’s own face.23 Several guides and preachers suggest that it is a way to visualize the ambivalence of Olav’s personality, his life and deeds, and the seemingly irreconcilable contrast. This was the motif chosen for the west front of Nidaros Cathedral.24

LITURGICAL RITUALS AND PILGRIMAGE

Liturgies, while for some are perhaps identical with ritual, are only one type of ritual found in a pilgrimage network. Liturgies are a form of Christian ritual that can make room for and give articulation for certain kinds of affects and all manner of thoughts and sentiments pilgrims may be unable to express. A broad definition of ritual as office of negotiation25 would include the work of the government, churches, clergy, and lay ministers as well as associations. It includes pilgrims, hosts, and volunteers in the building and networking of infrastructure, including the rituals present in power plays and small battles about fiefdoms and influence.26 All of that is part of a ritual of negotiation of the meaning and practice of pilgrimage as well as the creation of narratives about the pieces of the network and how they belong together.27 That said, liturgies also play a significant ritual role in establishing sites and the routes that lead to or connect them into a sacred geography. For example, the various pilgrim centers offer blessings and at times noonday masses for pilgrims, usually led by the various pilgrim priests or a local bishop or priest. A random sampling of pilgrims that came through the Oslo Pilgrim Center in July 2018 showed the majority was visibly grateful and positively surprised to be offered a blessing before setting off. It

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seemed to help them to ritually mark beginning their journey in front of a witness. This included several pilgrims who reported that they had left the church or were not going for religious reasons. Further, the fact that they did not give religious reasons for the pilgrimage when asked was not a reliable indicator on whether pilgrims wanted to receive a blessing. A Czech woman walking by herself pronounced that she was interested in history and in learning about how people lived in earlier times. I consequently assumed that she was not a religious pilgrim, but a culturally interested walker. When I mentioned that the center offers a blessing to departing pilgrims, she promptly dropped down on her knees in front of the makeshift altar of the pilgrim center. As she seemed open to it, I put my hand on her head as I read the Irish pilgrim blessing. When I offered her to join me for the Lord’s Prayer, she asked if she could recite it in Czech. And yet she insisted she was not walking for religious reasons. Encounters like these suggest that people’s stated commitments are often more complex than they may initially appear. Observing the pilgrims—​what they are actually doing and what decisions they make when it comes to participating in rituals or entering into a liturgical space and experience—​reveals more complexity in their responses than a checked or unchecked box on a survey form. Liturgies thus evoke complex emotional responses whether they are resisted or engaged with.

LITURGICAL RITUALS IN TRONDHEIM DURING THE PILGRIM SEASON

Every day during the pilgrim season, clergy at Nidaros Cathedral offer a variety of worship services. The content and mode vary somewhat, depending on when one arrives and how many foreign pilgrims are present. Generally, four types of liturgies can be found in and around Nidaros Cathedral at certain times and periods during Olsok and the Olavsfestdagene: pilgrim services, walking services, liturgies of the hours from the Nidaros cycle, and the St. Olav vigil.

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Each noon and evening during the season from June to October, the Church of Norway cathedral staff offers a short service specifically for pilgrims in a side chapel in Nidaros Cathedral. A multilingual (Norwegian, English, and German) bulletin features a half-​hour abbreviated liturgy of prayer with organ prelude and postlude but without sermon, congregational singing, or Eucharist. The sequence is prelude, call to worship, prayer (with pilgrimage theme), scripture reading, meditative organ music, the Lord’s Prayer and Blessing, tolling of the bells (3 x 3 for the Trinity), and postlude.

THE WALKING SERVICE PRIOR TO ST. OLAV’S VIGIL

For the past years, on the morning of the 28th, around two hundred pilgrims gather at Lian Resort, a few hours walk from Nidaros Cathedral, for a free breakfast, conversation, speeches, and a common walk down from the resort to the cathedral, walking the last kilometers of the Gudbrandsdalen route. Many of the pilgrims who attend the breakfast are locals, members of the pilgrim movement, volunteers, clergy, ecumenical or interreligious relations, government officials, or guests staying in town for the St. Olav Feast Days. On the morning of the breakfast and walk down to the cathedral, the tram ride up the hill is free for pilgrims. At Lian, local day pilgrims may converge with arriving long-​distance pilgrims and make their way down together to the cathedral. They may then join with another group of pilgrims who started their procession from the eastern direction, beginning at Lade Church. Groups then gather at the central Olav Tryggvason square, and each receives a rose to carry toward the cathedral, a custom that began in 1992.28 Led by the local pilgrim priest, bishop, and city officials, pilgrims walk toward the cathedral and circumambulate it clockwise while depositing the roses on a table placed outside near the far end of the outside of the octagon. This is to honor the saint near the place where the saint may well be buried. After a circumambulation of the cathedral and the deposition

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of roses on a table near the octagon, the festival is opened in the historic archbishop’s courtyard, the Erkebispegården. Gathering pilgrims from the directions of both routes, the route from Stiklestad and the Gudbrandsdalen route, the procession stops at historically significant places. There, the clergy party leading the procession recites biblical and hagiographically relevant stories and shares a short reflection. Pilgrims are thus drawn into the historical sweep of the feast day and hear parts of the hagiography split into shorter bits and associated with certain places, forming a cityscape of memory. On the evening of the St. Olav’s wake that begins one hour at midnight, a walking service that accompanies the last few stations of the pilgrimage starts from two places, east and west, from Lade and Sverresborg Church, respectively, that is, from two directions, joining together for the last few stations of the procession near the cathedral. Each stop on the walking service reflects on a reading from the Passio Olavi and a particular theme related to it. The handout for these stations29 is supplied in three languages. The themes of the walking service include Olav’s global vision of the church, connecting the very local to the very far away; Olav’s vision of heaven, including the motif of Jacob’s ladder; the miraculous recovery for the damage to the fields of a local farmer when Olav’s army flattens his crop; the death of Olav Haraldsson and the sweet smell of his intact corpse, the declaration of the bishop of Olav sainthood, and the immediate healing miracles at the tomb; and the partial healing of a blind man by attending a chapel dedicated to the saint. He was restored enough to make the trip all the way to Nidaros, where he was healed completely. In 2019, the route was changed slightly to include the newly rediscovered ruins of St. Clement’s Church in the old town, a church built by Olav Haradsson, and where later St. Olav’s shrine was placed.30 Clergy interpret the hagiographic themes for contemporary pilgrims, highlighting more universal themes during the walking service. Adapting passages from the saint’s life to the spirituality of contemporary pilgrims is not always easy. The hagiographic healing miracles at the grave of St. Olav are reframed to

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invite each pilgrim to serve their neighbor in life, as St. Olav did after his death. Thereby emphasis is put on the transformation of each pilgrim’s life, rather than the miraculous narratives of the hagiography. Not the patron saint’s miracles, but the everyday transformation of each person moves into focus. This framing loosely reflects the framing of contemporary St. Olav theology as shaped by former Nidaros bishop Finn Wagle.31 It picks up the hagiographic narrative of archbishop of Nidaros, Øystein Erlendsson (d. 1188), who reread Olav Haraldsson’s life so that his death, if not his life, could be used to reflect the Christian law of compassion, including help for the poor and the suffering. This echoes Lutheran ethics, which generally focus on the love of God and of neighbor and ignore the saint himself, thus avoiding the patron saint complex. This means the catholic saint is read through Protestant ethics that deemphasize Olav’s quest for power and reflect on his actions as a model for Christian living. For Wagle, the core tradition is that of renunciation,32 the law of the wheat grain that has to die in order to bring forth fruit and is an allegory of sacrifice, death, and resurrection from the gospel of John 12:24–​26. The fifth station of the walking mass is the bønnekors, a prayer cross where Olav’s death is interpreted as an act of service to others. The walking service ends there and concludes by way of a procession into the cathedral for the midnight St. Olav’s vigil beginning at 11 p.m.

ST. OLAV FEAST DAY AND VIGIL (OLSOK AND OLAVSVAKA)

During the twenty-​four hours of vigil from July 28–​29, Nidaros Cathedral is open to all visitors. Olsok is in the middle of the summer; thus, the saint’s day and festival happen toward the end of the general vacation period. In 1995, the tradition of keeping an all-​night Olsok vigil from July 28 to 29 was reintroduced.33 The evening begins with a midnight mass held at 11 p.m. on July 28, using parts of the medieval manuscript Passio Olavi for the saint’s day liturgy.34 Pilgrims and clergy enter in a silent

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procession through a corridor of torches held by volunteers dressed in brown monks’ robes. Some years, various visiting bishops participate in the procession or sit inside chapels during the vigil, available for conversation and prayer. Since the late 1980s, the vigil has included meditation stations spread throughout the sanctuary based on St. Olav’s life.35 One of the few reminders of a saint other than St. Olav at the cathedral is the women’s choir Schola Santae Sunnivae, named after the St. Sunniva, the saint associated with the first Christian presence on the island Selja.36 The service lasts about ninety minutes and includes the testimonies of pilgrim groups that have made their way to Nidaros for the saint’s day. In 2016, the theological emphasis was on presenting the saint as a guide to the life of service to others, which has become the dominant interpretation and is often heard in services and reflections on St. Olav. Clergy remarks and reflections often seem to repeat former bishop Finn Wagle’s framing of St. Olav. The emphasis there is on St. Olav’s life after conversion where he lived a life of charity and love. This commitment to living as equal to loving is also expressed through the hymn Å leve det er å elska (To Live Is to Love), which is often sung during Olsok festivities.37 After the vigil, the sanctuary remains open for people to mill about and stay through the night. Historically and theologically, the Passio Olavi is probably the most notable and the most problematic text involved in pilgrimage traditions in Norway today. As with many saints’ legends, the text has no critical distance from its subject and has the typical markers of legendary additions to hagiographies, miracles that echo known miracles from other saints, a large narrative span that aims to include pagan and Christian traditions. Its purpose is, among others, to legitimate the cult of the saint through narrating events and miracles, and to teach the next generation about the saint’s history, including the miracles that were necessary for a contender for sainthood to become recognized by Rome. The text of the Passio Olavi is taken from a medieval manuscript and speaks of the saint in idealizing tones and with a propagandistic streak. It thus resembles the hagiographies of other early medieval rulers who were proclaimed saints, despite it being “doubtful whether their violent deaths were in fact

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suffered in defense of the faith.”38 Over the years of my observation, cathedral clergy changed aspects of this liturgy regularly, to better engage the theological dissonances that contemporary audiences pick up on. While in the beginning of my research, liturgies seemed less open for the kind of artistic innovation and reinterpretation that other parts of the festival displayed, at its conclusion I find that liturgical flexibility continues to expand, including yoga meditation interspersed with music and pieces of the saint’s life, combining traditional, innovative, and liberating aspects.39 While the frames presented to pilgrims and congregants by clergy and other narrators generally stop short of triumphalism, they certainly often err on the side of repeating the harmonizing overall narrative, rather than explaining how and why the narrative strands were woven together and to what end. This framing can impact the narrative consistency of the hagopgraphical aspects and the transition of from raiding power broker to saintly king can seem a stretch. Thus, the pieces of the liturgical ritual may remain narratively unreconciled, which, of course, is not uncommon for liturgies. For some pilgrims this raised questions about how much background knowledge preachers assume. Few have heard of archbishop Øystein and his framing of the Passio Olavi. In addition, Lutheran theological staples such as the emphasis on grace rather than works were woven in. This heightened the impression of the liturgy as oddly fitting pieces rather than a consistent narrative. Seen with a theologically trained eye, the liturgy required a suspension of disbelief if one wanted to accept the premise that Olav Haraldsson, the murderous Viking had somehow turned into a Christ-​ like figure—​claiming numerous parallels between Olav’s life and the life of Christ.40 Some preachers struggle with the figure of Olav and may only lightly touch upon him, focusing on more common Lutheran themes and expanding on Wagle’s Olav motifs, which are relatively safe turf and a contemporary version of the historical harmonization of narratives as promulgated by archbishop Øystein. Not all pilgrims are equally able to follow these narrative flows. Many are happy to let the music and words wash over them. Some services during the pilgrimage season are only very sparingly supplied with

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translations, and several pilgrims told me that they barely understood what was going on. This experience is heightened for pilgrims who are unchurched. Worship handouts only provide the bare minimum and often feature hit-​and-​miss translations. Often, the rubrics to each part of the service are the only thing that is provided. Neither the lessons nor the gospel of the day is translated or available as a handout. Often the only accommodation to foreign guests was a brief welcome and the fact that some hymns alternate between English and Norwegian verses. Thus, the global perspective invoked by the framing of the St. Olav Ways route network is not always reflected by ritual hospitality for foreign pilgrims. To the relief of exhausted pilgrims, some adjustments were made during the time of my study. In 2014, the duration of the vigil had been shortened drastically, making the service less lengthy, rather than readings of large parts of the Passio Olavi when I arrived with the group of “multireligious” pilgrims. Most of us in the group also attended the high mass on the morning after the Olsok vigil. Our guide gathered us after the liturgy and invited us to sit in a circle in the grass in the shadow of the cathedral. He invited us to share reflections about the service and how it was to arrive at the cathedral. Several of the Norwegian pilgrims recounted how moved they were by the sacred space the cathedral represented for them. They spoke of loving the way the organ music and choir filled the space and how it created space for inner silence while drawing them into a different kind of reflection than walking had. Some said they felt a sense of cosmic unity; several of the women were moved by the Sámi blessing spoken by the female presider, hinting at a reconciliation for the history of oppression of the Sámi; another said he felt a strong sense of love. Several, most of them not usually churchgoing, indicated that the service was the most or one of the most powerful services of their lives. Others, who were more used to liturgical routines, did not have the same reaction. Rather, those who attend church services more frequently reported that they had an ongoing internal dialogue with themselves. They critically reflected on liturgical choices and reported becoming irritated with certain things, such as the difficult acoustics of the cathedral when it comes to spoken word

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and the balance between various parts of the liturgy. This prompted those who had spoken in elated tones earlier to chime in to say that they felt the sermon was too long. Yet others thought that there were too many words and that, in contrast, the music was especially powerful and calming. Generally, many articulated a preference of silence or music over longer spoken word. Our group had picked up a French pilgrim several nights earlier along the route and invited him to join us for dinner we cooked at a hostel. He had walked alone and we met him again in Trondheim. He had previously indicated that his motivation was mostly exercise and that he was not religious. Indeed, he seemed the type of pilgrim whose primary goal was motion, a true adrenaline junkie. He had wowed us with accounts of how far he had come and how many kilometers he covered daily, which seemed his main preoccupation. Yet he not only joined us for the ritual circumambulation of the cathedral on the day or our arrival, the laying down of roses near the octagon, but also joined us for services the day after. Sitting in the grass with us after the high mass, he spoke about how important it had been for him to join our group for the service. It had seemed to offer him a radically different dimension to the primarily athletic purpose of his pilgrimage. Indicating that he was hardly a religious man, he spoke of a mixture of feelings when he thought about all the people who have prayed over time in the cathedral, which reminded him of a forest, as he told of walking through it, touching the pillars of stone. As a frequent attendant of church services myself, I was struck by how strongly worded and positive the impression of the service was on persons who reported that they seldom or never go to worship services. This was especially in contrast to those among our group with professional ties to ecclesial structures. The solemn, serious, and emotional responses of many of the other pilgrims were striking, especially those who reported that they had left the church or had rarely attended. Pilgrims also articulated that the very act of sharing their liturgical experience with the group served to enrich their own sense of being present.

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NOCTURNAL RITUALIZATIONS: NIGHT VIGIL, MUSIC, AND MOVEMENT IN THE CATHEDRAL

One of the local mysteries associated with the vigil night, as told by local archaeologist, historian, and city guide Øystein Ekroll, is that an unknown person has been leaving red roses at various places in the cathedral for the last thirty years.41 According to multiple accounts, nobody has managed to find out who this person is, or why or how it is done. The roses are left intact and appear sometimes to be replaced when they are wilted. I had noticed the roses every year, but I had assumed that it was done by officials and involved the same roses that pilgrims place outside the oldest part of cathedral near where experts assume St. Olav may be buried. What the purpose of this may be, and whether it is an attempt to reintroduce some form of a cult of the saint, is unclear. During the Olavsfest in 2017, the mysterious roses became part of a cathedral treasure hunt when a group of school children visited Nidaros Cathedral. Hidden throughout the cathedral the children could find various signs saying “Maybe Olav is buried here” and similar signs meant to elicit excitement and engagement with various spaces around the cathedral. This pedagogy presents an inventive way to habituate children to mystery, if not necessarily sacred space. This improvised and unauthorized ritual act has become integrated in narratives of the cathedral and of Olsok. Other actors play with it and integrate it into their own ways of using the cathedral as an open space for engagement. During the night of the vigil, Olavsvaka, cathedral clergy and staff offer various opportunities for meditation, silence, and prayer in different locations of the cathedral. In 2013, the visiting bishops sat distributed in various locations and chapels and offered prayer and blessings. Having heard that the cathedral is open all night, I tried to stay awake past 1 a.m. but was unable to do so that year or the years after as the cathedral emptied out quickly after the scheduled program was over. It was not always clear what one could do or how one would deal with an increasingly tired body that had trouble remaining upright. Staying there, not knowing who else was there and how long, did not make the thought of staying there all night

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very compelling. This changed radically in 2018, when the priest responsible for the night vigil, Beate Iren Lerdahl, organized the first yoga vigil in the cathedral.42 It commenced around half an hour after the St. Olav vigil service and was by all accounts a popular success and much talked about. To the excitement of the organizers, hundreds of people quickly piled into the cathedral and made themselves at home on the floors that had been cleared for chairs. I had to move quickly to get a good spot and found one right in front of the choir steps, having for the moment forgotten that the choir would actually sing during the two first hours of the yoga vigil. Lying on the floor, breathing and listening to the Nidaros Oratory choir, I watched the conductor and choir from below. Being able to lie down and relax while the choir sung, listening to the yoga instructor, and doing the breathing and stretching exercises in between text and music provided a level of relaxation rarely accessible, especially in a church sanctuary. This ritual variation allowed pilgrims and yogis to experience the cathedral space in a more expansive way. Priest, yoga instructor, and choir blended words, texts, instruction, and music in what I experienced as a seamless tapestry. Over four hundred people crammed their yoga mats, sleeping bags, and yoga paraphernalia into the western part of the sanctuary and onto the stage at the center intersection of the cathedral. The first hour, from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m., focused on entering a phase of rest, guided by the yoga teacher interspersed with choral music. The choir sung John Tavener’s “Mother of God,” the Gregorian piece “Rex Olavus,” which marks the liturgical occasion of the St. Olav’s vigil, Bach’s “Jesu meine Freude,” Mendelssohn-​Bartholdy’s “Psalm 91,” and the popular Taize chant “Ubi caritas.” All the while, pilgrims and yogis were encouraged to engage in deep relaxing breath and deep listening. Lerdahl began by introducing the hour and its topic and read Psalm 139 about our bodies being formed and known by God since infancy; then the yoga teacher took over with breathing exercises, interspersed with three choir pieces, followed by stretching. The experience of lying on the cool stone floor of a cathedral while listening to choir music provided a radically different way of being present in a cathedral sanctuary.

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During hour two, from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m., the cathedral’s conductor and artistic director Karen Haugom Olsen had prepared a choral pilgrimage along stations within the cathedral, beginning in the chapel of creation and some movements from Haydn’s “Creation Oratorio,” moving on to a piece on the Dance around the Golden Calf, and Hezekiel’s prophecy of the Fall of Jerusalem (Mendelssohn-​Bartholdy), and then moving on to New Testament–​related material.43 Between each of the pieces of music, the choir moved from station and artwork or stained glass window, from one theologically significant symbolic space to another. Before each piece of music, conductor Olsen explained the theme and introduced the piece of music briefly, thus providing a kind of musical catechesis of salvation history as represented by cathedral architecture, of bringing to sound the silent catechesis contained in the architecture and artwork within the church. This vigil used the entire cathedral effectively, including its more remote spaces, such as the gallery above and behind the cross over the altar for the placement of the choir; thus, choral music on the death of Christ proceeded from above the cross. This surprising, unusual, and effective placement used the time and place of the vigil through music and physical movement, aligned with yoga practice and rest. Some participants moved with the choir to each station, while others remained in place, experiencing the sound coming from different locations and practices, and the space as a varied and variable soundscape. The vigil offered a different way of physically being in sacred space and made the space sacred for participants. The soundscape created by the interaction of word and music, including gongs and other sounding tools used by the yoga instructors, brought unexpected sound, music, and physical sensations to the vigil of the saint. It created an atmosphere of calm and relaxation, putting the bodies of strangers next to each other for a different kind of communitas, silent and yet intimate, invoking a particular kind of trust, and peaceful breathing together. Very few people left after the first hour and most stayed all night. I was one of the few people who left at 3 a.m. to catch a few hours of sleep—​skipping the Yoga Nidra (instructed sleep yoga)—​and continuing with the last hour of yoga from 7 to 8 a.m., offering to prepare attendants for the new day.

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Attendants set up their sleeping gear in various chapels; some of them even slept in the octagon, near the altar and adjacent to the St. Olav chapel behind the altar. As far as I could see, most of them were yogis, along with a number of choir members and pilgrims in the crowd. Some of the sleepers intentionally placed their mats near the purported placement of St. Olav’s body in the octagon, apparently knowing the significance of the location. The few cathedral guides on location stayed in the background and kept the exits free, but they did not bar anyone from sleeping anywhere in the cathedral. While not encouraging any particular veneration of the saint, this left a quiet, unobtrusive way for some, at least, to place themselves in the octagon over the course of several hours, while normally pilgrims merely circumambulate the location, without stopping for longer intervals of time. This way of managing the vigil allowed people to find places to stay all night in the cathedral and to do this where and how they felt comfortable. Another marker of vigil time is the Liturgy of the Hours, which is used at select intervals to mark ritual time. On the morning after the vigil, a Lutheran high mass is celebrated in the cathedral, filled to capacity on that occasion. In a ritual competition that appears at certain times and places in the pilgrimage network, Roman Catholics in Trondheim celebrate a pontifical mass in Nidaros Cathedral mere hours after the Lutheran high mass, processing across the street from the Roman Catholic congregation. In 2017 the new Roman Catholic Church and bell tower had just been completed and some locals consider its close proximity to Nidaros Cathedral a provocation, especially as the bells of the tower seem intended to compete with the bells of Nidaros Cathedral on Olsok. The Catholic parish in Trondheim is the seat of the bishop, marking the presence of the Roman claim on the tradition and the cathedral. Knut Andresen reports that Olav was a symbol of Norwegian independence over and against Denmark. One of the main motivations for continuing post-​ Reformation Olsok celebrations was to get out in front of Roman Catholics gaining a monopoly over the interpretation of the saint, provoked by the erection of a Roman Catholic chapel at the site of Stiklestad.44 Thus, Lutheran engagement with one of the last saints from preschismatic time, before the split between Eastern

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Orthodoxy and Western Latin Christianity, has an undertone of contestation with Orthodox and Roman Catholic incursions into the memory of St. Olav.45 The resurgence of pilgrimage in Norway, connected to sacred sites and involving a resurgence of the marking of saint’s days liturgically, thus contains aspects of contestation about the use and interpretation of the heritage of St. Olav and of Christian faith in Norway, its significance for national consciousness, and its international and ecumenical relations. The way many Norwegian Lutherans engage the saint is often remarkably different, refracting him with a critical ethical lens that focuses on love and justice, rather than the more outright veneration that dominates Catholic and Orthodox approaches to the saint and to sacred space.

HYMNS AND HAGIOGRAPHIES AS RITUAL TOOLS

The Protestant focus on congregational song, hymnody, and a strong culture of support for church music makes for a fertile environment. Many domestic pilgrim groups like to sing, often featuring the same hymns. In addition to focusing the inner journey on important themes, singing can be a useful tool to lift the spirits and get the focus away from the aching feet. The traditional hymns by Petter Dass and Elias Blix who served as pastors in the far north among fishermen reflect a very different spirituality, reflect on people’s interaction with elements and animals in their hymns in ways that give pride of place to northern Norwegians. Such hymns provide a part of the soundtrack for pilgrimages and are part of the improvised hymnal for groups of waterborne pilgrims. The elements affect lives powerfully, and cannot be ignored. From the time of the Vikings until the present, ocean waters became the grave of fishermen and all those who labor on the sea. Such hymns, several Norwegian pilgrims told me, keep them close to the history of their ancestors. Some Norwegian hymns thus are carriers of history and heritage, as well as faith, and often preserve and recall a blend of all these. Where the line between history, heritage, and faith goes is not always clear. Hymns are also independent of clergy mediation; pilgrims can sing them whenever and play them whenever, thus

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calling forth the narrative and melody that are contained therein. Singing is key ritual action of pilgrims to help handle pain and emotion while walking, to help invoke meaning and moods, history and faith. The mass on the saint’s day in 2017 featured Ljoset over landet dagna (Light Rises over the Land) (my translation), a hymn that includes a verse on St. Olav, portraying him in poetic and romanticized tones—​using metaphors of the contrasts between light and darkness, juxtaposing a pagan “darkness” and the image of his bringing of the Christian “light.”46 Invoking triumphalist missionary rhetoric, the hymn casts law and lawlessless alongside light and darkness as the contrast between pagan and Christian life modes. Yet the best we can tell from history suggests that whatever struggles Olav faced were related to his hunger for political power, and the new religion offered an ideology under which power could be consolidated and more permanent. The juxtaposition of him as a Christian king fighting against the godless simplifies the ongoing ambivalence of the narrative of Olav’s life and death. This hymn thus continues a tradition of legitimizing readings that do not consider a more complex reality, favoring instead a more dualistic and heroic imagery, a form of hagiographic propaganda. This ambivalence is also due to widespread habits of how to read hagiographies. Rather than reading them as if hagiographies were simply presenting historical events, they often include aspects of political theology that make several claims at the same time. Thus, the hagiographic material around Olav likely combines several strands of what one would call typological argumentation: certain narrative points hint that Olav is the rebirth of the pagan chief Olav Geirstadalv, that he is the chosen successor of the Hårfagre Dynasty, that he represents or supplants the Norse god Odin, and that he represents a saintly king in the Christian tradition of the rex iustus,47 in likeness to Charlemagne, the ideal of medieval Christian kingship. It is no accident that his son is known as Magnus the Good—​evoking Carolus Magnus—​Charlemagne, the ideal of a righteous, powerful, cultured Christian king. Indeed, the canonization of royal saints often has political character.48 Such historical detail is not easily available to contemporary readers, hearers, or pilgrims. Thus, the collage of narratives, motivations, and ideas

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helps produce some of the ambivalence modern hearers experience in relationship to saints and hagiographies but also theological statements thereto. This ambivalence is thus not only due to a misunderstanding of the genre of hagiography, or the hermeneutics of mythological elements, but also due to the grafting of traditions, the layered messages and claims that are contained within. The narrative labor and impetus of these hagiographic texts are multiple, combining religiocultural and political elements from symbol systems in a time of transition from pagan religiopolitics to a Christian royal political theology. As is common in other hagiographic texts, the framing of the light of Christian faith coming into darkness repeats classic patterns of Christian supersessionism over Judaism, where the pre-​Christian ethnic past is overcome by Christian imperial culture, something that is considered the fulfillment of divine promise.49 Using this hymn in the liturgy, to the worshiper who notices, clashes with the dominant depiction and narrative strategies of the Church of Norway when it comes to St. Olav. Today, the church may honor this type of hymnody as historical but recognizes its romantic nationalism and overemphasis on depicting Olav as a heroic figure that single-​handedly converted the nation to Christianity through his introduction of the Christian law and his martyr death. This may be one reason for the discomfort with the saint expressed by some clergy, in sermons, and in public discussions on the heritage of the saint and his significance in Norway today.50 The blending of Christian wisdom—​something has to die for things to grow—​with a story about a particular historical figure is common to Christian preaching. Some consider the link between the biblical passage of John 12:24–​26, the grain of wheat that has to die before it brings fruit, and the biography of the saint problematic. Interpreting Olav’s death in battle against political enemies as martyrdom, and linking it to a text about death and resurrection or transformation, seems to some an interpretive stretch. Both pilgrims and clergy would occasionally frown at the gaps in logic they saw between the historical data and the hagiographic reframing. Hymns are part of this ritualized reinterpretation. Hymnody narrates and frames, sometimes in tension with the preacher’s words and

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other times highlighting points in the sermon. The multiple impulses of biblical texts, hagiographic narrative, and the context of the congregation contribute to the ritual creativity expressed in framing liturgical messages. For example, Olsok liturgies use the hymn Jesus din søte forening å smake (Jesus, your sweet union to taste) contains the verse “Å, måtte Jesus min allting kun være, jeg er desverre så splittet og delt” (O may Jesus be my all, I am sadly split and divided). This verse describes the human realities of both St. Olav and the human condition more realistically, and captures this ambivalence powerfully in its poetic vibrancy. Liturgies often blend different voices, messages, and genres. At times it may be difficult for the conscious participant in these liturgies to try to hold the various pieces together, perhaps especially when a saint’s feast is involved. Occasional controversies around the use of certain of the pieces of liturgy may occur at the cathedral, such as the use of Gregorian chant in St. Olav’s honor. Some clergy reacted against the use of this piece in the liturgy, fearing a slippery slope toward a veneration of the saint. In their defense, some cathedral clergy responded that there is no encouragement in the rubrics of the service to pray to St. Olav or venerate him. Liturgical rituals around Olsok then raise certain questions: Is their intent to preserve and perform historical heritage, or to inform and reinterpret Christian faith for today? Or, can these two intentions, to preserve and to reinterpret, be constructively combined? Pilgrimage-​themed psalms in the Hebrew Bible’s Psalter may be the oldest obvious ancestor of a genre in Jewish and Christian pilgrimage-​ themed hymnody.51 A number of pilgrimage-​themed hymns are also found in the Norwegian hymnal, referring both to pilgrimage over land and sea. Newly composed music by pilgrims or those inspired by themes of pilgrimage add to the narrative and ritual framework of the pilgrimage network. Anne Kristin Aasmundtveit cowrote a Pilegrimsmesse with the same title as her book on pilgrimage, Alle Mine Veier (All My Paths). It was produced for the first time at Røldal Church in July 2016, an old pilgrimage destination for those who sought healing from its sweating cross. A new Swedish composition by Helland, the St. Birgitta prayers Lär mig att älska—​(Teach Me to Love), were performed for the first time in 2017

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at various locations, including Nidaros Cathedral. St. Birgitta (1303–​1373) from the monastery in Vadstena was a medieval Swedish nun who went on pilgrimage to Nidaros.52 Music is thus one of the most important ways to ritualize pilgrim tradition and to pass it on to the next generation.

INDIGENOUS ABSENCES AND PRESENCES IN THE CATHEDRAL AND ELSEWHERE

Pilgrim priest Einar Vegge describes the inclusion of Sámi practices and history as one of the greatest challenges for pilgrim spirituality in Norway.53 Pilgrimage from Sámi perspectives cannot and should not be assimilated into a dominant sacred geography that does not recognize Sámi notions of pilgrimage and sacred place. For the Sámi, the regions they have inhabited and the nation-​states they became part of in Norway, Sweden, and Finland have always been multilingual and multicultural. Ritual space can be used to revive and activate repressed memories or tokenize minority communities while rendering them invisible through colonial representation. The narrative of the Christianization and unification of Norway has been the dominant narrative in establishing the significance of St. Olav as a national—​and transnational—​figure, but this narrative has long excluded and made invisible the ethnoreligious variety of those who live in its territory: the indigenous people of the European North, the Sámi, and their place in a geography where the narratives and representation of Viking and Christian national pasts are dominant. While there appears to have been something approaching coexistence among Sámi and Nordic peoples in the Middle Ages, colonial politics applied in the early modern period. The Sámi population was subjected to centuries of forcible conversions and Norwegian colonial policies, such as the fornorskningsprosessen (Norwegianization) pressure to assimilate in to the dominant Norwegian culture. The result of these policies was the dimming if not the outright eradication of Sámi language, culture, and spiritual and ritual practices, putting their way of being in the world under severe stress.

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In the assimilation processes perpetrated on the Sámi by a state church that was often the handmaiden to colonial state dynamics, Sámi were stripped of much of their cultural knowledge, their spirituality was condemned as heathen, and their access to land for subsistence living was put under significant pressure. One of the tools of colonial repression was the modern practice of scientific travel and mapping. Thus, images produced by early modern Scandinavian scientist-​travelers “portray how the negotiation for power over the landscape also includes a visual production of the landscape, a production that is representative of and significant for intruders and settlers as well as for the imagination of the local population.”54 This dynamic extended to the way landscape was depicted in art and image in historic Scandinavian science literature, which often worked “as a colonizing tool to expand the Christian empire to the Nordic north. Churches and sacred places had an obvious significance in the construction of the landscape as national terrain.”55 Thus, pilgrimage and the creation of a sacred geography through the building of churches and thus potentially overwriting other sacred spatial narratives often go hand in hand. This is true both for the practice of pilgrimage and for the representation of Sámi culture and faith in church spaces. While there have been implicit and hidden presences of Sámi religious art in Nidaros Cathedral, it is only with the installment of a more prominent altar in the southern transept that Sámi are represented permanently and in a more recognizable and public fashion as part of the church and part of the Norwegian people. Previously, the stained glass windows of Mary’s Chapel—​an upstairs chapel on the second floor—​was the only sign of a Sámi presence. It remained inaccessible to anybody but those guided up by somebody with a key and enough agility to ascend the narrow stone stairwell. Unrecognizable to the untrained eye, guides have to make explicit what otherwise fades into the backdrop for most cathedral visitors.56 Nevertheless, it appears that Sámi artist Oddmund Kristiansen (1920–​1997) had quietly encoded his indigenous identity into the stained glass, the colors representing the Sámi flag.57 Former bishop of Nidaros Tor Singsaas recalls that the significance of the coloring of the

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stained glass was overlooked until visiting Sámi themselves exclaimed, “These are our colors.” In 2017, on February 6, Sámi Day—​which commemorates the one-​ hundred-​year anniversary of Tråante, the first Sámi Congress in Trondheim in 1917—​Sámi presence and culture were formally and permanently installed in the main sanctuary.58 The altar features a wooden Christ in a Sámi kofte (traditional dress) embedded in the sacred elements that form the back of the structure. It was dedicated during a liturgy including representatives from Sámi communities from Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and the royal house of Norway.59 Former bishop Singsaas oversaw the installation of the altar just off the main sanctuary high point; this was especially significant for the many Sámi who had long felt excluded and had worked for years to have a clearly visible Sámi presence in the cathedral.60 The colonial heritage of Norway in relationship to the Sámi in terms of cultural and territorial repression forms an often invisible backdrop of pilgrimage, especially around the location of Nidaros Cathedral. The existence and treatment of the Sámi pose challenges to the heritage of St. Olav as signifying their compulsory assimilation to Norwegian culture, language, and confession. A Norwegian pilgrim traveling with me on the sea route remarked that even with the inclusion of the region as far north as the town of Harstad, still other parts of Norway were missing from the pilgrimage network. That region, the far Arctic North, is also the location with the highest concentration of the Sámi. Traditional Sámi territories and routes are yet to be included in the map of pilgrimage routes, even as the coastal route from Trondenes southward to Trondheim has been officially recognized and opened to the contemporary map of pilgrimages, as part of the coastal pilgrimage route.61 At the time of writing, significant critical engagement with the traditions around St. Olav has yet to happen, and it is likely that when it happens, it may be in some degree of conflict with the emerging network of the St. Olav Ways, which from indigenous perspectives could easily be experienced as yet another form of colonial mapping. Since indigenous modes of living generally express profoundly religious modes of knowledge and perception, one of the most debilitating effects

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of colonization has been the disregard, supersession, and secularization of indigenous peoples’ ancestral landscapes, histories, and cosmologies.62 In many indigenous cultures, cosmogonies frame creation as “relative, not as a resource.”63 Such narratives “carefully encouraged Indigenous societies in the Americas to have a reciprocal, intentional, environmentally sustainable relationship with the natural world,” aiming to forestall infringement of these limits.64 The Sámi have their own sacred geography, and from what I could gather, it has little to do with Olav Haraldsson. Rather, it revolves around ancient markers of presence and the ancestral narratives tied to them, bringing them back from obscurity. It stands to reason that the notion of pilgrimage for many Sámi will not easily fit into the dominant St. Olav Ways narrative.

OLAVSFEST—​T HE SAINT’S FEAST DAY AND ITS CONTEMPORARY REFRAMING

The return of pilgrimage in Norway coincided with an increase in popular participation in festivals, among them a festival associated with Olsok, the saint’s day, and a marker of midsummer. The Olavsfest has grown to become a major annual event in the city of Trondheim, bringing hundreds of pilgrims and thousands of festival participants to the area in and around Nidaros Cathedral. The festival includes a variety of cultural offerings from welcoming the pilgrims: a breakfast reception for pilgrims, various shorter walks with stations, the St. Olav’s vigil, classical and contemporary music concerts, lectures, theater plays, panel discussions on religious and sociocultural topics, historical city walks, a medieval market, exhibitions, film, and food and drink. Olsok became a regular feast already five years after Olav Haraldsson’s death, and it was soon celebrated internationally within the Catholic Church.65 Moving the body of St. Olav was a form of resistance both against Danish rule and the Reformation, which elsewhere destroyed saints’ shrines and reliquaries and forbade prayer to the saints.66 After the cessation of the official celebrations and the removal of calendars of the

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saints during the Reformation, many elements were preserved and passed on. Legends, narratives, historical places, Olav’s wells, and churches helped keep the traditions alive.67 The Olavsfest is a week-​long celebration that begins with Olsok. People of many backgrounds converge—​Lutheran clergy and laypeople, volunteers, young people with summer jobs, tourists, local and international pilgrims, media representatives, politicians and government officials, local businesses, and members of various other Christian and interreligious communities. Its contemporary incarnation is the result of many engaged people, often at odds with each other, but managing in the end to create an increasingly diverse, multicultural and multireligious annual event that is effectively run by a sizable group of mostly local volunteers.68 The voices that come to expression at this festival form a large laboratory of how the heritage of St. Olav continues to be shaped and retold in the context of a globalized and multicultural world. Beginning with the revival of medieval Olsok traditions in 1980, ecumenical engagements during Olsok have gone from outright competition to increased ecumenical cooperation.69 One of the perennial controversial issues is the question whether St. Olav can be relevant as a role model or not. This discussion is played out regularly via print and online media or panel discussions and has aspects of ritualization in that it appears rehearsed and habitual, yet with varying protagonists. The St. Olav festival began as an initiative of the St. Olav’s Foundation, a church academy founded in 1958. Its members suggested a renaissance for Olsok celebrations, and in 1963 they organized the first Olavsfestdagene, cosponsored with Nidaros Cathedral, the cathedral organist, the vestry, diocese, and other cultural players in arts and education.70 Initially, it was a church music and liturgy festival, meant to highlight the cathedral as a center for church music, during the time of Olsok. During the early years, the main program consisted of services, concerts, and lectures, aiming for a renewal of Christian contemporary life, rather than an engagement with the past. Since then, Olsok has been part of a larger festival that included what was then called Olavsfestdagene, which have changed and grown considerably

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over the years.71 Over time, theological students volunteered as summer tourist guides in the cathedral. Many of the clergy involved in the festival later converted to the Catholic Church.72 There were thus high church and Catholic elements in the celebration that reanimated certain impulses that were not necessarily mainstream in this Lutheran setting. Eventually, the tourist guide service was brought under Nidaros maintenance and restoration works (NDR) and lost its volunteer, church-​based impetus. In the 1980s, the festival expanded by adding historic city walks and ecumenical walking services to the repertoire.73 Pilgrim traditions and practices became increasingly thematized during Olsok and the Olavsfest.74 The expansion of Olsok and Olavsfestdagene beyond the cathedral grounds became necessary when the festival began to grow larger. An Olavsfestdagene foundation formalized the work, but due to lack of coordination, communication, and clear agreements,75 in the mid-​nineties the festival was neither economically sustainable nor able to function well in struggles about what the profile of the festival should be and who among the various stakeholders should determine content and administration.76

IN AND AROUND THE CATHEDRAL: FRAMING THE ST. OLAV FESTIVAL

Today, the Olafsfestdagene festival, recently renamed Olavsfest, has become an arena where “deep-​seated conflict, historical injustice and social inequality” are addressed on multiple levels. This exemplifies reframing pilgrimage as part of the “peace-​builder’s toolkit.”77 It is in the context of the Olavsfest that the last portion of the pilgrimage route from Oslo to Trondheim is each year marked by an ecumenical and interfaith walk toward Nidaros Cathedral. Pilgrimage sites can be places where ethnic, national, colonial, and single religious identities are performed and reaffirmed. Pilgrimage and crusades have historically overlapped at times, and colonial ventures have been described as pilgrimages. Even so, it appears that few host sites engage in critical engagement with the history of pilgrimage.

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Retelling St. Olav’s story, whether in the context of pilgrimage or history, has always had religious and political implications. In Norway’s short history as an independent nation, in particular during the Nazi occupation, Olav was invoked both for and against fascism. Norwegian Nazis who sought to revive Norse lore used him as a prop in an ethnocentric and nationalist narrative and erected a monument in heroic style at Stiklestad, while the homefront fighter Hakon Wergeland wrote an article putting St. Olav in line with national independence from idols both in new and old forms, resisting any form of foreign rule.78 Several actors in the pilgrimage network counter Nazi appropriations of St. Olav by engaging the narrative about the way he used his power to further justice and greater equality, rather than emphasizing the violent aspects of Olav Haraldsson’s life, as was done both by Norwegian Nazis and the 2011 terrorist.79 Protestant pilgrimage hosts engage the heritage of a medieval saint with particular theological frameworks. Classic Catholic pilgrimages can be vehicles to reaffirm conservative Catholic gender and sexual ethics. Maryan pilgrimages in particular often reaffirm conservative ideas of womanhood and reproductive practices while giving room for an experience of the divine as feminine. Program events at Olavsfest feature justice, aid, reconciliation, and work for human rights and are aspects of contestation and engagement with injustice and the violent heritage of Olav. Often this happens in a way that does not become too controversial. Norwegian Church Aid’s campaigns to promote ecological and gender justice abroad are hardly controversial. Critiquing cell phone addiction, unhealthy body image, and consumer mentality is not controversial. Up to a certain point, environmental engagement is not controversial. Most of the theological and political debates go over relatively well-​trod ground, though they still are valuable and include a wide variety of people in a larger debate around critical issues in society. The discussion around St. Olav and how he should be remembered is still alive and at times controversial. In 2013, the then Lutheran university chaplain Gyrid Gunnes wanted to provoke the organizers of the Olavsfest to engage more critically with the problematic saint associated with the Christianization of Norway, something

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that is increasingly happening.80 Gunnes sought to direct attention to how the heritage of St. Olav is framed in the contemporary context by juxtaposing the violent image of Olav the Viking king with his axe next to him being framed as a Christ-​like humble figure. She did this by offering foot washing to pilgrims and covering a miniature statue of St. Olav with a Pussy Riot–​style knitted mask.81 Gunnes participated in the annual ritual of public discourse and newspaper opinion pieces, discussing the pros and cons of the saint and the merits of the feast and raising questions about how to remember and engage the ambivalent legacy of the past. She is not the only clergy person troubled by the logo of the Church of Norway (Olavsmerket), which features two battle axes. Whether this was a design choice or whether it symbolized both instrument of his martyrdom as well as his own participation in violent conflict is unclear. Anne Lidén’s research on the history of symbols and iconography around St. Olav suggests that the axe functioned as a symbol of royal power and law, showing Olav as athleta Christi, fighter for Christ both in a real and spiritual sense. The axe also serves to distinguish Olav from other Scandinavian saints. Given the many historic representations of the saint, there is ample room for multiple readings.82 The festival has become larger, more well-​known, and more nationally oriented over time. The panel discussions in front of the western side of the cathedral have been carried live by NRK, the public television channel, and are available as podcasts. Events in and around Nidaros Cathedral during the Olavsfest include interreligious dialogue, engagement with other cities that are pilgrimage destinations, concerts by secular and church musicians, events for children, movies, documentaries, historic accounts, televised panel discussions on controversial issues, and so forth. There is space for new compositions, new music, for plays that explore related issues of the themes in St. Olav’s life: encounter with the other, the different, travel, pilgrimage, learning from others, justice, faith in action, and more. In 2016, Kim Andre Arnesen offered the composition The Wound on the Water, a piece that invokes Genesis 1, John 1, and the pollution humans wreak on the “sister sea.”

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The organizers of Trondheim’s Olavsfest have been open to tackling the violent history and triumphalist accretions of that heritage by featuring conversations, theater plays, musical acts, and lectures that use this heritage as a jumping-​off point for opening critical conversations. In August 2016, toward the end of Olavsfest, people in the city of Trondheim celebrated the arrival of new residents in Trondheim who arrived as refugees. The year after, following a year of controversial politics and public discourse around refugees and immigration, the Norwegian government closed the borders for refugees. Festival organizers arranged a politically relevant panel discussions at Olavsfest about the experience of refugees and the work of church-​related groups to welcome these refugees. The events included honoring the work of Refugees Welcome to Norway, who received the annual bridge builder prize (brobyggerprisen) given by the Norwegian Church Academies on this occasion. It is often through such indirect but eloquent events that the ethical implications of the countercolonial interpretation of St. Olav manifest. During an interview with the outgoing and incoming bishops of Nidaros diocese, both welcomed a discussion of what the shared values are that societies are built upon. Both were also critical of the way in which some politicians framed the term “Christian values” in ways used to divide people in Norway. They further emphasized that if there are any Christian values, then they have to do with aiding the weakest and poorest in society. Thus, they critique the way in which some Norwegian politicians and samfunnsdebattanter (prominent participants in the public debate) make it a habit to link of Christian and Norwegian cultural habits such as eating waffles and skiing, or being a (white) Christian (often used to draw a line between Christians and Muslims, with Islamophobic undertones) to what it means to be Norwegian.83 The arts and culture program features complex, often intercultural modes that use the commemoration of the saint as an opportunity to engage in intercultural and interreligious dialogue, including bringing scholars for lectures that discuss new findings about the saint who resembled a cruel child soldier more than a saintly king.

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Long before he came to HBO’s Game of Thrones fame, actor Kristofer Hivju portrayed St. Olav in a play about Olav Haraldsson’s life at the Olavsfest. In 2017, the Olavsfest used a visual representation of Hivju as Tormund Giantsbane in Game of Thrones as the basis of the year’s promotion material. This layered his performance in this violent series and the violence of Olav Haraldsson close to each other. A lively panel discussion featuring Hivju, a historian, a Lutheran priest, and a descendant of Olav Haraldsson, discussed whether St. Olav could be an idol for our time, and offered four widely different viewpoints, thus drawing audiences on the cathedral square and in front of the TV into a process of public discussion and reconstruction of the saint’s memory as that of a complicated figure.84 The discomfort with the violent life of the king and saint can be traced already to the formation of the hagiographical accounts themselves, thus inscribing the duality and the tension between violence and sanctity within the hagiographical accounts,85 likely because they were shared by many contemporaries and needed to be addressed in some way in the promulgation of the saint. The annual tradition discussing the merits and demerits of St. Olav in the Norwegian press each summer thus has deep roots in medieval discourse. Despite the July 22 terrorist attack and its aftermath with its increasing presence of right-​wing attitudes in Norway, Olavsfest featured spaces where a diverse interethnic community is celebrated and narrated. During the 2017 volunteer orientation, it was announced that the person who had recruited the most new volunteers was a young Muslim man who had recruited ten other Muslims as volunteers for an ostensibly Christian-​themed festival. The festival volunteers are perhaps also the most ethnically diverse crowd involved in engaging the heritage of St. Olav (Olavsarven) seemingly a little more diverse each year, and emblematic of the presence of immigrants and refugees. Composed primarily of locals and some who have moved to Trondheim and seek connections and new friends, the volunteers were an unexpected aspect that the initial planners of the festival in the 1960s did not foresee. Festival volunteers are increasingly diverse in age, ethnic backgrounds, and religious affiliation. Many are middle-​aged women, a strong demographic also among

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pilgrims, but many are also young people in their twenties and thirties. In recent years, young local women have been in charge of the different groups of volunteers.86 Two other ritualizations interrogating the concept of icons and sainthood took place during summer 2017. Organizers had brought in some of the icons created by Mark Dukes, who is known for the Dancing Saints at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Mark Dukes’s saints each come with very different stories, manifesting both sins and sainthood, and are an interesting background from which to contemplate St. Olav. Among them are more traditional saints such as St. Gregory, Sta. Macrina, St. Symeon, and St. Francis but also Queen Elizabeth I, Gandhi, Abraham Heschel, Lady Godiva, Islamic mystics, Anne Frank, Mother Jones, Hypatia, and Martin Luther King Jr. Some of them push the boundaries of traditional Christian saints, across confession, age, and status. The criterion for the parish of St. Gregory of Nyssa was to identify persons who the parish felt had displayed the “stamp of holiness” rather than a standard confession or virtues.87 The exhibition included Dukes’s image of Our Lady of Ferguson, an icon created during the Black Lives Matter movement, and which was displayed in the church of Our Lady (Vår Frue) for the duration of the Olavsfest and served to broaden attendants’ perception of St. Mary. Another invited speaker was Nadia Bolz-​Weber, a popular Lutheran punk priest who founded an alternative church community in Denver, the House of All Sinners and Saints. Her community exemplifies the ambivalent experience of being sinner and saint at the same time, one of the main insights of Reformer Martin Luther, thus contributing further to the complexification of what sainthood looks like, whether people we admire have to be perfect, and what it might mean to live with the reality of the human experience of being capable of both great and awful deeds, and sometimes at the same time.88 The ritualizations around Olsok -​prayer walk, vigil, mass, and pilgrim services -​frame the experience of pilgrimage, the saint’s feast, and festival with liturgical acts, prayer, music, movement, and theolo1gical interpretation of ancient texts, hagiographic elements, and contemporary societal

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challenges. This occurs through structuring liturgical experiences; through planning concerts and theater plays; through hosting panel discussions; and through conversations about faith, meaning, and challenging human experiences. It involves clergy, laypeople, choirs, musicians, volunteers, and local business and political actors. Pilgrims, locals, and national visitors to the Olavsfest mingle during the days of the festival where the boundaries between sacred and secular are challenged consistently and profoundly. If pilgrims often find that they are walking between experiences of weakness and strength, life and death, exclusion and inclusion, sacred and secular, goodness and the temptation to success and power, how in particular do the various elements of the St. Olav Ways pilgrimage route network help participants negotiate between these experiences? This brings us to the next and last chapter.

7

Reconstructing Rituals Pilgrimage and Sainthood in Contemporary Norway

SACRED GEOGRAPHIES AND SACRED SPACES: RITUALS TAKING PLACE

Rituals in this pilgrimage network involve hermeneutical acts; they are ways of interpreting lives and spaces and framing transformation. Some pilgrims engage in the work of pilgrimage to focus on personal concerns—​getting away, getting over something, slowing down, deepening engagement in community—​or pilgrimage may become a way to walk the last walk of life in a worthy way. For some, pilgrimage entails a commitment to host strangers and meet new people. For others, the personal is the political, and pilgrimage is an opportunity to raise awareness about refugees or climate change, to gather interreligious community, or to seek a life of transforming action. Hosts, clergy, and volunteers help frame acts and narratives of pilgrimage through rituals that refract political theologies and interpretations of historical figures and events. Pilgrimage involves ritualized movement connecting locals and a network between regions, peoples, and nations. As a “kinetic ritual,”1 pilgrimage networks facilitate access to a variety of ritual practices, from movement to encounter to communication. Rituals can be tools to confirm and transform identities and political bodies and assemblies.2 Thus, pilgrimage is not merely a liminal ritual, meaning it facilitates transitions, but people seek it out precisely because of a desire to Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity. Marion Grau, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197598634.003.0008

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initiate a shift or transformation. Thus, acts of pilgrimage can offer an experience of threshold, of entry, of conclusion, or transformation. Rituals can serve as tools of oppression or as practices of liberation and dissent.3 In a pilgrimage network, ritual practices are employed to renegotiate people’s relationship to self, the sacred, ideas of the divine, and society. Actors in the network renegotiate ambivalent interactions and negotiations of narratives and build alternate personal and communal forms of identity. Rituals of pilgrimage can bring the past and the sacred into a more physical, narrative presence, mediated through the resistant and pained but ever-​so-​responsive bodies of the pilgrim that react to sight, sound, and story. Traversing sites and landscapes that activate memories, transform them, and take in new experience is a central aspect of pilgrim itineraries and circumambulations. Pilgrims step into an “echo chamber” of memory, personal and communal. Thus, as Einar Vegge writes: [t]‌he pilgrim does not always know why she is walking, but she is going towards a sacred place. She is walking through a landscape full of meaning. She assumes the risk to be changed, she risks encountering goodness.4 Place, vision, touch, and sound activate the body and the many narratives stored within it, they activate memory and add new ones. These liminal spaces between pilgrimage, travel and tourism can mean that “sometimes it is only after the journey is underway, or after the events connected with it have been experienced, that an individual comes to see the journey as pilgrimage and becomes transformed into a pilgrim.”5 Sacred spaces can be everywhere and nowhere. Every pilgrim’s doorstep, no matter where they live, is where the sacred geography and the path of life’s pilgrimage can begin, if they are open to receiving its blessings. A well, a church, a cathedral, a shelter, an encounter, a forest, a path—​ each of these can host sacred encounters for pilgrims seeking it. Passing by the waters of the many St. Olav’s wells that dot the landscape along the pilgrimage routes may remind the pilgrim of the sacredness and preciousness of all waters, pointing to the need of people and land for healing.

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MOVEMENT AND MEANING-​M AKING: THEOLOGIES OF PILGRIMAGE

A pilgrimage can offer meaning, experience and sharing of knowledge also for those who do not understand themselves to be religious. This is because the motif of pilgrimage happens entirely in the material: nature, landscape, embodiment, cultural and religious history concretely manifested. [ . . . ] The pilgrim is a wanderer with awareness. [ . . . ] The pilgrim does not own her surroundings. She is an awake and aware guest and observer. The pilgrim has rarely control over what will happen. —​E inar Vegge, “Utøvende Spiritualitet og Pilegrimspraksis,” my translation Insights gained by pilgrims are not necessarily new or surprising, but are often existential, real, and embodied insights. Experiencing discomfort, vulnerability, need, dependency, and exposure to strangers provides a different context for working through personal issues. For pilgrims going alone, or in small groups of close friends, the experience can be one of freedom from the strictures and demands of work life and family demands. Pilgrimage offers entry into a different hermeneutic of life induced by the physical experience of encounters, landscapes, and histories. Influences for the theology and spirituality of pilgrimage in Norway have received many impulses from ecumenical directions -​Ignatian spirituality, the monastic Taize movement, partnerships with Anglican cathedrals and bishoprics, Danish and Swedish pilgrims and writers, and the Celtic spirituality of pilgrimage destinations Iona and Lindisfarne.6 At the same time, Reformation discussions of appropriate forms of pilgrimage and ethical concerns regarding the mode, purpose, and context of pilgrimage have been important. Thus, Protestant reconstructions of pilgrimage today often contain “a healthy and necessary reminder of the openness of faith to exploitation, its susceptibility to being taken for a ride, and the need for simplicity and honesty on the part of both host and visitor to enable the experience to be as beneficial as possible.”7

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One of the key ways of framing pilgrimage theologically has been the biblical story of the post-​Easter encounter on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–​35). Thus, the “journey of the grieving disciples to Emmaus and the meeting with the risen Christ has been associated with pilgrimage at least since the Middle Ages.”8 Some have called this the first pilgrimage of the Christian tradition.9 The story of the two unnamed disciples in Luke 24:13–​35 finds two mourners on the road, disillusioned, disappointed, angry, and grieving their messianic hopes, where they meet a stranger who encounters them in their grief. People who grieve deeply may not be talkative or in good spirits, and it is such that these disciples appear in conversation, with confused, bitter, and angry words, voicing their frustration. On the road, they share their stories, and the strange companion offers his own take on their experiences, helping them to see things differently, to understand what happened in a different way.10 Emmaus is a motif that is common in sermons at pilgrim services at Nidaros Cathedral. The Emmaus story creates a narrative space that holds the hope for transforming encounters on a road traveled with grief and disappointment. The Emmaus story, with its sharing of food, and the invitation to the stranger to abide with their comforting presence and words that heal, describes one of the common experiences of pilgrims: unexpected healing through the gentle eyes of others on seemingly broken lives. Jim Forest argues that pilgrimage is impossible without unexpected encounters and events.11 This sense of pilgrimage as openness to encounter with the unexpected and unrecognized includes engaging in the internal struggle to not let the fear of others prevent meetings with strangers. If pilgrimage as spiritual journey entails living in realization that each journey ultimately encounters death and dying toward oneself, then shedding forms of blindness that keep us rooted in fear, self-​absorption, and ideological obsessions can be one of the goals of pilgrims.12 Former Nidaros bishop Finn Wagle suggests that a pilgrim “never goes home without having lost at least one prejudice and had at least one new idea.”13 The processes the pilgrim undergoes can be kenotic, stripping away a sense of security and stability in life. Pilgrimage can be a “way of life, a

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mode of listening,” an attitude that motivates choices, and a “discipline of being.”14 Similarly, William T. Cavanaugh argues from a Catholic viewpoint that pilgrimage can resemble “the way of the cross,”15 which here means facing mortality, pain, and the limits of ours and other bodies—​in short, experiencing radical vulnerability. Elisabeth Lidell and Anette Foged Schultz, two Danish pilgrim priests, propose various lessons for the human life pilgrimage, especially for pilgrimages with children and young people: life is a pilgrimage from birth to death; there are fellow wanderers with us; there are departures; there may be holy places and encounters; there will be scars from living; in encountering one’s own limits and meeting oneself, God can become present; there are opportunities for prayer; inner and outer pilgrimage are connected; finding one’s mission; Jesus’s pilgrimage; there will be a return; we have to move on in life.16 These phases cohere with the phases of a liminal transition, of departure, encounters, trials, and finally, returning with a renewed purpose or task. The Swedish priest and writer Hans-​Erik Lindström, who helped build up the first Nordic Pilgrim Center in Vadstena and framed seven key words for pilgrims, describes in his book features of a Protestant understanding of kenosis, one that comes out of a sense of simplicity and quiet. It resists connotations of pilgrimage as punishment or involuntary journey while embracing simplicity and the stripping of privilege and expectations.17 Like Cavanaugh, his theology includes hints of resistance against capitalist consumption, but it is less critical of the system and less political. Lindström’s language is focused on personal life. He sees all humans as pilgrims and focuses the idea of pilgrimage as the human path in life. On that path, it is important to focus on the quality of life and meeting with other people on the path. He describes the modern pilgrim’s soul using seven key words: slowness, freedom, simplicity, lack of worry, silence, sharing, and spirituality.18 Lindström proposes a theology of simple pilgrimage, based on what he calls seven classical concepts of pilgrimage, departure, walking, meals, resting place, prayer, meetings, and destination.19 His keywords are used by Swedish and Norwegian pilgrims to help prepare and interpret their own pilgrimages.

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Inspired by Saint Francis, as many others active in pilgrimage networks, Norwegian pilgrim and writer Anne Kristin Aasmundtveit writes: “as a Protestant I find it easier to see God’s finger prints in creation around me, in the living people around me, rather than in caskets with glass lids.”20 It is this focus on the now and the relational that characterizes what many pilgrims, hosts, and volunteers seek and appreciate about the kind of communitas that can be accessed in a pilgrimage setting. Protestants may connect it to Luther’s term of the priesthood of all believers (or nonbelievers, as it were), where the pilgrim network participant can meet others in caring and healing ways. In that sense, it can be seen as pilgrims moving into their own spiritual authority, not relying on clergy or officials to engage in transformative ritual acts. Pilgrims can give and receive engaged, embodied, immediate relationality, with a spirituality that is less comprised in meditating on matters divine on the path, but rather to radically be drawn into our embodied relationality—​ to bodies that matter, so to speak. Pilgrimage allows pilgrims a way to contribute to each other’s well-​being in a small, tangible, and immediate, if temporary way. This fosters loose, affectionate connections to others. Communitas here might mean that, for a few hours, days, or weeks, random strangers become our immediate support system, like family or friends, but without being in any way obligated or required to act in this way. The expectation, as well as the subtle pressure to act in this way, represents, of course, a kind of peer pressure, and some may not appreciate this kind of relationality. As with other spiritual disciplines, it is possible to appreciate its frame and effect, while resenting the pressure it exerts on individual habits at the same time.

POLITICAL ASPECTS OF PILGRIMAGE

Many theologies of pilgrimage focus on the “inner pilgrimage,” the psychological processes, the reinterpreting of one’s own life story, the connection to God and the sacred, and the gaining of wisdom and connection through other pilgrims, guides, and hosts. Yet other authors focus on the

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political aspects of pilgrimage. Cavanaugh suggests that a political theology of pilgrimage and a theology of the church as a pilgrim ought to seek a politically engaged version of Augustine’s understanding of the city of God. Thus, the church would be a pilgrim community that “marks the church as a liminal body in any bordered nation-​state,” a church that must let go of the trappings of tight church–​state relations, where “our pilgrim status makes us broader, more global, and more catholic than any merely national identity would.”21 While he may not be thinking of such a political theology of pilgrimage as one embodied in a physical pilgrimage network, we can see aspects of such a critical political theology of pilgrimage in the Norwegian network. While churches have historically been in a fraught relationship with forms of political power, they should seek a certain independence from forms of state and national power, and focus on a greater sense of interdependence that transcends national boundaries. While crown and church have long had a close to inseparable relationship in Norway, there have always been instances of critical distance from political power. Indeed, the transnational framework of churches can challenge nationalistic uses of religion and instantiate transnational political ecclesiologies. Indeed, the heritage of St. Olav is often framed as a transnational one, connecting east and west, north and south, beyond the boundaries of culture and religion. If humility is a key virtue of the pilgrim, Cavanaugh suggests it is a virtue with political implications, for a pilgrim church does not impose global solutions on the world, but rather embraces pilgrimage as a kenotic movement, as an emptying out of real or perceived power and privilege.22 Thus, seeking to examine the heritage and history of St. Olav critically is one way to engage in this kenosis, or resisting the claims to power but rather interrogating historical and present uses of religiopolitical power. Though this framing of humility is a stretch for what we know about the historic Olav, the revaluation of values in the hagiographic material makes this forceful reading part of the tradition. Furthermore, we have seen that the act of walking itself can be a political project, as pilgrim priest Arne Bakken has suggested. Those that wander can challenge the status quo by bringing their concerns on the

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pilgrim route as part of a protest movement.23 People who have roots in different cultures and speak several languages are also the building blocks of peace and friendship between peoples. Hans-​Erik Lindström writes that walking can bring about in the pilgrim a deeper understanding for the involuntary pilgrims, those who are forced to wander without wanting to, the refugees of the world.24 Migration exposes bodies to pain, war, famine, trauma, loss of future and perspective, and a form of sustained hope to achieve more agency and power to keep these forms of suffering at bay. Like migration, pilgrimage can challenge and construct personal and communal identity. But what role does the presence of historic saints or figures play for the pilgrim, and in particular, how do pilgrims and hosts frame St. Olav within the network and what impulses does this give for ritual frames for pilgrimage and for what pilgrims may call saintly lives?

FOR ALL THE SAINTS: UN/​H OLY PEOPLE IN A RESACRALIZED GEOGRAPHY

A pilgrimage network is a complex set of many chains of memory of various lengths and strength, spun and woven into each other. As we have seen, pilgrimage involves a multidimensional manifold of experiences of sacred profanity and profane sacrality, and some of these dimensions stand in tension with others. These tensions and the ambiguities they can produce are clear and present in the roles that sainthood in general and St. Olav in particular play in pilgrimage in Norway. Critical engagement with pilgrim spirituality is an important practice, perhaps especially in a Protestant pilgrimage network, if we consider that the Reformation emerged from a critique of certain practices of the medieval church, and among them forms of pilgrimage. While not all pilgrims give much thought to the historic background of St. Olav and of pilgrimage in Norway, there are many bits and pieces of narratives and interactions that are present throughout the network. It is largely actors associated with the Church of Norway that have been engaged with the heritage of St. Olav in a more explicit manner. This is

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reflective of the narrative tensions in the interpreting traditions around St. Olav and the need to have a viable approach to a theology of pilgrimage and sainthood to present to pilgrims arriving at Nidaros. The public discussion around the heritage of St. Olav in Norway, which is ongoing and related to the ambivalent feelings regarding the Viking past, helps keep the dangerous memories accountable to the present. Supported by a sustained and deepened reflection on faith, nation, church, sainthood, and memory, the pilgrimage network involves rituals and practices that continue to further a public discussion of how to engage difficult legacies and pasts. If saints can be said to present pilgrims with an image of an inner struggle to bring forth the possibility of saintliness that is in each and every one of us, the common human struggles, and the inability to escape them, how has St. Olav been reconstructed as facilitating such saintliness? Hints of such reconstruction are strewn around the network, both past and present. In the following pages I will present aspects of this critical reconstruction. The Catholic feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson distinguishes two models of sainthood, one framed according to a biblical model of community, and the Roman model of patronage, that was the main target of Reformation criticism.25 Historically, St. Olav is formed and shaped after the Roman patronage model, but it has been interpreted in ways that manifest the principles of liberation and feminist theology, toward a more egalitarian and communal notion of agency. Aspects of such rethinking of the patron saint model can be found especially around Nidaros Cathedral and the Olavsfest. One prominent example is Erik Hillestad’s speech at the 2017 Olavsfest on the topic of idols and icons. Delivering his speech at the cathedral’s west front, with its many figures of saints, helped drive home the point visually. By framing that year’s topic explicitly around the issue of whom we may admire and aspire to emulate, festival organizers facilitated a public discussion of the icons people choose for our lives, with a particular focus on the namesake of the festival, Olav. The topic was presented to the audience in at least three ways: 1) through Hillestad’s lecture on icons and idols, 2) through exhibitions featuring Mark Dukes’s Dancing Saints, and

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3) by inviting punk priest Nadia Bolz-​Weber as a speaker, who writes of All Saints as a “feast of splendid nobodies.”26 This multimedial approach released both saints and pilgrims from the twin dangers of romanticization and dismissal. Each of these engagements was designed to help crack open the issue of saints and sainthood in ways that invited listeners and viewers into the effort to do this work publicly. Dukes’s Our Mother of Ferguson helped disrupt and put in relief the white Eurocentrism of most Norwegian expressions of Christian faith, pushing its limits by offering an image of sainthood that expands the notion of the community of saints in its racial and cultural diversity. Elizabeth Johnson’s reconstruction of the community of saints further proposes that a reconstruction of sainthood should resist the marginalization of female saints, the patriarchal depiction of female saints, and the hierarchical nature of the patron saint frame.27 She emphasizes that the community of saints includes the entire people of God, not just an elite group of the dead that functions as patrons to be petitioned for favors and healing.28 While early Christian martyrs refused to offer gestures of civic piety to the Roman Empire’s cult,29 saints were reworked according to the imperial patron–​client system. Thus, patron saints were fit into a hierarchical system of negotiation with power to receive favors. For Johnson this changes the understanding of sainthood into something fundamentally unequal. She argues that it is exactly this form of the cult of saints that the Reformers attacked.30 Johnson wants to recover saints as companions of hope, in the paradigm of friendship with God and each other, and inspiring examples to maintain moral responsibility and resist amnesia.31 This would expands the notion of the communion of the saints to the entire cosmos,32 beyond the anthropocentrism of most theologies of sainthood. Johnson argues that consigning the dead to utter extinction undermines the basis for an ecological ethics that includes the primordial communio sanctorum, the communion of the saints of all of creation.33 Indeed, there are traits of the contemporary dominant framing of St. Olav that include some of the aspects Johnson calls for. Members of the pilgrimage network have at various intervals pointed out the lack of female figures of sainthood and spiritual power in Norwegian church

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history.34 Despite the title St. Olav Ways, some of the other saints, paths, and pilgrimage sites are emerging from obscurity. Annual feasts of the arrival of Christian faith on the island of Selja, if not St. Sunniva, have been held and continue to grow in popularity also now due to the inclusion of Selja in the coastal pilgrimage route. St. Hallvard, the patron saint of Oslo, has also received fresh attention, perhaps also because he offers an image of sainthood that is in important ways counter to the life of Olav Haraldsson.35 The network also contains resources and rituals for the reframing of St. Olav.

FACING ONESELF: A COUNTERIMPERIAL READING OF ST. OLAV

Various agents of the pilgrimage network engage St. Olav as a “dangerous memory,” as Johann Baptist Metz has framed the term.36 Most memories carry the potential for dangerous forms of retrieval. It matters deeply how we recollect and activate the memory of the past in the present context. Memories can be dangerous to the powers that be, or challenge our worst temptations and prejudices. They can endanger other people or set them free. A decolonial account of St. Olav would resist silence around the violence and refuse to gloss over the inconsistencies in biography and hagiography. Accounting for the problematic parts of the narrative is a strength rather than a weakness, and it allows for a more honest and in fact more real reckoning with the humanity not only of ourselves but of saints. Some pilgrims are little or not at all interested in the history of the St. Olav’s Ways. Others read brief accounts, sometimes with a spiritual or religious emphasis, sometimes not. Yet others are unsure what to make of the history or the saint. Some think Olav Haraldsson was not a saintly person and find nothing admirable in him and the violence he helped perpetuate. They find other ways of being fed spiritually and emotionally. Others can embrace the ideal of a just and righteous king who treats people without regard of status, age, or gender equally and seeks their healing and well-​being, as is reported in Gleisi and Passio Olavi of the

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postconversion St. Olav. Other participants of the pilgrimage network write plays, give tours and lectures, write books, music, or poetry, and help make accessible the heritage of Christian faith in Norway, or the saint, the cathedral, or the churches along the way. Saints are flawed people who transcend their own limits. Their stories are shaped by other people, to ambiguous effects and for various reasons. The stories of some saints are cautionary tales or stories of great change that seem miraculous. Some hagiographies involve conversion narratives that show the power of the Christian faith and, especially in the case of royal saints, the political and institutional change such Christian rule establishes. The hagiographic legends of St. Olav have puzzled and amazed and been cause for lively discussions and various appropriations. They are shaped to impress on listeners the holiness of a powerful Viking who built political power at home—​with the proceeds from rape and pillage abroad and a faith that helped transition out of a way of wealth won by violence—​ to introduce a rule of justice and peace. The transition of an entire people to a different way of life is expressed through the story of one of its leaders. The idea of messianic leadership and the hopes for just kings37 that uphold the law and act with mercy to uplift the poor and downtrodden is at the core of Jewish and Christian traditions. These ideas are embedded in the idea of St. Olav as an ideal king for Norway who upholds the law, making them relevant for the Norwegian context as a type of medieval contextual theology.38 The concept of the heritage of St. Olav (Olavsarven)39 can be seen as an extension of those traditions. The Norwegian kings have been mere representatives and tenants of the saint, holding the kingdom just “as a knight holds from a lord.”40 Further limits to the power of the Norwegian kings included a clause that the oldest legitimate son would inherit the crown only if suited to the task.41 The idea of the rex perpetuum Norvegiae instills the sense of impermanence from his successors who are merely temporary stewards (vicarius) for St. Olav,42 from their crowning to their death. Olav is sometimes—​and most prominently on the west front of Nidaros Cathedral—​depicted as standing on top of a figure that carries his own face. It may be a representation of his former self that is not quite dead,

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or a dangerous memory that continues to be present and awake. To some contemporary interpreters this iconography suggests living in the conscious presence of our shadow self. The shadow former, some tour guides suggested, might present a warning to the onlooker. The past and the energies of violence continue to be alive, awake, and always ready to jump into action. Although we may perceive we are standing over and have conquered our own selves, whoever we might really be may indeed arise from conflicted pasts we may seek to repress. In Lutheran terms one might call this the state of being simul iustus and peccator, at once justified and sinner. In some of the more popular accounts, especially those that seem intended for a secularized audience, Olav can appear as a medieval equivalent of a UN official, who introduced human rights legislation into a new region to be developed. Though intended to interpret him for a modern audience, this overlay of human rights discourse has a number of problems, including its anachronism. Echoing classical missionary rhetoric, the pagan past can be described as violent, cruel, discriminatory, and oppressive, a past that was liberated by the bringing of Christian law. The ambivalent reception of this ancestral saint is engaged in various ways by participants of the pilgrimage network. This creates forms of “subversive memory,” resisting amnesia and repression of shadow sides. Such ritual memorialization engages in memory that refuses to silence the pain, loss, and troubled heritage of a saint and his narrative afterlives.43 St. Olav, an important ancestor of Norwegian national and religious heritage, is not easily read from a liberation perspective, where one might see saints as partners in the struggle against oppression.44 This despite the fact that it is often stressed that he introduced laws that made some forms of violence and slavery illegal. But historians highlight that little is known about what the laws he introduced contained and how they may have contributed to lifting up the rights of individuals.45 Despite hagiographic reports of Olav’s conversions and generosity, his life and death coincided with the end of the Viking age. Central to this period was the importance of slave trade to the economy of the Viking age. It was part of what allowed Vikings to be the dominant traders they

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were: the raiding of silver from monasteries and human trafficking. The silver and other highly valuable luxury goods they traded in were soaked in blood and the sweat and sex labor of slaves.46 The prowess and courage Vikings displayed at sea travel are often overemphasized against the raping, pillaging, and trading of what they had stolen once they arrived at their destinations and the trade posts they established.47 Some find that the flowery “heroic propaganda” and selective language found in a number of contemporary Norwegian museums deeply problematic, as such framing undercommunicates the shadow sides of the historic Vikings in its focus on artifacts.48 The figure of Olav Haraldsson/​St. Olav embodies this ambivalence in Norwegian history, and hence he becomes a somewhat predictable symptom of the ongoing discomfort with that past, with the tension between Christian virtue and slavery, rape, and murder. We have seen that actors in the network reimagine the community around St. Olav as one of hope and transformation, and the communion of saints and pilgrims embodied through ecumenical and interreligious cooperation, and of walking together. But how is this represented in iconography?

RECONSTRUCTING OLAV VIA ICONOGRAPHY

An artistic and iconographic representation of this ambivalence of history and of person can be found in the style of representation in St. Olav’s iconography, the motif that represents him trampling a underligger, literally an “under-​lyer.”49 It is an iconographic attempt to deal with the violent life of the pretender king who became a healing presence only after his death; it enshrined in the image of the saint a certain permanent ambivalence.50 The figures on which Olav is portrayed standing first appear in his iconography at the end of the 1200s and evolve from there. Variations of portrayal place Olav standing on top of an anthropomorphic figure, often a warrior. Other depictions show Olav superimposed on zoomorphic bodies, such as sea snakes and inhabitants of the oceans, and then to semizoomorphic forms, that is, an animal body with a human head, at times resembling the head of the king and martyr himself. Interpretations as to what this means

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vary, as there is no single form of representation, and there appear to be few parallels to this image within the narrative material, apart from material from legends around Olav that tell of his struggle with the Midtgard serpent and with trolls.51 It seems overall more likely that the figures represent the saint’s struggle against evil and the triumph over it through adherence to God’s commandments, the lust for power, and the victory over death52 but also the victory of wisdom over the arrogance of ignorance and folly, contrasting the wise and just rule of David and Solomon to that of haughty abuse. Strikingly, some of these representations show Olav not standing on the creature at his feet, but it lying beside him or even between his feet, like a dog that keeps getting underfoot and in the way.53 Most of the figures are alive and alert, looking out at the viewer or at the saint himself. The fact that many of them bear his own features and represent the contrast between Olav Haraldsson and Saint Olav—​that they are a visual representation of the two very different narrative traditions—​may not be an accident, especially given the fact that the St. Olav’s liturgy features hostility against Olav by those surrounding him as a consistent motif.54 How is a constructive theology of pilgrimage to understand and incorporate a figure as ambiguous as St. Olav? How can it understand the role of sainthood in a Protestant and secular context where pilgrimage centered on this saint promises so many different spiritual transformations in so many different ways? A saint such as St. Olav—​and there are many saints who have similar stories—​might be best remembered by including his shadow sides because they remind us of our own dark sides and temptations. To transcend those is a lifelong struggle that we may not succeed in, ever, but that we can never be released from. The very notion of a patron saint can seem to clash with the Norwegian ideal of an egalitarian society and the Protestant critique of the medieval idea of petitioning saints. Various opinions continue to be voiced in how to deal with the heritage of a saint who plundered, took slaves and sold them, and stole enormous sums of silver, only to return home a made man, ready to stake a claim as a Christian king uniting an impossibly complex geography. It took a hagiography constructed by a bishop—​as

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happened so often throughout medieval history—​rich in the posthumous miracles that were necessary for the creation of a saint in the Middle Ages. Nonetheless, it is possible to respect the motives for creating a more salutary ideal of a king. The use of the figure of Olav as essentially equivalent with the gathering of the ethnic Norwegian nation by Nazis adds to the difficulty of administering this legacy and narrating it responsibly in a majority-​Lutheran setting that has a critical stance toward aspects of sainthood that have to do with propaganda, power play, and misrepresentation of facts.55 Some popular and public discussions of St. Olav and his heritage (Olavsarven) are short on comparative historical approaches, and they can treat Olav as if he were simply a historic individual rather than a figure shaped by the shared conventions of medieval hagiography and local contextualization. Yet the pilgrimage network reveals various aspects of a critical hagiography. During the Olavsfest in 2016, Erik Hillestad, a Norwegian composer of liturgies and contemporary church music, addressed the issue of idols, saints, and icons in front of Nidaros Cathedral’s west front, full of our own saints and guides.56 Contrasting the social media “liturgies” of selfies as self-​sanctification with the real need to have role models that can show us the possibilities of our humanity, he invited listeners to imagine a new west front, with new saints, people who know themselves and know about their own limits. While he did not discuss the ambivalence of saints and idols in history and at present, the Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-​Weber who appeared that same year offered an egalitarian and ethically complex approach of communion of saints.57 In true Lutheran fashion, humans are a un/​holy mixture of all saints and all sinners, simul iustus et peccator. This paradox holds also for the writers of the hagiography, who held the good and the bad together: the healing, generous side of St. Olav, and the sociopathic, violent shadow of Olav Haraldsson. The complexity of the St. Olav tradition thus is a reminder of the possibilities within each person: our worst selves and our best selves. The shadow that haunts all our attempts to be ethical actors requires acknowledgment, rather than repression.58

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ADAPTING SACRED SPACES TO CONFRONT RELIGIOPOLITICAL CHALLENGES

Much of Norwegian pilgrimage practice is consistent, not surprisingly, with Luther’s emphasis on the local by pulling in local parishes and parish churches into the maps and narrative of the St. Olav Ways. Luther wanted pilgrimage to contribute rather than detract from the local parish life.59 This is in many ways aspirational, as contemporary pilgrimage often attracts people who have lost their connection to the local parish perhaps entirely, and ironically may be rediscovering the local church after having gone far off into the distance. Thus, it could be argued that the effect of pilgrimage today may at least in some cases be the opposite and allow people disaffected from their local churches to reenter Christian practices through self-​propelled spiritual practices embodied in their own hands and feet. At least some pilgrims insist that pilgrimage under the sign of St. Olav, St. Hallvard, and St. Sunniva can unite people from different corners of the world and different faiths to work together to create a more just society, in Norway and elsewhere. Studies of pilgrimage focus primarily on human element of pilgrimage, its history, narratives, and rituals. This is also the case with the emerging pilgrimage network in Norway. Landscapes, seascapes, climate, and weather form the material support for what are “ritual places.”60 At the same time, there are pilgrims who capture a wider frame of sacred geography, beyond landscape as a romantic backdrop to an inner journey. During the time of the study, climate change has been increasingly manifest and also discussed within Norwegian society. Sigurd Bergmann observes that the relationship between “climate and religion is much more complex than expected.”61 In some cases, pilgrimage and the climate activism cross paths when Norwegian climate pilgrims march with an intention to change the way we live together. Dag Hessen uses the term landskapslykke—​ landscape happiness—​to describe the experience that obtains when one is joyfully connected to a natural landscape rather than a city environment.62 Recovering or maintaining a sense of happiness in a sacred geography is

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a practice to counter the despiritualization of geography and the loss of a sense of place. To counter the shrinkage and diminishment of place in the throes of the dominance of urban life, petroculture and the contraction of space through swift, efficient travel, modes of pilgrimage are set apart to such forms of collapsed and exploited place. Mourning the loss of sacred place and landscape is among the sensations being negotiated in the ritual complex of pilgrimage. One way to name sacred geography in theological terms is by viewing the universe as sacramental. A sacramental view of the universe is open to seeing the sacred in all things.63 Timothy Gorringe’s clarification is helpful here, describing sacraments as “rents in the opacity of history where God’s concrete engagement to change the world becomes visible.” Thus, sacraments are “reminders [ . . . ] that matter and spirit, body and soul are not opposites, not temporarily and unfortunately mismatched, but proper expression of each other.”64 John Inge describes a “relational view of the sacrament of place,” particularly as developed in the Anglican tradition.65 Inge argues that the loss of place is dehumanizing, and that a theology of place holds the resources for the rediscovery of the importance of place.66 Not only that, but a theology of place in a sacramental sense, understanding it as the basis and necessity, the gift and key substance of our lives, is highly relevant as place becomes increasingly colonized and distorted by the dynamics of climate change and other efforts to exploit place without a sense of the sustainability of space as a dwelling place67 for all creatures. For Inge, sacraments are a way in which a concrete experience comes together with a particular set of encounters. Thus, the “Christian religion is not the religion of salvation from places, it is the religion of salvation in and through places.”68 It is thus that places that mark holy lives can themselves “bear witness” (called martyria in the early church).69 “Places are the seat of relations and of meeting and activity between God and the world” and consequently promote the “reintegration [. . . of] sacramental encounters into the life of the church.”70 Inge suggests that “sacramentality must be based in action and in relationship,”71 or, as a way in which a concrete experience comes together with a particular set

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of encounters. Cathedrals in particular can provide such open sacramentality: they are focal places in a sacred geography that also offer expansive spaces.

CATHEDRALS AS SACRED SPACES FACILITATING BROAD ENCOUNTERS: EXPANSIVE SENSES OF THE SACRED

A crucial part of the reconstruction of sacred geography in Norway is the effort to expand narratives and practices of pilgrimage and to invite new and different kinds of pilgrims onto its paths. Various actors contribute to this by expansive integration of other forms of spirituality, faith, practice, and rituality within the setting of pilgrimage, cathedral, and festival. Other ways of conceiving and honoring an expansive sense of sacred geographies is that it leaves room for Sámi self-​determination and representation.72 One sign toward cultural representation, if not reconciliation, is the 2016 addition in Nidaros Cathedral of a Sámi altar to the sacred map of the cathedral. The altar’s depiction of Christ is expansive. Christ stands at the center of the interplay of the cosmic elements and tells of a theology of incarnation, of body, soul, and spirit that sees the human, too, as an intersection of cosmic forces, giving pride of place to the elements, to the sacred cosmos that bears the divine and offers it room. At its best, the Sámi altar and pieces like it can function as a form of “countermemory,” recovering an expression of indigenous religion as an ecomemory, and representing a reconstitution of Sámi religiocultural “traditional environmental history”73 that refuses colonial divisions between sacred and secular and helps rearticulate the connections of the Sami to the land. The bringing of the Sami altar into the main sanctuary of Nidaros Cathedral hints at a fresh presence and challenge to the pilgrimage traditions associated with St. Olav. The altar offers a possible clue to an expansive pilgrim theology that houses the cosmos more fully and respects indigenous peoples as guardians of land and resources.

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Yet what is the point of placing such an altar if the sacred places and relations it points to are not honored outside cathedral walls? The destruction of Norwegian land and seascapes progresses: oil in the Arctic, windmill parks placed in Sámi reindeer grazing grounds, mines adjacent to important fishing grounds. These violations are often implemented against entire communities’ will, putting coastal culture under environmental pressure by offering spaces of beauty as “sacrifice zones” for new technologies. The struggles are real. The continual deferral of an energy transition and the ongoing destruction of what is left of the happiness-​ inducing power of Norwegian landscapes are sharply at odds with each other in the days in which I write these lines.

Epilogue

For me, pilgrimage as the entry into communitas with strangers meant meeting the limits of my own body, accepting the help of others when offered and needed, letting others take care of me, and letting others contribute to my healing, as well as contributing to theirs—​whatever that included. I experienced that “as a pilgrim you do not own anything—​but you still have everything! You do not own, you receive.”1 Not all of us are prepared for this receiving, for this reminder of our dependence on other people, our inescapable relatedness. I was not, and I resented the reminder. While I began going on pilgrimage to observe others, I quickly and uncomfortably found myself observed and having to attend first to myself. That was not the plan. It seemed a long way from where I started out intellectually, with Augustine and his image of the pilgrim church, the city of God moving toward heaven. Contrary to Augustine’s warnings against lingering and making one’s home in this world, walking pilgrimage urges attention to the body and the here and now. My experience of walking pilgrimage was of breakdown, of being forced to address life’s pace and its effect on me. And it inspired a commitment to finding ways to reduce stress. A sacred geography includes the human body, its relations, histories, and troubles as well as the cosmic geography of land and sea. The pilgrim—​not just a stranger passing by on the way to a distance place, but with a “nomadic polyamory of place,” can be a lover of many places as part of a larger planetary community.2 Some pilgrims tread carefully, Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity. Marion Grau, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197598634.003.0009

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gather drops of water or collect ocean plastics on beaches, aware that each step bears the potential for destruction or preservation, the ambivalent presence of the wanderer on the search to be drawn into self and into the cosmos, the larger relations we are all bound up in. Fittingly, Arne Bakken sets pilgrimage traditions in a wider theological and ecological context by highlighting the connection between people, church, and the cosmos.3 Thus, pilgrimage offers the opportunity for the pilgrim’s body to become a bridge between people and landscapes, as the wanderer has to respond to her surroundings, as the four elements move through, in, and around her.4 Bakken goes on to suggest, following ecofeminist theologian Sallie McFague, that while many pilgrims walk for the healing of their bodies, that now it is time that we are pilgrims for the sake of the body of God, McFague’s metaphor for the created world.5 Bakken, echoing Johnson and McFague, proposes that pilgrims expand the commandment to neighborly love to include the cosmos.6 Bakken, the climate pilgrims, and Hope Cathedral represent some of the most fresh ritualizations of pilgrimage in Norway today. Forgotten routes and hand-​constructed floating barges become new nodes in the sacred geography. Hope Cathedral in Fredrikstad represents a ritualization through embodied action, the planning, gathering community, and building of a new sacred space enunciating a commitment to the oceans that connect all humanity. The community behind Hope Cathedral seeks to gather multiple religious communities, people who care about climate and want to engage in meaningful and meaning-​making ritual acts, shepherding desperately needed transitions away from petroleum and plastics to ways of living that are sustainable for land and sea. Creating a new cathedral, an adaptable space for the expansive sense of the sacred that may be needed to create rituals of transition, liminalities into a yet unknown future affected by severe climate change. Climate pilgrims seek to invite to move the transition along, economically, ritually, and spiritually. Pilgrimage studies is full of claims that modern pilgrims, or Protestant pilgrims, do not go on pilgrimage for the purpose of repenting for sins or to seek miraculous healing. And yet they display various desires for healing, for leaving behind pasts, for entering a new life phase, for ending

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a life well, for coming to terms with a simpler life, for articulating a wider sense of religious and ethnic community, for entering into silence, and for finding ways to remember the past in such a way that the future can be redeemed. Pilgrimage networks manifest a certain sense of the chaotic, and they can present as a cacophony of rituals, meanings, narratives, and actions.7 Only a selection of them could be named and described here. The sacred geography mapped and described here shows pilgrimage as a shape-​ shifting activity. It can be about recovery and revival, about death and new life, about big transitions, and one of the biggest of all: how we hold life sacred, how we hold our hearts soft and quiet, how we attend to and mourn the precarity of bodies, ourselves and those of others, how we lament with land and sea, and how we set about to imagine new forms of community, hope, joy, and sacred places. Tom Driver argues that religion should be judged by its contribution to the transformation of power into beneficent forms.8 We have seen that at least in some cases, with all attendant ambivalences, pilgrimage can be such a liberating rite. As Jacob discovers after his dream of angels climbing up and down a ladder, the Divine can appear in any space where any pilgrim or traveler is open to the experience. Like Jacob, she may exclaim that this cosmos is the house of God, though she did not know or understand it before the moment of theophany. At its most radical, then, consciously embodied pilgrimage is open to the end of life as we have known it, stumbling toward the beginning of some form of healing, truth, and reconciliation.

NOTES

introduction 1. Helle Aarnes and Robert Veiåker Johansen, “De Overlevde Utøya. Nå Lever de Med Drapstrusler,” Aftenposten, July 21, 2018, 12–​27. https://​www.aftenposten. no/​amagasinet/​i/​Eon852/​De-​overlevde-​Utoya-​Na-​lever-​de-​med-​drapstrusler; Helene Skjeggestad, “Netthat Er Som Vann, Det Finner Alltid en Vei. Nå Trenger Norge Flere Og Bedre Demninger” (2018). https://​www.aftenposten.no/​meninger/​ kommentar/​i/​oRG4Pm/​-​Netthat-​er-​s om-​vann_​-​det-​f inner-​a lltid-​en-​vei-​Na-​ trenger-​Norge-​flere-​og-​bedre-​demninger -​ Helene-​Skjeggestad. 2. Anne Rokkan, “Rosetoget Som Sporet Av,” Bergens Tidende, July 20, 2018. https://​ www.bt.no/​btmeninger/​kommentar/​i/​rLjpgA/​Rosetoget-​som-​sporet-​av. 3. Lara Rashid, “Det Glemte 22. Juli,” Dagbladet, July 22, 2018. Lara Rashid is a survivor of the terror attacks. Her sister Bano Rashid was killed on Utoya. The family’s story is told by Åsne Seierstad in her striking account of the lives touched by the terror attacks. Åsne Seierstad, One of Us: The Story of a Massacre in Norway—​And Its Aftermath (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2015). 4. Malkenes names, in particular, Breivik’s rhetoric on the Knights Templar, thus hearkening back to medieval crusades that also invoke historic Viking travels. Simon Malkenes, Apokalypse Oslo (Oslo: Samlaget, 2012), 18. 5. Throughout most of the period of research, the festival was called Olavsfestdagene, but in 2019, likely due to a marketing decision, it was renamed Olavsfest, likely to more easily accommodate users of other languages. For the sake of consistency, I am using “Olavsfest” throughout this book. 6. Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Penguin, 2000), 50. 7. Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, 50. 8. Numbers for 2020, according to Statistics Norway. https://​www.ssb.no/​en/​kultur-​ og-​fritid/​statistikker/​kirke_​kostra and https://​www.ssb.no/​en/​kultur-​og-​fritid/​ statistikker/​trosamf 9. Jill Dubisch, In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 58–​60. 10. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007).

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11. Ammerman’s research shows that the oft-​cited binary between religion and spirituality really does not hold up to people’s reported ways of straddling and combining various practices and beliefs. Nancy T. Ammerman, “Spiritual but Not Religious? Beyond Binary Choices in the Study of Religion,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 52, no. 2 (2013): 260. 12. Ammerman, “Spiritual but Not.” 13. See, for example, Ellen Badone and Sharon Roseman, “Approaches to the Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism,” in Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism, ed. Ellen Badone and Sharon Roseman (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 2. 14. See also Ian Reader’s study challenging the tendency in pilgrimage studies to separate the dynamics of marketplace from pilgrimage’s seemingly more “sacred” nature. Ian Reader, Pilgrimage in the Marketplace (New York: Routledge, 2014), 14. 15. Nancy Louise Frey, Pilgrim Stories: On and Off the Road to Santiago (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 121. 16. See Frey on the ecumenical nature of the Camino. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 16. 17. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 20. 18. As cited in Badone and Roseman, “Pilgrimage and Tourism,” 4. 19. Examples are Robert Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1889–​1950 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); Thomas Tweed, Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); and Anna-​Karina Hermkens, Willy Jansen, and Catrien Notermanns, “Introduction: The Power of Marian Pilgrimage,” in Moved by Mary: The Power of Pilgrimage in the Modern World, ed. Anna-​Karina Hermkens, Willy Jansen, and Catrien Notermanns (London: Ashgate, 2009), 2. 20. The Anglican option was to fathom a big tent of practices and at least in some of its forms never dispensed of the saints, cathedrals, or of the importance of liturgies. See Marion Bowman and Tina Sepp, “Caminoisation and Cathedrals: Replication, the Heritagisation of Religion, and the Spiritualisation of Heritage,” Religion 49, no. 1 (2019): 74–​98. 21. With the introduction of the Reformation in Sweden in 1544, pilgrimage was forbidden in Sweden. See Anna Davidsson Bremborg, “Spirituality in Silence and Nature: Motivations, Experiences and Impressions Among Swedish Pilgrims,” Journal of Empirical Theology 21 (2008): 149, Pilgrimsvandring På Svenska (Lund: Arcus, 2008). 22. Council of Europe, “Enlarged Partial Agreement on Cultural Routes.” https://​www. coe.int/​en/​web/​culture-​and-​heritage/​cultural-​routes. See also Lisbeth Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral: A Recreated Pilgrim Church,” Religion 49, no. 1 (2019): 105. Lisbeth Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral: A Recreated Pilgrim Church,” Religion 49, no. 1 (2019): 105. 23. Bowman and Sepp, “Caminoisation,” 81, 80, 82. 24. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 110. 25. Willy Jansen, “Old Routes, New Journey: Reshaping Gender, Nation and Religion in European Pilgrimage,” in Gender, Nation and Religion in European Pilgrimage, ed. Willy Jansen and Catrien Notermans (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012), 2.

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26. Jansen, “Old Routes,” 11. Frey already mentions the focus on “rebuilding Europe through a collective past,” as an effort that reversed the decline of pilgrimage to Santiago since the Reformation. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 26. 27. Jansen, “Old Routes,” 4. 28. Jansen, “Old Routes,” 9. 29. In her essay on anti-​ abortion movement pilgrimages within the EU, Judith Samson highlights that pilgrimages are generally making more or less obvious statements about gender and sexuality, either affirming or contesting the status quo, furthering particular forms of female and male agency, for example. See Judith Samson, “EU Criticism in Two Transitional Marian Anti-​Abortion Movements,” in Gender, Nation and Religion in European Pilgrimage, ed. Willy Jansen and Catrien Notermans (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012), 71 and Lena Gemzöe, “Big, Strong, and Happy: Reimagining Femininity on the Way to Compostela,” in Gender, Nation and Religion in European Pilgrimage, ed. Catrien Notermanns and W. H. M. Jansen (London: Ashgate, 2012), 37–​53. 30. See, for example, Orsi, The Madonna, 83, or Hermkens, Jansen, and Notermanns, “Introduction: The Power of Marian Pilgrimage,” 1. 31. Lluis Oviedo, Scarlett de Courcier, and Miguel Farias, “Rise of Pilgrims on the Camino to Santiago: Sign of Change or Religious Revival?” Review of Religious Research 56, no. 3 (2014): 433–​442. 32. Stephen Castles, Hein de Haas, and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, 5th ed. (New York: The Guilford Press, 2014). 33. Petrocultures Resource Group, After Oil (Edmonton, CA: Petrocultures Research Group, 2016). 34. Jansen, “Old Routes,” 5. 35. John Eade and Michael Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 9. 36. Here “sustainable” means economically, relationally, and emotionally sustainable for those who are involved now as a labor of love but are beginning to show signs of exhaustion and frustration. The European Green Pilgrimage Network represents a network of pilgrimage cities committed to green pilgrimage. https://​ www.greenpilgrimageeurope.net/​# 37. Circumambulation is a concept I use to signal traversing research territory as well as geographical territory in circular ways. This type of movement seeks to perceive from multiple perspectives, without the assumption that complete vision can be achieved. See Marion Grau, Rethinking Mission in the Postcolony: Salvation, Society, and Subversion (London: T&T Clark/​Continuum, 2011). 38. James G. Lochtefeld, God’s Gateway: Identity and Meaning in a Hindu Pilgrimage Place (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 8. 39. Lochtefeld, God’s Gateway, 8. 40. Dubisch, In a Different Place, 160. 41. As in John Lochtefeld’s account of pilgrimage, I began to develop relationships with some actors involved in the network. I, like Lochtefeld, found that “my most valuable sources have involved long-​term relationships” that are part of my developing

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network in Norway. It does mean that I had to “balance a scholar’s responsibility to tell the truth with [ . . . ] personal loyalties,” or at least the need to consider the public effect of writing about a subject that involves persons in a growing personal and professional network. Lochtefeld, God’s Gateway, 10. 42. I want to thank to Michael Houseman, Graham Harvey, and Sarah Pike for conversations about method that helped formulate this method. 43. In their classic text on pilgrimage, the Turners describe four main types of pilgrimages (archaic, prototypical, medieval, and modern). Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 17–​19 As at other sites, some of them are layered onto each other in the case of the St. Olav Ways. While in the case of the ritual geography of St. Olav Ways there was no known pre-​Christian, archaic pilgrimage, a prototypical pilgrimage (marking a founder figure) sprang up around the site where Olav’s body was believed to have been initially buried. It has its premodern expression as a medieval pilgrimage and is now being reshaped as a modern pilgrimage whose contemporary shape is continuing to emerge. 44. Thus, regarding Ronald Grimes’s question on whether festivals can contain rituals and rituals contain festivals, both are the case. Ronald L. Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 186 45. Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies, 242, 55. 46. While some have contrasted pilgrimage as an activity engaged in negotiating religioculturally contested sacred places with pilgrimage as a ritual offering pilgrims a form of communitas along the route, in the network of Norwegian pilgrimage, choosing between either communitas or contestation makes little sense. Both can take place at the same time. Pilgrimage networks provide ethnographic evidence both for theories that prioritize “contestation” over those that consider the establishment of some kind of communitas among pilgrims. Simon Coleman, “Do You Believe in Pilgrimage? Communitas, Contestation and Beyond,” Anthropological Theory 2, no. 3 (2002): 355–​368, 359. People can find communitas even as they are skeptical or critical of the saint’s life, heritage, or religious culture in general. Bonding is not dependent on harmonious relations, but it can sometimes be enhanced by low-​level tension and conflict, sometimes leading to deeper connection and greater emotional engagement. See also Dubisch’s description of island pilgrimage on Tinos and Frey’s account of ambivalence among pilgrims on the Camino Santiago. Dubisch, In a Different Place; Frey, Pilgrim Stories. 47. Some propose that “the chaos of pilgrimage” needs to be acknowledged and those trying to conceptualize pilgrimage should consider engaging the cacophony that occurs in a pilgrimage network. It can rather feel like a “realm of competing discourses,” where not only pilgrims but governments, church leaders, hosts, tour operators, local communities, guides, and other stakeholders generate their own narrative. Dionigi Albera and John Eade, “International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies: Putting the Anglophone Contribution in Its Place,” in International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies: Itineraries, Gaps and Obstacles, ed. Dionigi Albera and John Eade (London: Routledge, 2015), 4. 48. Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies, 259.

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49. Roland DeLattre, “Ritual Resourcefulness and Cultural Pluralism,” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 61, no. 3 (Fall 1978): 287. 50. DeLattre, “Ritual,” 287. 51. Tom F. Driver, Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 47. 52. DeLattre, “Ritual,” 288. 53. DeLattre, “Ritual,” 292. 54. Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies, 55. 55. The Viking ship’s keel and large sail allowed for ocean travel in ways that the previous coastal boats were unable to. Harald Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer (Oslo: Verbum, 2013), 20. 56. See Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism against Climate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014). 57. Øystein Ekroll, “St. Olav Og Olavssymbolikk i Mellomalderske Segl Og Heraldikk,” in Helgenkongen St. Olav i Kunsten, ed. Øystein Ekroll (Trondheim: Museumsforlaget, 2016), 150. 58. Victor and Edith Turner note in their classic text on pilgrimage that “a tourist half a pilgrim, if a pilgrim is half a tourist [ . . . ] seeking an almost sacred, often symbolic, mode of communitas, generally unavailable to the structured life of the office, the shop floor, or the mine.” Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 20. 59. David Picard and Michael Di Giovine, “Introduction: Through Other Worlds,” in Tourism and the Power of Otherness: Seductions of Difference, ed. David Picard and Michael Di Giovine, Tourism and Cultural Change (Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2014), 6. 60. Picard and Di Giovine, “Introduction,” 5. 61. In May 2017, a journalist in Morgenbladet, a Norwegian weekly, commented on the fact that Norwegians on average fly four times as much as the average European, a fact that is encouraged by the authorities, despite the fact that Norway was one of the signatories of the UN Paris climate agreement. Emil Flatø, “Norge Tar Av: En reise til hjertet av den norske flyavhengigheten,” Morgenbladet, April 28, 2017. 62. Tourism, as Lochtefeld comments, may affect how people think about pilgrimage. In the case of Nidaros, tourism precedes the more recent revival of pilgrimage by far, and the blend already is extant. Lochtefeld, God’s Gateway, 204. 63. This multiplicity of motivations is similar to what walking pilgrims to Compostela articulate. See Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 27–​28. 64. Frey discusses this demarcation of pilgrimage as articulated by pilgrims on the Camino. Pilgrims see walking and cycling as more authentic forms of pilgrimage, due to the physical labor involved. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 32. 65. Andreas Nordin, “The Cognition of Hardship Experience in Himalayan Pilgrimage,” Numen 58, no. 5/​6 (2011): 636, 637. 66. Mikaelsson indicates that the Church of Norway has great power over how the narrative around Olav is given meaning today. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 114. 67. This is consistent with classic pilgrim literature that lays out proposals for what a good pilgrimage experience can look like. For example, see the Swedish pilgrimage writer Hans-​Erik Lindström and much of the popular literature and travelogues.

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Hans-​Erik Lindström, Pilegrimsliv: En Håndbok for Vandrere (Oslo: Verbum, 2007 [Swedish original ed., 2005]). 68. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 54. 6 9. Nordin, “Cognition of Hardship,” 645.

chapter 1 1. John Inge, A Christian Theology of Place (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2003), 119. 2. I want to thank colleagues Erica Martin, Kristin Aavitsland, and Harald Hegstad, as well as Bishop Herborg Finset and Rev. Kristine Sandmael for their insights on this issue. 3. It is no accident that the texts of the Hebrew Bible appealed strongly to indigenous peoples when introduced to it by missionaries, often more than the less place-​oriented letters of the Apostolic Writings. See, for example, Huie-​Jolly Mary, “Maori ‘Jews’ and a Resistant Reading of John 5.10–​47,” in Postcolonial Biblical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 224–​237. 4. Seamus Heaney, Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–​1978 (London: Faber & Faber, 1980), 132. 5. Heaney, Preoccupations, 132. 6. Heaney, Preoccupations, 132. 7. Heaney, Preoccupations, 133. 8. Allice Legat, “Walking Stories; Leaving Footprints,” in Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot, ed. Tim Ingold and Jo Lee Vergunst, Anthropological Studies of Creativity and Perception (London: Ashgate, 2008), 36. 9. Thomas Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 54. 10. See Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion, 58. 11. As referred to in Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion, 61. 12. Thomas Tweed, “Space,” Material Religion 7, no. 1 (2011): 119. 13. Simon Coleman and John Eade, “Introduction,” in Reframing Pilgrimage, ed. Simon Coleman and John Eade (London: Routledge, 2004), 2. 14. Tweed, “Space,” 123. 15. Hanna Engler, Norwegen: Olavsweg, 2nd rev. ed. (Velver: Conrad Stein Verlag, 2018), 10 My translation. 16. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 7. 17. Not all of these can be discussed here. 18. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion, 150. 19. Dag O. Hessen, Landskap i Endring (Oslo: Pax, 2016), 24. 20. Hessen, Landskap i Endring, 8. 21. Gro Steinsland, Mytene Som Skapte Norge: Myter Og Makt Fra Vikingtid Til Middelalder (Oslo: Pax Forlag, 2012), 29. 22. Steinsland, Mytene Som Skapte Norge, 30. 23. Steinsland, Mytene Som Skapte Norge, 31. 24. Steinsland, Mytene Som Skapte Norge, 32.

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Steinsland, Mytene Som Skapte Norge, 87. Hessen, Landskap i Endring, 9. Hessen, Landskap i Endring, 25. As quoted in George Marshall, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 83. 29. Marshall, Don’t Even Think, 83. 30. Marshall, Don’t Even Think, 84. 31. Marshall, Don’t Even Think, 83. 32. Dee Dyas, “Medieval Patterns of Pilgrimage: A Mirror for Today?,” in Explorations in a Christian Theology of Pilgrimage, ed. Craig Bartholomew and Fred Hughes (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 94. 33. See, for example, Kristin Aavitsland, “Defending Jerusalem: Visualizations of a Christian Identity in Medieval Scandinavia,” in Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-​Banai, and Hanna Vorholt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 121–​131. 34. See Øystein Ekroll, “The Octagonal Shrine Chapel of St Olav at Nidaros Cathedral: An Investigation of Its Fabric, Architecture and International Context,” PhD thesis (NTNU, 2015). 35. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was destroyed at least in its then version through the invasion of the Fatimid caliph of Cairo, Al-​Hakim in 1010 as part of a policy that was hostile to both Jews and Christians. This was, however, misinterpreted by some Christian chroniclers as part of a plan by both Muslims and Jews to destroy the holy places of Christendom. Brett Edward Whalen, ed., Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages: A Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 166. 36. Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 618–​619. 37. Astor Furseth, Heilag-​Olav i Valldal (Valldal: Harusett Forlag, 2017), 4–​5. 38. Gunnhild Røthe, “Helt, Konge Og Helgen: Den Hagiografiske Tradisjon Om Olav Den Hellige i Den Legendariske Saga, Heimskringla, Og Flateyarbok” (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2004), 155ff. 39. Furseth, Heilag-​Olav i Valldal, 9–​10. 40. Furseth, Heilag-​Olav i Valldal, 22. 41. Furseth, Heilag-​Olav i Valldal, 29–​30. 42. Tweed, “Space,” 119. 43. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, “Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species,” Environmental Humanities 1 (2012): 144. 44. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, “Blasted Landscapes (and the Gentle Arts of Mushroom Picking),” Environmental Humanities 1 (2012): 94–​107 The Multispecies Salon, vol. 1, ed. Eben Kirksey (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012). 45. Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin the Chthulucene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 13. 46. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 58. 47. I am following the convention John Inge borrows from Iain Mackenzie of place as significant space. See Inge, Theology of Place, 31. 25. 26. 27. 28.

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chapter 2 1. Soon after, Constantine set in motion a “lavish program of church building throughout the Roman Empire,” which transformed the “religious landscape of Christian devotion and pilgrimage.” Whalen, Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, 13. 2. In turn, aspects of the architecture of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre inspired the shape of the octagon in Nidaros Cathedral. This may indeed be the origin of the phrase “Jerusalem of the North,” which is sometimes used in reference to the cathedral. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 110. 3. See, for example, Kristin Aavitsland, “Remembering Jerusalem in Medieval Scandinavia,” in The Formative Past and the Formation of the Future: Collective Remembering and Identity Formation, ed. Terje Stordalen and Saphianz-​Amal Naguib (Oslo: Novus, 2015), 175–​196. 4. Whalen, Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, 45. 5. Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 1. 6. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 3. 7. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 6. 8. Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 204. 9. Cyril Hovorun, Political Orthodoxies: The Unorthodoxies of the Church Coerced (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2018), 154. 10. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 171. 11. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 177. 12. https://​snl.no/​Olavskirker 13. In the postmedieval period, St. James continued to be marshaled as an “emblem of militant Spanish Catholicism.” See Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 382. Retrieving this narrative, the Spanish fascist ruler Franco used the collective memory of St. James to bolster his nationalist and ethnocentric framing of Spain. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 238, 241. 14. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 20. 15. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 8. 16. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 10. 17. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 10. 18. Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, “Religions Old and New,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, ed. Peter Sawyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 219. 19. It is possible that Winroth overemphasizes the difference between Scandinavia and other territories. Certainly, the fact that certain leaders, whether they are considered foreign or local, imposed a form of religion still does not give us much information about how the local population would have worked through the adjustment. Anders Winroth, The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Making of Northern Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 162. 20. Sørensen, “Religions Old and New,” 218. 21. Steinsland, Mytene Som Skapte Norge, 16.

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22. See Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (Berkeley: University of California, 1999), 393 and G. Ronald Murphy, Tree of Salvation: Yggdrasil and the Cross in the North (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 102–​103. 23. See Gro Steinsland, “Fra Yggdrasils Ask Til Korsets Tre—​Tanker Om Trosskiftet,” in Fra Hedendom Til Kristendom: Perspektiver På Religionsskiftet i Norge, ed. Magnus Rindal (Oslo: Ad Notam Gyldendal, 1996), 20–​30 and Murphy, Tree of Salvation. 24. Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (London: Penguin, 2012), 92–​93. 25. All the ancient burial mounds from the Bronze Age can be found along the coast, which serves to emphasize the importance of the location. It is possible to trace the ocean routes by following those grave sites along the coast of Norway. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 16. 26. One notable exception is the discovery of a female warrior in a grave at the site of Birka, Sweden. Charlotte Hedenstierna-​Jonson et al., “A Female Viking Warrior Confirmed by Genomics,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 164 (2017): 853–​860. 27. Lisbeth Mikaelsson, “Locality and Myth: The Resacralization of Selja and the Cult of St. Sunniva,” Numen 52 (2005): 198. 28. Mikaelsson, “Locality and Myth,” 200. 29. Kari Leine Balog, Pilegrim Rett Vest: Med Vandresko i Luthers Land (Oslo: Kolofon, 2015), 188. 30. Sigrid Undset, Norske Helgener (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1937), 87. 31. Gro Steinsland, Den Hellige Kongen: Om Religion Og Herskermakt Fra Vikingtid Til Middelalder (Oslo: Pax Forlag, 2000), 162. 32. See Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 24; and Macfarlane, Old Ways, 95. 33. The three first diocese in Norway were thus Selja, Nidaros, and Oslo, each with their own saint. On Selja as first diocese on the Western coast of Norway, see Knut Helle, “Det Første Bispedømme På Vestlandet,” in Selja—​Heilag Stad i 1000 År, ed. Magnus Rindal. (Oslo: Unversitetsforlaget, 1997), 240-​251.. 34. Mikaelsson, “Locality and Myth,” 201. 35. Anne Kristin Aasmundtveit, Alle Mine Veier: En Pilegrims Vandringer (Oslo: Luther, 2013), 110. 36. Aasmundtveit, Alle Mine Veier, 115. 37. Undset, Norske Helgener, 93–​94. 38. Undset, Norske Helgener, 100; and personal conversation with Tor Singsaas. 39. Thomas DuBois, “Sts Sunniva and Henrik: Scandinavian Martyr Saints in Their Hagiographic and National Contexts,” in Saints, Lives, and Cults in Medieval Scandinavia, ed. Thomas DuBois (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2008), 72. 40. Without a knowledge of Norwegian, it would seem difficult both to get to Selja and to make sense of the events on the island, especially the service. Consequently, most everybody in attendance was Norwegian and in some way connected to the site, and with more than a pilgrim connection to the site. 41. Samson, “EU Criticism,” 72.

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42. The 900-​year anniversary of the establishment of the bishopric of Bjørgvin was marked by a service on July 8, 2018. A Roman Catholic blogger chose to ignore the Church of Norway’s celebration and focused only on the Roman Catholic one, repeating the prior contestations of who the successor church of this site is. See the blog of Ragnhild H. Aadland Høen, a Catholic convert and genetic descendant of Olav Haraldsson. http://​stasunniva.blogspot.com/​2018/​06/​950-​arsjubileum-​ kom-​til-​seljumannamesse.html and the Facebook event by the Church of Norway https://​www.facebook.com/​events/​189238298463105/​ 43. In the years since I first visited, the following additions to the existing but logistically difficult pilgrims’ path over land and sea, Sunnivaleia (The Sunniva route), and the Seljumannamesse were made: a statue of St. Sunniva carved in white marble was erected in the harbor region on the mainland, creating a visual marker of the lore associated with the legendary figure in front of the vicarage in 2013. The pilgrim association of St. Sunniva was founded, but it remains regional, unlike many of the other recently founded pilgrimage associations, and has not joined the national association. Several persons and groups, some from the Roman Catholic side of things, have attempted to reestablish the presence of a monastery on the island which was closed during the Reformation. Meanwhile, Kari Leine Balog, Lutheran local priest in Selje and pilgrim active in the Selje pilgrim scene, has walked the Camino Santiago and wrote a book about walking a Luther-​related pilgrimage in eastern Germany (http://​sunnivaleia.no). Balog, Pilegrim Rett Vest. 44. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 101. 45. Although Tryggvason was said to have built a small church to Sunniva’s memory (most likely an Irish monastery was the first building on the island), the saint’s shrine was later moved to Bergen, where she became the city’s patron. Her reliquary remained in the cathedral there until it was destroyed during the Reformation. Mikaelsson, “Locality and Myth,” 199. 46. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 42. 47. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 42. 48. Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200–​ 1000, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 471–​472. 49. Fletcher, Barbarian Conversion, 370. 50. Winroth calls it a “long, drawn-​out process that may last generations.” Winroth, The Conversion of Scandinavia, 122. 51. See Winroth, The Conversion of Scandinavia, 16. 52. A similar dynamic occurred on the continent and fused militarily focused ideas of Saxon leadership with the idea of kingship, an extension of the idea of messianic kingship and the Roman ideology of the Caesar as a deity and Christ as king. See Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002) and G. Ronald Murphy, The Saxon Savior: The Germanic Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth-​Century Heliand (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) as well as Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (Boston: Beacon, 2008). 53. Winroth, The Conversion of Scandinavia, 145.

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54. Winroth, The Conversion of Scandinavia, 145. 55. Janet Nelson writes: “What lured the Vikings was movable wealth,” both from raids and from monies paid for protection. The shift from raiding to protection has an interesting parallel in Rollo’s history. He was defeated and then engaged to protect the locals, but he first had to convert, also in order to secure loyalty. Thus, conversion correlates also to a type of sworn loyalty replacing the one secured through goods obtained through raids. Janet L. Nelson, “The Frankish Empire,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, ed. Peter Sawyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 36. See also Tore Skeie, Hvitekrist: Om Olav Haraldsson Og Hans Tid (Oslo: Gyldendahl, 2018), 105–​106. 56. Winroth, The Conversion of Scandinavia, 141. 57. Winroth, The Conversion of Scandinavia, 142. 58. Skeie, Hvitekrist, 236–​237, 245, 250. 59. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 43. 60. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 44. 61. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 55. 62. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 43. 63. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 44. 64. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 47, 48. 65. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 54–​55. 66. Winroth, The Conversion of Scandinavia, 138. 67. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 27. 68. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 130. 69. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 31. 70. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 38. 71. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 56, 57. 72. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 87. 73. Steinsland, Den Hellige Kongen, 15. The ties that bound Viking societies were based on power play, warfare, slavery, blood rites, and gift exchange. The economies of exchange involved are similar to the potlatch of the Northern Americas—​with wealthy chiefs giving large and exotic gifts to warriors to keep their loyalty and to secure their swords and support for the maintenance or expansion of their power. Winroth argues it is the need to give ever-​greater wealth to assure the loyalty of warriors that was the primary motivation for Viking raids for silver and slaves—​ rather than just bloodthirst. But this is what—​always over the sea route—​brought Viking chieftains, some later kings, in touch with the Christian nations to the south. 74. Such images of God as king and warlord from the side of rulers remained not unopposed, as Steinsland reports in a chapter. A powerful wife and landowner commissioned a stone carving that represents a countermyth, replacing the warrior Christ with the child in a stable, visited by three strange men from afar. A similar transformation can be observed in the narratives about St. Olav, adjusted to new ideals and expectations of a king as peacekeeper rather than warlord. Steinsland, Mytene Som Skapte Norge, 21. 75. Mikaelsson, “Locality and Myth,” 208.

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76. Gro Steinsland, Norrøn Religion: Myter, Riter, Samfunn (Oslo: Pax Forlag, 2005), 158, 163. 77. In keeping with the increase in literature on Norwegian saints and pilgrimage, the first book on St. Hallvard was published in 2020 for the 1,000-​year anniversary of his birth. Ole Rikard Høisæther, Sankt Hallvard: Helgen Og Symbol (Oslo: Orfeus, 2020). 78. Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 145. 79. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 178–​179. 80. Steinsland, Mytene Som Skapte Norge, 122, 123. 81. Idar Kjølsvik, Olavssteinen På Stiklestad (Kristianssand: Cappelen Damm, 2012), 27–​31. 82. “Gjennom deres egen døde konge ble Kristus gjort hemlig.” Steinsland, Mytene Som Skapte Norge, 122. In his study of sainthood, Robert Bartlett suggests that there is a particular geographical distribution to “slaughtered Scandinavian ruler-​saints,” including Canute IV of Denmark, Earl Magnus of Orkney, Canute Laward of Schleswig, and king Erik of Sweden. In the case of several of the royal saints who died violent deaths, their power as posthumous healers helps make the case for their sanctity even with a less than saintly life. The life of St. Martin, a former soldier, is one of the older templates for this type of hagiography. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 55–​56, 215. 83. Ekroll, “Octagonal Shrine Chapel,” 70. 84. Ekroll, “Octagonal Shrine Chapel,” 70. Royal saints like St. Olav were also the “undying champions of their dynasty and country,” so when king Haakon IV of Norway attacked Scotland in 1263, “he faced not only the forces of the Scottish king but also the power of St. Margaret, the queen of Scots.” Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 228. 85. Lenka Jirouskova, Der Heilige Wikingerkönig Olav Haraldsson und Sein Hagiographisches Dossier: Text und Kontext der Passio Olavi (mit Kritischer Edition), Mitellateinische Studien und Texte (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 657f. Jirouskova introduces her study by pointing to her own pilgrimage to Nidaros as inspiration to explore the history and ideological frames of hagiographic texts around Olav (XXI). 86. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 36. 87. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 558–​559. 88. See also Røthe, “Helt, Konge Og Helgen,” 247, 251, 258. 89. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 110. 90. Arne Bakken, “Erkebiskop Øystein Og Det Norske KongedØmmet—​Veien Til Alle Menneskers Verd Og Verdighet Stakes Ut,” in Vor Kristen Og Humanistisk Arv—​Betraktninger Ved 200-​Årsjubileet for Grunnloven, ed. Øystein Ekroll, Søren Hjorth, and Einar Vegge (Trondheim: Nidaros Domkirkes Restaureringsarbeider, 2014), 23–​24. See also Øystein Ekroll, “Octagonal Shrine Chapel.” 91. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 110. 92. Arne Bakken argues that Øystein’s framing includes a kind of democratization of power even while gathering a transtribal nation under a king. In this framing, it is the hitherto unseen individual, rather than just the tribal elite in a strict martial

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hierarchy, or the tribe as a whole, thus increasing the dignity of the poor and enslaved. Bakken, “Erkebiskop Øystein.” 93. Bakken, “Erkebiskop Øystein,” 28. 94. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 212–​213. 95. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 101. 96. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 102. 97. Augustine, City of God, Preface. See also Picard and Di Giovine, “Introduction,” 253. 98. Dyas, “Medieval Patterns,” 96. 99. For the relevant excerpt from Jerome’s treatise, see, for example, Whalen, Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, 30–​33. 100. Graham Tomlin, “Protestants and Pilgrimage,” in Explorations in a Christian Theology of Pilgrimage, ed. Craig Bartholomew and Fred Hughes (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 110. 101. Dyas, “Medieval Patterns,” 101. See also Diana Webb, Medieval European Pilgrimage (London: Palgrave, 2002), 45. 102. Dyas, “Medieval Patterns,” 94. 103. See Roger Jensen, Pilegrim—​ Lengsel, Vandring, Tenkning—​ Før Og Nå (Oslo: Novus, 2014) and Kjølsvik, Olavssteinen. Each points to the lack of a fully considered Protestant theology of sacred space, saints, and pilgrimage. However, Lindström and Bakken do provide aspects of Protestant Scandinavian pilgrim theology. Jensen proposes aspects of a pilgrim theology based on Luther’s Small Catechism. Jensen, Pilegrim, 204–​224. 104. Tomlin, “Protestants and Pilgrimage,” 111. 105. LW 31, 199. Cited in Tomlin, “Protestants and Pilgrimage,” 111. 106. Tomlin, “Protestants and Pilgrimage,” 112. 107. Tomlin, “Protestants and Pilgrimage,” 112. 108. Tomlin, “Protestants and Pilgrimage,” 113. 109. See, for example, Jensen, Pilegrim, 142. 110. NB that Tomlin incorrectly refers this quote to the treatise on Babylonian captivity rather than that on Christian nobility. Tomlin, “Protestants and Pilgrimage,” 114. 111. See To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, in particular the discussion of St. Anthony of Florence, some pages after the classic quote on the pilgrimage to one’s home parish. 112. Tomlin, “Protestants and Pilgrimage,” 119. 113. Tomlin, “Protestants and Pilgrimage,” 119. 114. The German Protestant Church EKD promotes pilgrimage and runs pilgrim offices, arguing that Luther opposed pilgrimages to Rome in particular and appear to circumvent the problem in this manner. Helmut Eberhardt, “From Religious Folklore Studies to Research of Popular Religiosity: Pilgrimage Studies in German-​Speaking Europe,” in International Perspectives on Pilgrimage Studies: Itineraries, Gaps and Obstacles, ed. Dionigi Albera and John Eade (London: Routledge, 2015), 124.

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chapter 3 1. In 2018, the Oslo Pilgrim Center stocked guidebooks in German, Dutch, Swedish, and English, in addition to Norwegian. 2. To avoid stereotyping pilgrims as privileged older white people, and perhaps especially female, it behooves us to read up on the diversity of pilgrimage over time and location, also noting what phase in a resurgence attracts what kind of pilgrim. The kind of pilgrim attracted by a site can quickly change over time, especially as a route becomes more well-​known and accessible. See, for example, Willy Jansen and Catrien Notermans, eds., Gender, Nation and Religion in European Pilgrimage (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012) and Simon Coleman and John Eade, Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion (London: Routledge, 2005). 3. Jan Arild Holbek, “Går Og Kjører Bil for Pilegrimsturisme,” Vårt Land, August 6, 2013, 13. 4. See Lars Verket, Padlepilegrim: Fra Tønsberg Til Nidaros (Stavanger: Kai Hansen Trykkeri, 2014). 5. Ronald Grimes, Deeply in the Bone: Re-​Inventing Rites of Passage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 307. 6. Anna Fedele, Looking for Mary Magdalene: Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity at Catholic Shrines in France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 224. 7. Frey reports on esoteric pilgrims on the Camino in the 1990s. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 46. 8. There has been some discussion of whether the 100 km have to be walked or whether, for example, a pilgrimage by ship, boat, or kayak is also included. In 2014, for example, boat pilgrims received the certificate. 9. Olavskilden is a well associated with St. Olav as having sprung from the place where his casket was set down before the actual burial in Nidaros. Numerous other wells and springs are associated with St. Olav during the Catholic time in the Nordic countries and carry the same name. Likewise, a stone at Stiklestad is known as the Olav’s stone, each linked, via legend, to certain events in Olav Haraldssons life and travels; thus, he is said to have bathed in one of them and put his spear down near another one. See https://​snl.no/​Olavskilder and https://​no.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​ Olavskilder 10. On the Camino, where numbers are far higher, the phenomenon of pilgrim fatigue appears to be spreading among hospitaleros. Pilgrims report that hospitaleros in Norway tend to be of the friendlier sort, and outright unpleasant experiences appear to be rare. Gunnar Wiederstrøm, “Krev Færre Sommarturistar,” Klassekampen, July 12, 2018 https://​klassekampen.no/​utgave/​2018-​07-​12/​krev-​faerre-​sommarturistar. 11. Given how dependent on waterborne transportation the entire coast was for most of its history and how easily communities become insulated and isolated from certain larger processes, this is not hard to see. The land-​locked priests would have to be rowed across the fjords and were often terrified of the passage, while fear of the sea would have been as good as a death sentence to the island dwellers and coast fishermen themselves. On the priest, see Roy Jacobsen, De Usynlige (Oslo: Cappelen Damm, 2013), 6, “[presten] er livredd havet.” Of the islanders before the advent of

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motorized boats, Jacobsen writes “En øyboer er ikke redd, da kan han ikke bo her, men må ta hus og pakk og flytte og bli som alle andre i en skog og en dal, det er katastrofe, en øybeboer er mørk til sinns, ikke stiv av skrekk, men av alvor.” Jacobsen, De Usynlige, 53. 12. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 87. 13. Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 22. 14. Kjølsvik, Olavssteinen. 15. Adamus, “Capitulum,” 32. Cited in Øystein Ekroll, “Octagonal Shrine Chapel,” 73. 16. DuBois, “Sts Sunniva and Henrik,” 87. 17. Jensen, Pilegrim, 132. 18. Jensen, Pilegrim, 132f. 19. The quote is a summary of the work of Nancy Frey on pilgrim stories from Compostela from the year 1998. Coleman and Eade, “Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion,” 11. 20. Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 21. 21. Until the routes in Norway were redeveloped, it was far easier to go to Spain for an accessible experience of pilgrimage. Anne Kristin Aasmundtveit explains: “Many have said to me: Why go to Spain when we have pilgrimage routes in our own country? [ . . . ] Yet, if many chose to go southward to Spain and the Camino first, it is because things are so much accessible for pilgrimages there. The routes are well marked, there are countless guidebooks in many languages, web pages help you plan your own personal route, there are plenty of well developed hostels, and even water sources along the route.” Aasmundtveit, Alle Mine Veier, 89, my translation. 22. Knut Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke: En Historisk Gjennomgang (Trondheim: Tapir Akademisk Forlag, 2005), 112. 23. Anna Davidsson Bremborg, Pilgrimsvandring På Svenska (Lund: Arcus, 2010), 14–​15. 24. Bremborg, Pilgrimsvandring På Svenska, 17. 25. Guro Kristiane Berge Vistad, “Den Norske Pilegrimsrenessansen: En Analyse Av Tilretteleggere, Interessenter Og Prosesser” (Trondheim: NTNU, 2012), 43. 26. Jensen, Pilegrim, 35. 27. Eivind Luthen, I Pilegrimenes Fotspor Til Nidaros (Oslo: Cappelen, 1991). 28. Vistad, “Den Norske Pilegrimsrenessansen,” 43–​44. 29. Michael Stausberg, Religion and Tourism: Crossroads, Destinations, and Encounters (London: Routledge, 2011), 61–​62. 30. Hans-​Jacob Dahl, “Pilegrimsleden 20 År—​1997–​2017: Den Offentlige Satsningen,” Pilegrim i Dag 9, no. 1 (2017): 9–​10. 31. Torunn Selberg, “Pilegrimsveien Som Kulturarv,” DIN 1–​2 (2011): 122. 32. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 198. 33. Einar Vegge, “Utøvende Spiritualitet Og Pilegrimspraksis,” in Vor Kristen Og Humanistisk Arv—​ Betraktninger Ved 200-​ Årsjubileet for Grunnloven, ed. Øystein Ekroll, Søren Hjorth, and Einar Vegge (Trondheim: Nidaros Domkirkes Restaureringsarbeider, 2014), 375 Wagle is not a scholar, and his references to historical sources and exegesis of the life of St. Olav remain somewhat on the surface. Nevertheless, the themes he lifts up allow for a reconstruction of St. Olav that

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matches many of the challenges of contemporary life and have had a strong influence on how St. Olav’s heritage is shaped today. 34. Karl H. Brox et al., Ingen Lever for Seg Selv: Festschrift Til Biskop Finn Wagle (Oslo: Verbum, 2008), 158, 178. 35. The Viking chief Rollo led raids from 820 on. He was defeated in 911 and through the treaty of St. Clair du Epte, following the Carolingian tactic of recruiting one Viking war band to ward off the others, required that Rollo convert to the Christian faith. Rollo’s position became permanent, and his rule of power eventually matched the size of the archbishopric of Rouen at the center of the province. Three generations later, these Normans were deeply integrated with the local population, but the name Normandy preserves the memory of the Scandinavian component of the population. Nelson, “The Frankish Empire,” 31. St. Denis, the patron saint of France, was early associated with Rouen. St. Denis is also among the saints depicted on the Westfront of Nidaros Cathedral. 36. The ten-​year anniversary booklet of the path dedicated an article to him in 2007. Peter St. Lindholm, “Morten Dahler, Pilegrimsledens Engler,” in 1997–​2007: 10 År Med Pilegrimsleden—​Pilegrimen På Vei Inn i et Nytt Århundre, ed. Rolf Synnes and Peter St. Lindholm (Trondheim: Faktrykk Trondheim, 2007), 23–​27. 37. See Ween and Abram on the history of the association. Gro Ween and Simone Abram, “The Norwegian Trekking Association: Trekking as Constituting the Nation,” Landscape Research 37, no. 2 (2012): 155–​171. 38. As an example may serve the following article showing an organized tour under the umbrella of the DNT Gudbrandsdalen region but clearly marked as a pilgrimage. https://​gudbrandsdalen.dnt.no/​aktiviteter/​88133/​844566/​ 39. See, for example, Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 13, 25. 40. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 198. 41. Dahl, “Pilegrimsleden 20 År—​1997–​2017: Den Offentlige Satsningen,” 11. 42. Selberg, “Pilegrimsveien Som Kulturarv,” 127. 43. Selberg, “Pilegrimsveien Som Kulturarv,” 125. 44. Vistad, “Den Norske Pilegrimsrenessansen,” 65. 45. Uddu was the director of the Olavsfestdagene from 1998 to 2007. See Tone Mørkved, Med Øks Og Lilje: Olavsfestdagene Gjennom 50 År (Trondheim: Tapir, 2012), 266 and https://​www.nrk.no/​trondelag/​skuffet-​uddu-​ma-​ga-​1.3407460 46. Per Kvistad Uddu, På Livets Vei—​Pilegrimsmotivet et Nasjonalt Utviklingsprosjekt (2008), 3. Mikaelsson informs that the report was somewhat controversial. Some felt that it was overblown and unrealistic. Here, the Camino was used as a model for how the Norwegian routes could become, something that is highly unlikely. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 105. 47. Vistad, “Den Norske Pilegrimsrenessansen,” 85. 48. Vistad refers to a lecture Mikaelsson gave in 2009. Vistad, “Den Norske Pilegrimsrenessansen,” 83. Mikaelsson’s lecture can be found at http://​www. pilegrim.no/​news.php?id=1262123190 49. Dahl, “Pilegrimsleden 20 År—​1997–​2017: Den Offentlige Satsningen,” 15–​16.

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50. At the time of writing, Bjerkestand is director of Nidaros Restauration Works. Steinar Bjerkestand, “Det Offentlige Pilegrimsarbeid,” Pilegrim i Dag 9, no. 1 (2017): 38. 51. Stausberg, Religion and Tourism, 62. 52. Prinsesse Märtha Louise and Ari Behn, Fra Hjerte Til Hjerte (Oslo: Forlaget Press, 2002). 53. Prinsesse Märtha Louise and Behn, Fra Hjerte Til Hjerte, 14. 54. Prinsesse Märtha Louise and Behn, Fra Hjerte Til Hjerte, 7. 55. See Siv Ellen Kraft, “En Senmoderne Pilegrimsreise: Prinsesse Märtha Louise Og Ari Behns Fra Hjerte Til Hjerte,” in Religiøse Reiser: Mellom Gamle Spor Og Nye Mål, ed. Ingvild Sælid Gilhus and Siv Ellen Kraft (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2007), 39–​50. 56. Kjell Skartseterhagen, “Vandringer Med Hjertet!” in 1997–​ 2007: 10 År Med Pilegrimsleden—​Pilegrimen På Vei Inn i et Nytt Århundre, ed. Rolf Synnes and Peter St. Lindholm (Trondheim: Faktrykk Trondheim, 2007), 35. 57. Knut Olav Åmås, “Stadig Flere Går Pilegrimsvandringer i Norge. Jeg Hadde Slett Ikke Tenkt å Bli en Av Dem,” Aftenposten, August 4, 2013. http://​www.aftenposten. no/​meninger/​kommentarer/​Stadig-​flere-​gar-​pilegrimsvandringer-​i-​Norge-​Jeg-​ hadde-​slett-​ikke-​tenkt-​a-​bli-​en-​av-​dem-​7268908.html#.UgIxbqxYUfR 58. Knut Olav Åmås, “Gråt Etter Pilegrimsvandring,” Vårt Land, August 7, 2013, 32. 59. Aasmundtveit, Alle Mine Veier, 58. 60. Bremborg, Pilgrimsvandring På Svenska, 106. Other pilgrimage goals in Sweden include Vadstena, Lund, and Västergötland. 61. Bremborg, Pilgrimsvandring På Svenska, 119. The Swedish writer Hans-​ Erik Lindstrom’s theology of pilgrimage is based on even key words: slowdown, freedom, simplicity, fearlessness, silence, sharing, and spirituality. There are three pilgrim priests in Denmark, in Arhus, Roskilde and Viborg/​Lolland-​Falsters (2013). See Lene Kühle et al., “Funktionspræster i Danmark—​En Kortlægning” (Center for Samtidsreligion/​Folkekirkens Uddannelses-​og Videnscenter, 2015), 1.40. 62. One of the most recent reopened routes leads from Abo, Finland, by water to Stockholm and then on to Nidaros. The official opening was in May 2019 (https://​ stolavwaterway.com/​en/​). This marks a route from Novgorod, where Olav hid in 1028, visiting his brother in law Jaroslav I, ruler of Novgorod (https://​snl.no/​Olav_​ den_​hellige). Jaroslav conquered Kiev and included it in the Kievan Rus. This history contests the modern Russian nationalist narratives that build this history into a juxtaposition of East and West Europe. 63. See the following public webpage. http://​www.riksantikvaren.no/​Tema/​Friluftsliv-​ og-​kulturminner/​Pilegrimsleiene-​til-​Trondheim 64. After a reorganization in 2016, all governmental pilgrimage work was put under NPS and is being administered as a department under the restauration works at Nidaros Cathedral (NDR). See http://​www.nidarosdomen.no/​nidaros-​domkirkes-​ restaureringsarbeider/​nasjonalt-​pilegrimssenter 65. See for example the official webpage on pilgrimage on the Visit Oslo site. https://​ www.visitoslo.com/​en/​osloregion/​articles/​pilgrim-​routes/​

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66. Østang’s book tracks the slow and hesitant movement toward claiming Nidaros as an archbishopric. He has himself suggested this move, which would put Norway in the same position as Sweden and Finland, both of which have an archbishop. Øystein Østang, Hjem til Nidaros: Norges Nølende Vandring siden 1814 (Oslo: Genesis, 1997). 67. Hans Morten Løvrød, Arsrapport for 2013 Nasjonalt Pilegrimssenter—​National Center for Pilgrims-​Annual Report (Trondheim, 2013), 1. 68. This is also remarked on by Selberg. Selberg, “Pilegrimsveien Som Kulturarv,” 122. It remains an open question how much of this may also be related to the personal interest of some of the politicians involved and their own historical connection to sites related to Olav, for example, then minister Trond Giske’s family heritage’s own historical connection to St. Olav. Local interests are often profoundly manifest in the development of pilgrimage routes. 69. The building is administered by Statsbygg, the Norwegian government’s building administration, and thus it is dependent on a government agency rather than being administered by the church or a civic organization. From the website: “Statsbygg is the Norwegian government’s key advisor in construction and property affairs, building commissioner, property manager and property developer.” http://​www.statsbygg.no/​Om-​Statsbygg/​About-​Statsbygg/​ 70. Foreign pilgrims, prepared for high prices in Norway, often travel with far more luggage than the pilgrimage centers recommend: for instance, they often carry tent and sleeping bags so they can reduce the number of expensive overnight stays. Budsjord, a hostel site run by an architect who has lovingly restored the historic farm site, cost a whopping 700 NOK per night at the pilgrim’s rate in the summer of 2018, considerably more for nonpilgrims. It is expensive for the host to run the site but also expensive for pilgrims to stay. Nevertheless, the financial advantage of arriving as a pilgrim rather than a tourist can give relational and at times financial advantages, especially in a notoriously expensive country such as Norway. And for many young people in Norway, especially from financially less well-​off contexts, just purchasing equipment in a style-​and equipment-​focused context, can be a barrier to engaging in pilgrimage. These realities are starkly visible on the eastern part of the Gudbrandsdalsleden, which leads through the more diverse, more urban, and some of the most low-​income areas in Norway. 71. Despite government promises for a more long-​term funding, the center, like most other Norwegian institutions, has to apply annually to the Norwegian government for funding and must send in annual reports. 72. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 199. 73. I was able to get access to relatively informal statistics for the years 2013 and 2014, with the comment that they are likely not particularly comprehensive or reliable. 74. Bowman and Sepp suggest that the use of stamps and credentials is one of the features of “caminoisation” also when it comes to St. Olav Ways. Bowman and Sepp, “Caminoisation,” 80, 82. 75. The most recent design of the credential Olavsbrev now features a plant map of the route. Vigdis Vormdal, the chairwoman of St. Olav’s pilgrim association, told me that the map traces the landscape and plants that can be encountered

Notes

76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87. 88.

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along the route, representing the ecosystems of forest, high mountain, and river ecosystems. The credential artwork is inspired by Trond Øigarden’s nature guide for pilgrims. Trond Øigarden, Naturguide for Pilegrimer: Blomster, Fugler Og Dyr i Kristen Tradisjon (Oslo: Novus Forlag, 2015). The letter comes with a coded map of what is represented, including a guide to the plants with their names in English and German. The credential has shifted from artwork more focused on Olav to artwork that represents the landscape encountered along the road. http://​ pilegrimsgarden.pilegrimsleden.no/​en/​the/​what-​is-​the-​olav-​letter/​ Nidaros Domkirkes Restaureringsarbeider, Annual Report (Trondheim, 2018), 27. This represents an increase of over 331 percent from 2012 to 2018. Mattias Jansson, Arsrapport for 2017 Nasjonalt Pilegrimssenter—​National Center for Pilgrims-​Annual Report (Trondheim, 2017), 8 and Mattias Jansson, Statistikk Gudbrandsdalsleden Og St. Olavsldeden 2019 (Trondheim: Nasjonalt Pilegrimssenter, 2019), 11. In 2010 there were 165 pilgrims who received the credential, 360 in 2011, 580 in 2012, down to 380 in 2013, up to 683 in 2014, 797 in 2015, 1,045 in 2016, and 1,040 in 2017. Jansson, Statistikk Gudbrandsdalsleden Og St. Olavsldeden 2019, 2, 9. Jansson, Statistikk Gudbrandsdalsleden Og St. Olavsldeden 2019, 13. Nidaros Domkirkes Restaureringsarbeider, Annual Report, 27. Nidaros Pilegrimsgård, Statistikk for 2016—​Nidaros Pilgrim Center—​Statistics (Trondheim, 2016). Nidaros Pilegrimsgård, Statistikk for 2015—​Nidaros Pilgrim Center—​Statistics (Trondheim, 2015), 5. Relevant webpages have been central ways to communicate COVID-​19 responses. See https://​pilegrimsleden.no/​en/​articles/​pilegrimssesongen-​2020 and https://​ www.elcaminoconcorreos.com/​en/​blog/​camino-​de-​santiago-​and-​covid-​19 William T. Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 84. Eduardo Chemin, “Producers of Meaning and the Ethics of Movement: Religion, Consumerism and Gender on the Road to Compostela,” in Gender, Nation and Religion in European Pilgrimage, ed. Willy Jansen and Catrien Notermans (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012), 128. Vistad, “Den Norske Pilegrimsrenessansen,” 84. Other examples are Fokstugu, a pilgrimage host site on the main route in the mountainous region of Dovre. It is run by a Swedish/​Finnish couple who take hospitality very seriously and have reflected on the spirituality of hospitality. During the season, they offer brief daily services, and each summer they have hosted various bishops and clergy of the Church of Norway in residence, allowing them to interact with pilgrims. Bishops stay on for a certain time as a pastoral presence. For some pilgrims the explicit aspect of worship can seem too much, while others report that they enjoyed the explicit spiritual aspect and found it fitting for the context of a pilgrimage. Lia Gard, a retreat center on the Østerdalsleden, is located on a less developed and less traveled route. Likewise, it functions as a retreat center throughout the year and welcomes pilgrim during the summer, offering seminars and an occasional pilgrims’ retreat, for example

202

89. 90. 91. 92.

93. 94. 95. 96.

97.

98. 99. 100. 101.

Notes

on the topic of using the forests around the center for day pilgrimages in the area. http://​www.liagard.no/​pilegrimsdager-​pa-​lia Veslemøy Selvik, “En Pilegim Er En Hospitalero: Rollekonstruksjon Og Bytte i Møte Med Pilgrimer Og Deres Vertskap På Camino de Santiago, Spania,” Thesis (Bergen: University of Bergen, 2001), 12–​14. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 16. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 15. St. Boniface indicates in his letters that pilgrimage is valid but should be regulated in such a way that “pagan practices” such as singing, drinking, and enjoying food are avoided. In one letter he expresses concern that female pilgrims fall by the wayside and end up either dead or as prostitutes. Whalen, Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, 75–​76. The authors are summarizing an argument made by J. Adler. Coleman and Eade, “Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion,” 10. Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 249. Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage, 20. See also Badone and Roseman, “Pilgrimage and Tourism,” 2–​3. Selberg’s claim that the Norwegian route system is completely secularized and becomes yet another tourist and hiking path seems thin on the ground. First, there was no extant known practice of pilgrimage, certainly not as recognizable as a common practice without this investment in building the routes up, and a preoccupation with authenticity is not just found among pilgrims but Selberg herself seems to operate with a particular notion of what marks an original or authentic pilgrimage path and what does not. Certainly, the questions raised around which routes are prioritized are valid, especially at the time of her writing in 2011. Selberg, “Pilegrimsveien Som Kulturarv,” 128. For an in-​depth treatment, see Stausberg, Religion and Tourism, 19–​30. Jim Forest observes that even somebody as seemingly dedicated as Thomas Merton reports switching from tourist mode to pilgrim mode and back; in fact, for the majority of his time on pilgrimage to a Cuban shrine of the Virgin Mary he describes his time there as being spent mostly as a tourist. Forest comments, with reference to Chaucer and Merton, that 10 percent of our time spent on pilgrimage might be “as much pilgrimage as most of us can stand. We are like Chaucer’s travelers to Canterbury, spending more time with mugs of beer in our hands than rosaries. But even to be ten percent pilgrim is no small achievement.” Jim Forest, The Road to Emmaus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007), xvi–​xvii. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 127, 13, 147. Stausberg, Religion and Tourism, 8, 71. Michael DiGiovine, “Pilgrimage: Communitas and Contestation, Unity and Difference—​An Introduction,” Tourism 59, no. 3 (2011): 249. Heather Warfield, Baker Stanley, and Sejal Parikh Foxx, “The Therapeutic Value of Pilgrimage: A Grounded Theory Study,” Mental Health, Religion & Culture 17, no. 8 (2014): 860 Citing a study by Smith and Puczko.

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102. See, for example, the case studies in David Picard and Michael Di Giovine, eds., “Tourism and the Power of Otherness: Seductions of Difference,” Tourism and Cultural Change (Bristol: Channel View Publications, 2014). Bakken suggests that a useful attitude for a pilgrim is one that is similar to that of the Norwegian fairy tale figure of the Askeladden, a kind of trickster traveler whose characteristic is one of great openness to that which he encounters, open to a sense of wonder of encounter on the road. Arne Bakken, Pilegrim: Folk—​Kirke—​ Kosmos (Oslo: Nygaard, 2017), 52. Several pilgrim priests have referred to this figure when they narrative pilgrimage to groups they guide, at times perhaps too quickly claiming this figure for the ideal Christian attitude of trust and openness. 103. Picard and Di Giovine, “Introduction,” 2 104. Picard and Di Giovine, “Introduction,” 2. 105. Picard and Di Giovine, “Introduction,” 4. 106. As described by the Norwegian social anthropologist Selvik. Selvik, “En Pilegim Er En Hospitalero,” 15ff. 107. Aasmundtveit, Alle Mine Veier, 266. Frey describes that pilgrims, if they behave in arrogant or ungrateful ways, essentially by abusing hospitality are considered as tourists. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 133, 147.

chapter  1. Michael Winkelman and Jill Dubisch, “Introduction: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage,” in Pilgrimage and Healing, ed. Michael Winkelman and Jill Dubisch (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2005), 19. 2. Webb, Medieval European Pilgrimage, xiii. 3. Aasmundtveit, Alle Mine Veier, 46–​47. 4. Gemzöe, “Reimagining Feminity,” 47–​49. 5. As of the time of writing, pilgrimage in Norway—​at least the long-​distance and supported variety—​continues to be a matter of privilege, accessible primarily to people with many resources. Activists, church officials, and regjeringspilegrimer—​ government pilgrims—​have been aware of this and have over the last few years created opportunities for shorter, more affordable, and more one-​and two-​day-​ long versions that involve local confirmation classes, students, kindergarteners, and younger persons. That is, at this point, longer pilgrimages tend to be done by older (foreign) pilgrims with time and means, while younger persons from Norway are introduced to their local stretch of the path by local guides and pastors. Most of the foreign pilgrims are going on longer pilgrimages but not necessarily the entire route to Trondheim. Some are doing one stretch each summer. 6. Numbers-​wise, after Norwegians, the highest number of long-​distance pilgrims currently comes from Germany. German pilgrims come from a populous country and a rather strong popular pilgrimage movement. They also benefit, as of 2015, from a well-​executed, up-​to-​date guidebook that opens the route for many pilgrims. Also on the Camino, domestic pilgrims, that is, Spaniards, have the highest numbers, while Germans represent one of the highest percentages

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among foreign pilgrims also in Spain, after US and Italian pilgrims. See the official 2016 statistics for the Camino Santiago (https://​oficinadelperegrino.com/​en/​ statistics/​). Many of the German pilgrims report that they have started skipping or avoiding the Camino de Santiago due to overpopulation of the route and hostels on the Camino. Many of the foreign pilgrims that come to Norway seek a quieter, cooler experience, mentioning more often nature rather than culture as the motivator to take this particular route. 7. https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Slow_​television. See, for example, http://​world.time. com/​2013/​07/​08/​norways-​slow-​tv-​movement-​so-​wrong-​its-​right/​ and http://​news. msn.com/​pop-​culture/​norways-​must-​see-​slow-​tv-​knitting-​fireplaces-​and-​more 8. This motif is found in many of the studies on motivation for pilgrimage and also often obvious from even casual conversations with random pilgrims. See, for example, this Norwegian study of pilgrims on the Spanish Camino. Selvik, “En Pilegim Er En Hospitalero,” 33–​35. 9. In 2015, members of the Church of Norway’s national staff organized a climate pilgrimage that collected drops of water from various watersheds in Norway into bottles that were finally delivered to the UN Climate Meeting in Paris. Pilgrims used bottles of water gathered from various bodies of water to symbolize the waters that feed the land and people as relay batons that were passed on from pilgrim to pilgrim. Initially begun as a one-​time action in 2015, there are now moves to revive this form of pilgrimage together with indigenous actors and in new ways around historically important places relevant to northern Norwegian and indigenous Sami identity. 10. Pilgrim for Hospice is an action by Hospiceforum Norway, a volunteer nonprofit composed of a group of mostly women who have worked to improve access to palliative care in the form of hospice in Norway. Astrid Rønsen, one of the initiators of Hospiceforum Norway, has written about going the last steps on life’s pilgrimage and going on pilgrimage to raise awareness for the possibility to do so in the context of hospice. Rønsen reflects on the journey, both the physical and relational pilgrimage with the memory of lost ones as company, and the blessings short encounters with other pilgrims add to an experience of relationality that transcends death and the impermanence of encounters along the roadside, where pilgrims become each other’s spiritual counselors and supporters. Astrid Rønsen and Rita Jakobsen, Å Fullføre Et Liv: Omsorg for Døende Og De Som Står Naer (Oslo: Gyldendal Akademisk, 2016), 11. 11. Frey mentions Belgian and Dutch programs for young prisoners. Frey, Pilgrim Stories, 52. Inspired by the Belgian program that was started in 1987, Rolf Eckbo first had the idea of bringing this to Norway. He applied for money from the Department of Justice in 2005, and the first pilgrimage with prisoners occurred the year after (http://​www.pilegrim.no/​news.php?id=1288100699). In 2006 pilgrim activist Eivind Luthen and a prison guard walked from Oslo to Trondheim with six pilgrims on part of the path as an effort to aid in their prison program. Bastøy prison describes this here: http://​www.pilegrim.no/​news.php?id=1213650423 http:// ​ w ww.kriminalomsorgen.no/​ i -​ pilegrim- ​ for- ​ e n- ​ b edre- ​ f remtid.365962-​ 237613. html https://​www.nrk.no/​vestfold/​fengselsfugler-​blir-​pilegrimer-​1.281431.

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Summer 2017: http://​www.frelsesarmeen.no/​no/​vart_​arbeid/​fengselsarbeidet/​ hoyre_​kolonne/​vare_​tilbud/​Retreat+i+Halden+fengsel.d25-​SxdjK57.ips. In later years, the guides vary; in 2017 it is the Salvation Army together with the Church of Norway that has guided a pilgrimage of six to seven prisoners from Halden prison to Trondheim. Kjell Arnold Nyhus is prison chaplain and has worked both with monastic retreats and pilgrimage to engage prisoners who are desperate for change in their life patterns. See Kjell Arnold Nyhus, Hvis Jeg Har en Sjel: Fortellinger Fra Klosteret i Fengsel (Oslo: Vårt Land, 2015). 12. The stated purpose of Pilgrims Crossing Borders is to “build friendship, engage in dialogue, and cross borders literally and metaphorically.” The group’s walks are meant to “symbolize diversity and solidarity,” from different backgrounds and denominations. The pilgrimage featured a pilgrim staff that functioned as a baton that was passed between local groups of pilgrims from Nidaros to Rome and eventually Jerusalem during the year 2015. Eventually, it was the staff, rather than the pilgrims who crossed borders across Europe. It is supported by a number of institutions, pilgrimage centers, and pilgrim confraternities in participating countries. https://​picrobo.blogspot.no/​ and https://​www.facebook.com/​picrobo/​ 13. Bremborg, Pilgrimsvandring På Svenska, 120. 14. Research by Karoliussen and Faero as cited in Nanna Natalia Karpinska Dam Jørgensen, “Pilgrimage Walking as Green Prescription Self-​Therapy?” in The Many Voices of Pilgrimage and Reconciliation, ed. Ian S. McIntosh and Lesley Harman (Wallingford, UK: CABI, 2017), 128. 15. Nanna Natalia Karpinska Dam Jørgensen, “Self-​Therapy,” 127. 16. Nanna Natalia Karpinska Jørgensen, “El Camino Santiago: Walking Oneself to Wellbeing, Reclaiming and Reinforcing One’s Spirit,” M.Phil. Thesis (Trondheim: NTNU, 2008), 74–​75. 17. Nanna Natalia Karpinska Dam Jørgensen, “Self-​Therapy,” 128–​129. 18. Fedele, Looking, 131. 19. Fedele continues that pilgrims had ways of dealing with “leader’s theories they did not feel at ease with,” by filtering them and “keeping what they agreed with and discarding the rest.” Fedele, Looking, 163. 20. The main site of the St. Olav’s paths can be found at pilegrimsleden.no. 21. Luthen, I Pilegrimenes Fotspor and Eivind Luthen, Pilegrimsguiden Tønsberg -​Oslo -​ Hamar (Oslo: Verbum, 2003). 22. https://​stolavsleden.com/​ 23. Engler, Norwegen: Olavsweg. 24. Margunn Pettersen, Kystpilegrimsleia -​Fra Egersund Til Trondheim -​En Gudie Til Nøkkelstedene (Stavanger: Mosaikk, 2020). 25. See, for example, self-​published books found on Amazon when searching Nidaros or Trondheim. 26. For example, https://​www.facebook.com/​Pilegrimsleden/​, https://​www.facebook. com/​Kystpilegrimsleia, and https://​www.facebook.com/​StOlavsleden 27. “Med de konkrete fortellingene fra pilegrimsveien ser man det gang på gang: at de ytre erfaringene gjør noe med pilegrimens indre, at de litt etter litt gir pilegrimen en annen identitet. Kroppens erfaringer er sterke nok til a forandre et menneskes

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28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 4 7. 48. 49.

holdning til seg selv og omgivelsene. Samtidig som den indre pilegrimen hele tiden blir utfordret å tolke den ytre, til å la omgivelsene ta farge av de indre oppfatningene.” My rendering. Aasmundtveit, Alle Mine Veier, 45. Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 65. Verket, Padlepilegrim: Fra Tønsberg Til Nidaros. Fedele, Looking, 168. Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, 45–​46. Cf. Part 1 in Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking. Aasmundtveit, Alle Mine Veier, 255. Aasmundtveit, Alle Mine Veier, 257. My translation. Aasmundtveit, Alle Mine Veier, 44–​45. Terje Eidsvåg, “Åpning med klump i halsen” Adresseavisen, July 29, 2017, 8. Warfield, Baker Stanley, and Foxx, “Therapeutic Value,” 860. Warfield, Baker Stanley, and Foxx, “Therapeutic Value,” 861. Warfield, Baker Stanley, and Foxx, “Therapeutic Value,” 868. Winkelman and Dubisch, “Introduction,” x. Winkelman and Dubisch, “Introduction,” xxvi–​xxxii. Jørgensen, “Self-​Therapy,” 124. Jørgensen, “Self-​Therapy,” 124. Jørgensen, “Self-​Therapy,” 129. Jørgensen, “Self-​Therapy,” 132. Georges Canguilhem, “Is a Pedagogy of Healing Possible?” in Writings on Medicine, ed. Sean Geroulanos and Todd Meyers (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), 54–​56. Warfield, Baker Stanley, and Foxx, “Therapeutic Value,” 866. The study engages a set of pilgrims from various religious backgrounds, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus, but all themes are a match for pilgrims in a primarily Christian setting. Warfield, Baker Stanley, and Foxx, “Therapeutic Value,” 866. Coleman and Eade, “Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion,” 16.

chapter 5 1. Margunn Pettersen, a longtime administrator at the Bishop’s office in Stavanger, had noticed that the Uddu report proposing the redevelopment of the St. Olav Ways had not mentioned the ocean route. Pettersen wrote to then minister Trond Giske and suggested that the plan was incomplete without the coastal sea route being included and pushed for its inclusion. This resulted in writing a proposal and eventually government support and an initial launch of the route in 2014 to put the sites involved on the map again and to stimulate local awareness at the various stopping points and historically important sites. Personal conversation with Margunn Pettersen, July 29, 2018. 2. Many coastal churches in Norway feature a model ship in the style of the Nordland boats suspended in the middle of the church’s ship. A ship within a ship, it is both a symbol of salvation, as well as a memorial to all the ones lost at sea. The sea

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gives much, one fellow traveler tells me, but it also takes; in particular, it takes lives, many lives. It is through narratives of coastal life that one escapes the danger of romanticizing coastal life in these places before the arrival of petroleum-​aided transportation. The seascape is also represented in the Norwegian hymnody and artwork of coastal churches. There are numerous hymns that reflect on aspects of the story of Jesus’s stilling of the storm. It is an iconography represented both in texts of Peter Dass and Elias Blix. Other common pictures are of the resurrected Jesus levitating above his grave as in a promise that one day the bodies of those lost at sea will rise like it and give up its dead. At the same time, oral lore as recounted by pilgrim priest Bernt Aanonsen contends that the coastal fishermen were not fond of the image in Revelation where the new heaven and the new earth are described but the “sea will be no more.” They did not feel this was something to look forward to for them. The sea was a worthy opponent, source of life and cause of much death, yet to have it gone did not find their approval. 3. This scenario highlights one dynamic sometimes seen in pilgrimage scenarios: that men provide the infrastructure and aid with transportation, while often women are more likely to travel the route. This is not always the case, of course, but it highlights that when, at times men are thought to be absent from pilgrimage, some participate as “ground crew,” as part of the pilgrimage network. Gemzöe, “Reimagining Femininity.” 4. The route continues to be developed. See https://​ pilegrimsleden.no/​ en/​ trails/​ kystpilegrimsleia. 5. This citation is from Pär Lagerkvist’s book Pilegrim på havet (Pilgrim on the Sea), 12. “Havet vet mer enn noe annet pa jorden, hvis du kan få det til å fortelle deg om det. Det kjenner alle gamle hemmeligheter, fordi det er selv sa gammelt, eldst av alt. Også dine hemmeligheter kjenner det til, tro bare ikke annet. [ . . . ] Hva har du i Det hellige land å gjøre når havet er til. Det hellige havet. [ . . . ] Ja, havet kan lære deg meget. Det kan lære deg å leve.” As cited in Olsen, Havets Pilegrimer, 14. 6. Olav attempted to impose a trade embargo with the local economies up north that were built on a blend of strong fisheries and agriculture. This led to hostilities that were not, as sometimes argued, focused on resisting a change in religion, but rather were concerned with maintaining regional and local economic and political self-​sustainability. 7. This narrative of resistance to Olav Haraldsson echoes center-​periphery tensions in Norway today. Northern Norway struggles with similar issues today—​often marginal in a country that has most of its population centers in the south and west of the country and notoriously focuses its attention on the financially affluent parts of the country. This is reflected also on the initial maps of pilgrimage in Norway, which show the southern half of the country, Oslo to Trondheim, and possibly Stiklestad. Pilegrim i Nord (Pilgrims in the North), a group of clergy and lay leaders, have argued that this leaves out an entire important history as well as ignoring coastal sea routes that were once the key to settling and living on this long-​stretched land. 8. Ian S. McIntosh, “Pilgrimages and Peace-​Building on the Global Stage,” in The Many Voices of Pilgrimage and Reconciliation, ed. Ian S. McIntosh and Lesley Harman (Wallingford, UK: CABI, 2017), 14–​15.

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9. Recognizing the potential harmful impact of pilgrimage, the Green Pilgrimage Network was established to counteract the ecological impact of large numbers of pilgrims. It continues as the European Green Pilgrimage Network, based in the United Kingdom and associated with the Anglican Diocese of Canterbury, another historic pilgrimage site, and has eight member cities. See https://​www. greenpilgrimageeurope.net/​egpn-​history.html 10. Per Ivar Våje, “Klimapilegrim 2015: Pa Vei Til Klimarettferdighet,” Skaperverk og Bærekraft (Oslo, Norway, 2015), 2. 11. Våje, “Klimapilegrim 2015: Pa Vei Til Klimarettferdighet,” 2. The collection of small quantities of water from their home watersheds to conferences has become a tradition in some ecumenical meetings. At a conference in Sweden on the Future of Life in the Arctic in the fall of 2015, one of the delegates commented on the fact that, sadly, the mixture would be undrinkable, as various streams had been starkly polluted. That water ritual of sharing and gathering the waters indeed shows the reality of what is happening to the waters for good or ill. The sacramental potential is there, but the pollution also affects the sacrament. Perhaps this experience also highlights the significance of the concept of a sacred well, such as historically have attracted pilgrims and those who seek healing. 12. Våje, “Klimapilegrim 2015: Pa Vei Til Klimarettferdighet,” 5. 13. See also Einar Tjelle’s article on the interreligious aspects of the climate pilgrimage initiative. Einar Tjelle, “Grønn Vending i Religionsdialogen,” Kirke & Kultur, no. 2 (2016): 189–​206. 14. https://​www.hopecathedral.no/​climate-​pilgrimage 15. https://​www.hopecathedral.no/​the-​vision

chapter 6 1. Røthe, “Helt, Konge Og Helgen,” 116. 2. Røthe, “Helt, Konge Og Helgen,” 118, 120. 3. Røthe, “Helt, Konge Og Helgen,” 159. 4. Sigurd Bergmann, Religion, Space, and the Environment (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2014), 225, 227. 5. Trondheim houses the headquarters of the national pilgrimage administration and is where much of the energy for developing the network has taken place. Within a short walking distance of Nidaros Cathedral one finds the offices of Nidaros Restauration Works (NDR) and the National Pilgrimage Center (NPS), in addition the Nidaros Pilgrim Center (NPG), the hostel where most arriving pilgrims check in to receive their stamps and their certificates for completed pilgrimages. 6. Røthe, “Helt, Konge Og Helgen,” 198, 204–​205, 210. 7. Coleman and Eade, “Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion,” 11. 8. See, for example, Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral.” 9. Olav Tryggvason (not actually a saint), St. Hallvard, St. Sunniva, and St. Olav (Haraldsson), as well as the archbishops of Nidaros and St. Swithun of Winchester, the patron saint of Stavanger, are also found. Øystein Ekroll, Nidaros Cathedral: The West Front Sculptures (Trondheim: Nidaros Kirkes Restaureringsarbeider, 2006).

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10. Simon Coleman and Marion Bowman, “Religion in Cathedrals: Pilgrimage, Heritage, Adjacency, and the Politics of Replication in Northern Europe,” Religion 49, no. 1 (2019): 16. 11. Coleman and Bowman, “Religion in Cathedrals,” 1, 5. 12. Coleman and Bowman, “Religion in Cathedrals,” 11, 13. 13. Coleman and Bowman, “Religion in Cathedrals,” 14. 14. Coleman and Eade, “Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion,” 11. 15. See, for example, Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral.” 16. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 102. 17. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 102. 18. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 100. 19. Between 2016 and 2018, visitor numbers for the cathedral have increased from somewhat under 180,000 to close to 200,000 annually, a number that is far greater than that of pilgrims. See Nidaros Domkirkes Restaureringsarbeider, Annual Report 2018. The number of pilgrims, however, is under 600 per year. 20. Bakken, “Erkebiskop Øystein,” 23–​24. 21. Bakken, “Erkebiskop Øystein,” 27. 22. See Øystein Morten, Jakten På Olav Den Hellige (Oslo: Spartacus, 2013). Catholics and Orthodox Christians may go in procession with the relic and icons. In April 2020, the Serbian Orthodox Church in Norway reports of a procession with St. Olav’s relics against the coronavirus. http://​www.spc.rs/​eng/​fourday_​procession_​ relics_​st_​olaf_​against_​coronavirus_​held_​norway 23. Anne Lidén, Olav Den Hellige i Medeltida Bildkonst: Legendmotiv Och Attribut (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 1999), 220–​244. 24. In 1519, a seal generated by Nidaros bishop Walkendorf distributes the image of St. Olav standing on a “dragon” (the Norse word is orm, which can mean both serpent and dragon) with his own human face. Perhaps it was popularized along with the distribution of the seal imprint. The “dragon” is portrayed as alive and alert, often looking in the same direction as the saint himself. Øystein Ekroll, ed., Helgenkongen St. Olav i Kunsten (Trondheim: Museumsforlaget, 2016), 163. Around the town of Egersund a legend about the St. Olavsormen was told, an etiology of a geological feature that looks like a serpent/​dragon. This story was likely associated with a Norse deity before Christian times, but it was later associated with St. Olav, who is said to have battled the Midtgard serpent which tried to come on land from the fjord to an inland lake. St. Olav stopped it and defeated it, resulting in the geological feature as known until today. There is an external sculpture of a basilisk on top of Nidaros Cathedral near the Olav’s well inside the cathedral dating to the 1200s. Øystein Ekroll, “Helgenkongen St. Olav i Kunsten,” 152. 25. DeLattre, “Ritual,” 287. 26. Occasionally, ritualized practices linking pilgrimage and climate change could be observed. Thus, on April 11, 2015, the year of the Paris climate meetings, the eleven bishops of the Church of Norway picked up their pilgrim staffs and walked through the streets of Trondheim in a brief urban pilgrimage that highlighted the church’s refusal to remain quiet on the issue. Earlier that spring, the then minister

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27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

Notes

of culture had asked church leaders to keep quiet on matters of “political nature,” a rhetoric that has been standard issue when government officials would prefer church officials to be silent on matters of political significance. The bishops, however, remained unfazed and in a show of unity that they cannot easily display on issues such as homosexuality, they walked together for the climate. See Aagot Opheim, “Biskopene Marsjerer for Rettferdig Klimaavtale,” Adresseavisen, November 2004, https://​www.adressa.no/​nyheter/​trondheim/​article10843731.ece. In 2018, a Norwegian ecumenical alliance renewed calls for the need to address the issue of climate with real seriousness and were invited to continue the pilgrimage to demand action in addressing climate change. Den norske kirke, “Vi Må Fortsette Vandringen,” https://​kirken.no/​nb-​NO/​om-​kirken/​aktuelt/​kronikk-​klima/​ Ronald Grimes suggests that a theory of ritual should “provide orientation by (a) specifying how the word ‘ritual’ will be used: (b) proposing a way to classify the types of ritual; (c) identifying the constitutive elements, phases, and layers of ritual; (d) demonstrating how these work internally as a system or tradition; (e) showing how a ritual functions[.]‌” Ronald L. Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies, 175. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 180. The following description reflects the official worship service bulletin from 2018. https://​historictrondheim.com/​st-​clements-​church/​ A Festschrift contains a section with Wagle’s texts on the topic of pilgrimage and St. Olav as well as Nidaros Cathedral. Brox, Ingen Lever for Seg Selv, 154–​188. Mikaelsson, “Nidaros Cathedral,” 108. Knut Andresen has documented the changing uses of the Passio Olavi and of hymnody at Olsok over the years. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 134–​140. Guro Vistad mentions that the Olavsvaka included a reading of Snorre’s Passio Olavi since 1985. Vistad, “Den Norske Pilegrimsrenessansen,” 43. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 141. They perform a cappella Gregorian chants from Nordic and European contexts and were founded in 1992. Mørkved, Med Øks Og Lilje, 233. The popular hymn Å leve det er å elska (To Live Is to Love) is a favorite among Norwegian pilgrims. Many think it is the best expression of a theology of pilgrimage and of St. Olav’s life, and it follows largely Bishop Finn Wagle’s interpretive tradition. Its ability to combine images of struggle, resistance against injustice, and love may be the most convincing expression of this theology. This hymn is also often used in wedding services and at memorial services for the terror acts of July 22 that emphasize a response of love to the terrorist’s aim to strike fear at the heart of people. Aware that his reading could be seen as triumphalist, Wagle argues for its historicity, in Olav bringing together different strands of Christianity and streams of thought toward an ethic of love. Brox, Ingen Lever for Seg Selv, 158. Webb, Medieval European Pilgrimage, 18. See the dynamic Driver describes about liturgy having the ability to both repeat and restrict as well as to innovate and liberate. Driver, Liberating Rites. These elements of the way in which sermons relate St. Olav to the present congregation are generally similar. Helga Byfuglien’s sermon at the 2016 service suggested that through Olav is how the gospel came to the North that connects Christians in

Notes

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

211

Norway to community across the world, which is symbolized by Olav’s travels. He stands for peace and freedom to think against all that threatens, and he symbolizes servant leadership through moving toward early care for the sick and taking responsibility for those that are different from us. (From the author’s notes.) Personal conversation with Ekroll, August 2018. https://​www.facebook.com/​events/​144844126389754/​ Email communication between Karen Haugom Olsen and the author from August 4, 2018. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 14. DiGiovine, “Pilgrimage: Communitas and Contestation, Unity and Difference—​ An Introduction.” Her i striden og i trengsla gjekk Sankt Olav kveikt av lengsta etter ljos og evig liv. Kvite Krist hans hug har vunne, og den kjærleiks sol har runne som or landet mørkret driv. Landet han med lov vil byggja, rett for heile folket tryggja, kristenrett for alle mann. Gudlaust folk imot han strider, men han heller døden lider enn sin Gud han svika han.

4 7. Røthe, “Helt, Konge Og Helgen,” 12, 79, 115, 341. 48. Jirouskova, Der Heilige Wikingerkönig, 456, fn 456. 49. For example, in the case of St. Boniface who chopped down the Oak of Thor and promoted the rule of the Christian king Charlemagne. See, for example, Marion Grau, “Bonifatius, Christus und die Axt Am Baum: Ein Beitrag Zur Soteriologie in Postkolonialer Perspektive,” in Postkoloniale Theologien II, ed. Andreas Nehring and Simon Wiesgickl (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2018), 242–​255 or Marion Grau, “Political Hagiographies: Sainthood, Ethnocentrism, and the Fallacies of Identity,” Louvain Studies 42 (2019): 265–​287. 50. Another common image associated with St. Olav is that of the wheat grain that has to die in the earth to bring fruit, casting Olav as the seed and his death in battle as necessary so that the seed of Christian faith and law could rise from the ground. While this image refers elsewhere in Christian hymnody to Christ’s resurrection, here it is more a way of saying the life of St. Olav could not become holy without his death. This motif from John 12:24–​26 is common in sermons on St. Olav’s day interpreting one of the readings of the Feast Day. See, for example, Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 52.

212

Notes

51. Two pilgrims arriving in Trondheim from Moravia noted the pilgrimage psalms via a book by Eugene Peterson they had read. They were Moravians in the double sense of the word, both from Moravia and belonging to a Brethren Church of Moravians. Being from the Czech Republic, they remarked that they were not theologians but rather lay Moravians who in the post-​Christian context of their home country had to have a functioning apologetics for their faith. They referred to Peterson’s work on the psalms as part of their guide on the concept of pilgrimage (Personal conversation, Nidaros pilgrim hostel, July 17, 2017). 52. Popular Norwegian music features pilgrimage-​related themes, religious or not, in songs such as Ola Bremnes’s Har du fyr popularized by the band Hekla Stalstrenga or his sister Kari Bremnes’s E du nord, both providing a poetic metaphorical reading of classic Northern Norwegian experiences, that of needing a lighthouse to shine the way home, and just missing that last ferry across the fjord so that all plans for a new beginning in a dark winter have to be postponed. Marine metaphors are prominent in Norwegian poetry and musical culture, and marine journeys share many features of pilgrimages. 53. Vegge refers to Roald Kristiansen’s and Tore Johnsen’s articles about Sámi history in the same volume as important contributions to this thematic. Vegge, “Utøvende Spiritualitet Og Pilegrimspraksis,” 376. 54. Bergmann, Religion, Space, and the Environment, 223. 55. Bergmann, Religion, Space, and the Environment, 224. 56. Sámi handicraft (duodji) functions in a mode that is different from European-​style art/​handicraft. Thus, it can function as an expression of the active life of a person, in a way that puts verbal communication side by side with the “silent practical knowledge and the ritual action that applies a physical and spiritual significance to the artifact,” in ways that facilitate both continuity and revitalization. Bergmann, Religion, Space, and the Environment, 254. 57. https:// ​ w ww.nidarosdomen.no/​ k alender/​ o pplev- ​ o ddmund- ​ k ristiansens​glassmalerier?d=2017-​02-​26 58. The altarpiece was created by the Swedish south Sámi Folke Fjällström and is entitled “Sami Altar.” https://​www.nidarosdomen.no/​musikik-​arkitektur-​historie/​det-​ samiske-​alteret and https://​www.royalcourt.no/​nyhet.html?tid=140155&sek=27262 59. Tor Singsaas, bishop of Nidaros at the time, commented in 2016 at a national pilgrimage conference in Sarpsborg that the Sámi do not see Nidaros as a sacred place. He noted the fact that the cathedral would receive a Sámi altar in 2017 at the one-​hundred-​year anniversary of the Sámi council would mean that Sami receive their own publicly visible place in the sanctuary, while only the initiated could access and interpret the upstairs chapel with church windows in traditional Sámi colors made by a Sámi artist. 60. https://​ w ww.nrk.no/ ​ t rondelag/ ​ biskopen- ​ i - ​ n idaros- ​ b egeistret- ​ over- ​ s amisk-​ alter-​1.13338933 and https://​www.nrk.no/​sapmi/​vil-​ha-​samisk-​alter-​til​markering-​1.8402981 61. Former bishop Finn Wagle mentions briefly that the routes from the north (Nordleden) begin at the former mission church for Sámi at Gloshaugen in

Notes

62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

213

Namdalen, but there is little information found on this. Brox, Ingen Lever for Seg Selv, 316. Sámi speak about belonging to the land, rather than the land to them, in a mode similar to that of many indigenous peoples. Daniel Morley Johnson, “Reflections on Historical and Contemporary Indigenist Approaches to Environmental Ethics in a Comparative Context,” Wicazo Sa Review 22, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 26. Daniel Morley Johnson, “Reflections on Historical and Contemporary Indigenist Approaches to Environmental Ethics in a Comparative Context,” 28. This did at times include warning children that the oversize ancestor of a small animal they might mistreat would come back to take revenge on them for torture or killing without need. There are approximately 340 Olav churches throughout the Northern countries and elsewhere, such as the United Kingdom and the Baltic. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 13. The cathedral fire in 1531, the Reformation, and in 1536 the cessation of Norway’s independence on the saint’s day which put the country under Danish rule marked an end to medieval celebrations of Olsok. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 14–​15. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 17. For a history of the St. Olav’s Feast Days, see Mørkved, Med Øks Og Lilje, 11. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 105. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 89. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 90. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 93. In later years, these city walks have included pub crawls with historic contexts, such as “Vi drikker på vigslet grunn—​Pub til pubvandring på forsvunne hellige steder” (Drinking on sanctified ground—​Pubcrawl connecting forgotten sacred sites). Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 112. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 121. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 169, 170, 171. Andresen, Olsok i Nidaros Domkirke, 173. McIntosh, “Pilgrimages and Peace-​Building on the Global Stage,” 3. Brox, Ingen Lever for Seg Selv, 51. Alvestad notes that there was a great awareness at the beginning of the twentieth century of the complicated dual legacy of political unification and religious conversion. While bishop Eivind Berggrav—​who led the resistance to the Nazi occupation of Norway—​saw Olav as a missionary, Vidkun Quisling—​the eponymic traitor of the country and leader of the homegrown Nazi regime—​portrayed Olav as unifier of the nation. The dual legacy is also represented in works of art that made administering the heritage of Olav a loaded matter. Alvestad also reports that during the years of Nazi occupation, Stiklestad became the place where Norwegian Nazis met on the saint’s day, especially in 1934, seeing the place and the person as a gathering place of the nation, monopolizing the image of St. Olav at Stiklestad. Karl Alvestad, “Den Nasjonale Olav,” in Helgenkongen St. Olav i Kunsten (Trondheim: Museumsforlaget, 2014), 206, 211.

Notes

214

8 0. 81. 82. 83.

84. 85. 86. 87.

88.

Mari Brenna Vollan, “Protest Mot Olavsfest,” Klassekampen, July 31, 2013, 24–​25. Vollan, “Protest Mot Olavsfest.” Lidén, Olav Den Hellige i Medeltida Bildkonst, 214–​215, 53, 330. See, for example, a 2013 political campaign that sought to discuss the issue of whatever Norwegian values might be. https://​www.vg.no/​nyheter/​meninger/​i/​wa7Xo/​ kebab-​og-​sirkus-​til-​folket but also the more recent confrontation between a islamophobic group with immigrant youth in Bergen. https://​www.nrk.no/​vestland/​ kasta-​stokkar-​og-​braut-​sperringar-​etter-​sian-​demonstrasjon-​i-​bergen-​1.15131707 https://​tv.nrk.no/​serie/​olavsfestdagene-​2016/​2017/​DMTL21290117/​avspiller Røthe, “Helt, Konge Og Helgen,” 339, 341. Women have a strong presence in the Church of Norway. As of 2017, Nidaros diocese has a female bishop, a female dean of the cathedral, and several female priests. Mark Dukes’s painting at St. Gregory’s Episcopal, San Francisco, features many familiar and less familiar of various cultures, genders, and even religions, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Rumi dancing in the round. Dukes has also created icons of St. John Coltrane (of Love Supreme) and Our Lady of Ferguson. https://​www. saintgregorys.org/​the-​dancing-​saints.html# https:// ​ w ww.adressa.no/ ​ k ultur/ ​ 2 017/ ​ 0 5/ ​ 1 0/ ​ Hvilken-​ r eligion-​ e r-​ d et-​ b est-​ %C3%A5-​v%C3%A6re-​annerledes-​i-​14703225.ece

chapter 7 1. Coleman and Eade, “Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion,” 2. 2. Driver, Liberating Rites, 44. 3. Driver, Liberating Rites, 51, 79. 4. Vegge, “Utøvende Spiritualitet Og Pilegrimspraksis,” 394. My translation. 5. Winkelman and Dubisch, “Introduction,” xiv. 6. Vegge, “Utøvende Spiritualitet Og Pilegrimspraksis,” 392. 7. Tomlin, “Protestants and Pilgrimage,” 121. 8. Webb, Medieval European Pilgrimage, 158–​159. 9. Forest, Road to Emmaus, 173. 10. Forest, Road to Emmaus, 170–​173. 11. Forest, Road to Emmaus, 174. 12. Forest, Road to Emmaus, 176, 181, 182. 13. Brox, Ingen Lever for Seg Selv, 254. My translation. 14. Jim Forest here reflects on Dorothy Day’s notion of pilgrimage. Forest, Road to Emmaus, xiii. 15. Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy, 80. 16. These twelve lessons are discussed in depth in their study. Elisabeth Lidell and Anette Foged Schultz, Dem Glauben Beine Machen: Pilgerwanderungen mit Kindern und Jugendlichen (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2010), 5. 17. Lindström, Pilegrimsliv: En Håndbok for Vandrere, 41. 18. In the Swedish, “langsomhet, frihet, enkelhet, bekymringsløshet, stillhet, deling, og åndelighet.” Lindström, Pilegrimsliv: En Håndbok for Vandrere, 9–​10. A similar list is also suggested by Eivind Luthen, a key figure in the Norwegian pilgrim

Notes

215

movement. Luthen’s list is silence, slowness, loneliness, effort, simplicity, good gifts, and medieval wisdom. Aasmundtveit, Alle Mine Veier, 71. 19. In the Swedish, “oppbrudd, vandring, måltider, rasteplass, bønn, møter, og mål.” Lindström, Pilegrimsliv: En Håndbok for Vandrere, 9–​10. 20. Aasmundtveit, Alle Mine Veier, 63. My translation. 21. Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy, 86. 22. Cavanaugh, Migrations of the Holy, 82. 23. Bakken, Pilegrim, 50. 24. Lindström, Pilegrimsliv: En Håndbok for Vandrere, 8. 25. Elizabeth A. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints (Ottawa: Novalis, 1998), 92. 26. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 8. 27. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 27–​29. 28. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 87. 29. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 71. 30. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 92, 108. 31. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 167. 32. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 2. 33. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 240, 242. 34. For example, Mikaelsson, “Locality and Myth.” 35. See Høisæther, Sankt Hallvard: Helgen Og Symbol. 36. See Johann Baptist Metz, “In Memory of the Other’s Suffering: Theological Reflections on the Future of Faith and Culture,” in The Critical Spirit: Theology at the Crossroads of Faith and Culture, ed. Andrew Pierce and Geraldine Smyth (Blackrock: The Columba Press, 2004), 179–​188. 37. This idea captures Augustine’s notion of a just king, rex iustus. Bakken, “Erkebiskop Øystein,” 16. 38. Vegge, “Utøvende Spiritualitet Og Pilegrimspraksis,” 385. 39. Roger Jensen notes that the content of the so-​called heritage of St. Olav (Olavsarven) remains rather opaque in contemporary government documents promoting Norwegian pilgrimage, but he conjectures that it refers to the Christian heritage that became a part of Norwegian history and culture through the Christianization of Norway. Jensen suggests that the Church of Norway does not always have a clear sense of what this heritage of St. Olav is or is supposed to be, especially since the Christianization of Norway is a larger process in which Olav Haraldsson was merely one actor. Jensen, Pilegrim, 39. 40. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead, 228. 41. This is called a skikkethetskrav in Norwegian. The term is also used to assess the suitability of candidates to the priesthood and deaconhood in today’s Church of Norway. Bakken, “Erkebiskop Øystein,” 16. 42. Bakken, “Erkebiskop Øystein,” 19. 43. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 164–​165. 44. Johnson, Friends of God and Prophets, 13–​14. 45. Olav Tveito, “Erkebiskop Wulfstan Av York Og De Eldste Norske Kristenrettene,” Norsk Teologisk Tidsskrift 108, no. 3 (2007): 170–​186.

216

Notes

46. Tore Skeie’s 2018 biography of Olav Haraldsson highlights these features and draws a detailed portrait of the man with great attention to the social, economic, and religiopolitical context in which he operated. Skeie, Hvitekrist, 123. See also Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (New York: Vintage, 2015), 110–​131. 47. Over time, they seem to have assimilated into the population around them both in the east and the west, and moved on to silk found at the Oseberg ship site and other Viking graves. Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, 124. 48. In summer 2019, respected author Ottar Grepstad lambasted the representation of Vikings in contemporary Norwegian museums for covering over and hiding through rose-​painted, flowery language the very real aspects of human trafficking and displacement of populations that mark Viking life in three Norwegian museums’ Viking-​themed exhibitions. He observes that the museums all describe Vikings as skilled and effective fishermen, traders, and fearsome warriors, but they pass over in silence the cruelty and enslavement that allowed them to accrue the riches and fine metals on display. Ottar Grepstad, “Musea Rosemålar Vikingane,” Aftenposten, June 16, 2019. See also Yngvar Ustvedt, Verre Enn Sitt Rykte: Vikingene Slik Ofrene Så Dem (Oslo: Cappelen Damm, 2004). 49. Lidén, Olav Den Hellige i Medeltida Bildkonst, 220–​367. 50. St. Olav’s iconography involves a sword, but the symbolism often was not connected to a violent act but the sword of judgment of merciful redistribution, which is the quality posthumously associated with Olav and hence the ideal king of Norway. Ekroll argues that the axe (symbolizing the instrument of his death) shifts his image from other royal saints whose attribute is generally the sword. This axe does not appear in the iconography until around 1250. Øystein Ekroll, “Helgenkongen St. Olav i Kunsten,” 148, 151. 51. In addition, researchers mention that iconography representing St. Olav does not appear until at least 130 years after his death, and then it was likely part of the work to establish, formalize, and structure the seat of the bishop of Nidaros and the church’s promotion of an ordered and structured government, and began with people who through direct relations with Olav Haraldsson had a claim to the throne and thus used the saintly heritage as a way to substantiate their own claim. Lidén, Olav Den Hellige i Medeltida Bildkonst, 220. For the early political aspects of martyrdom and the claim for the rex perpetuum, see also Røthe, “Helt, Konge Og Helgen,” 247. Margrethe Stang suggests that this breakthrough is due to the establishment of the bishop’s seat in Nidaros in 1152/​1153 as Christian faith and administration become more formally integrated in society. Margrethe Stang, “Helgenkongen Og Alterbildet,” in Helgenkongen St. Olav i Kunsten (Trondheim: Museumsforlaget, 2014), 28–​29. 52. Lidén, Olav Den Hellige i Medeltida Bildkonst, 183–​184. 53. Lidén, Olav Den Hellige i Medeltida Bildkonst, 371, 367. 54. Since Olav Haraldsson was still controversial, this may have been one of the ways to counter his critics by acceding to the discrepancy in narrative accounts about him. Lidén, Olav Den Hellige i Medeltida Bildkonst, 238. 55. Alvestad, “Den Nasjonale Olav,” 201.

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217

56. http://​www.olavsfestdagene.no/​2017/​07/​les-​erik-​hillestads-​fantastiske-​tale-​idol/​ 57. The church Bolz-​Weber founded is called House of All Sinners and Saints (http://​ houseforall.org/​). Based on her experiences, she wrote a book entitled Accidental Saints, where she develops a Lutheran theology of sainthood, of simul iustus et peccator, justified and sinner at the same time. Nadia Bolz-​Weber, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People (New York: Convergent Books, 2015). 58. Personal conversation with Einar Vegge, July 20, 2017. 59. Tomlin, “Protestants and Pilgrimage,” 121. 60. Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies, 256–​262. 61. Bergmann, Religion, Space, and the Environment, 282. 62. Hessen, Landskap i Endring, 134. 63. Inge, Theology of Place, 60. 64. Gorringe as cited in Inge, Theology of Place, 67. 65. Inge, Theology of Place, 78, 68. 66. Inge, Theology of Place, x. 67. Inge refers to Heidegger pointing out the connection between building and dwelling and the importance of not separating the two. Inge, Theology of Place, 19. 68. Inge, Theology of Place, 92. 69. Inge, Theology of Place, 97. 70. Inge, Theology of Place, 68, 73. 71. Inge, Theology of Place, 80. 72. Tore Johnsen, Jordens Barn, Solens Barn, Vindens Barn: Kristen Tro i et Samisk Landskap (Oslo: Verbum, 2007), 115. 73. Melanie Harris, Ecowomanism: African-​American Women and Earth-​Honoring Faiths (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2017), 31.

epilogue 1. Vegge, “Utøvende Spiritualitet Og Pilegrimspraksis,” 372. 2. Whitney A. Bauman, Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 128. 3. Bakken, Pilegrim. 4. Bakken, Pilegrim, 38–​41, 33. 5. McFague is not directly named on page 33, but she appears on page 76 and in the bibliography. See Bakken, Pilegrim, 33, 83. 6. Bakken, Pilegrim, 37. 7. Albera and Eade, “International Perspectives,” 4. 8. Driver, Liberating Rites, 172.

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INDEX

For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Aanonsen, Bernt, 206–​7n.2 Aasmundtveit, Anne Kristin, 77–​78, 88, 104–​5, 146–​47, 163, 197n.21 Adam of Bremen, 51–​52, 68 Against Vigilantius (St. Jerome), 55 Å leve det er å elska (hymn), 134–​35, 210n.37 Alle Mine Veier (Aasmundtveit), 146–​47 Alvestad, Karl, 213n.79 Åmås, Knut Olav, 77–​78 Ammerman, Nancy T., 5–​6, 184n.11 ancestor veneration, and veneration of saints, 36–​37 Andew (saint), association with Scotland, 37 Andresen, Knut, 80–​81 Anglicans, retention of Catholic practices, 184n.20 Areopagos, 62 Asgard (realm of the gods), in early belief system of region, 30–​31 Augustine (saint), on pilgrimage, 54–​ 55, 179 Bakken, Arne, 71, 128, 165–​66, 179–​80, 194–​95n.92 Balog, Kari Leine, 192n.43 Bartlett, Robert, 50, 194n.82 Behn, Ari, 77

Bergen, as medieval pilgrimage site, 39 Berggrav, Eivind, 213n.79 Bergmann, Sigurd, 175–​76 binary of religion and spirituality, inaccuracy of, 5–​6, 184n.11 Bjørgvin bishoppric, 900th anniversary celebration, 192n.42 blessings and masses for pilgrims, pilgrims’ interest in, 130–​31 Blix, Elias, 143–​44, 206–​7n.2 bodies of pilgrims, 103–​8 communication with landscape, 103–​ 4, 115–​16 as interpretive instruments, 104–​5 lessons from soul, 106–​7 and sacred geography, 179–​80 somatic experiences, 115–​17 See also ecumenical group pilgrimage, physical pain Bolz-​Weber, Nadia, 157, 167–​68, 174, 217n.57 Boniface (saint), 33–​34, 201n.82 books about pilgrimage, as draw for pilgrims, 99 Borge Church, 114–​15 Bowman, Marion, 8 Breivik, Anders Behring, 2 Butler, Judith, 104 Byfuglien, Helga, 210–​11n.40

230

Camino de Santiago de Compostela and blurred line between tourism and pilgrimage, 86–​87 as ecumenical and open minded, 11–​12 efforts to reconstruct, 69 and gender roles, 90 groups founded to support travel to, 71–​72 hospitality fatigue of hosts on, 85 increasing interest in, 1–​2 loose friendships formed in, 89 and modern pilgrims’ concerns about St. James legends, 38 motives of pilgrims, 21 number of domestic vs. foreign pilgrims, 204n.8 as prototype for pilgrimage routes, 8 resurgence in twentieth century, 7 sense of community developed by, 6 well-​developed support for pilgrims, 197n.21 Canguilhem, Georges, 109 Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), 96 Cathedral of Hope (Fredrikstad), 119–​ 20, 179–​80 cathedrals as adaptable spaces, 124 and exposure to vicarious religion, 124 and open sacramentality, 176–​77 post-​Reformation comeback of, 124 Catholics, claims to St. Olav heritage, 45–​46 Cavanaugh, William T., 162–​63, 164–​65 Chemin, Eduardo, 83 Christ Church, Trondheim, as first version of Nidaros Cathedral, 122 Christianity Norwegian, white Eurocentrism of, 167–​68 as religion of salvation through places, 176–​77 values of, as expressed in Norway, 155 churches and blurred line between tourism and pilgrimage, 85–​86

Index

as places of pilgrimage, 26 transnational framework of, and challenging of nationalistic religion, 164–​65 churches, coastal local pride in, 113–​14 model ships displayed in, 206–​7n.2 the sea in hymnody and artwork of, 206–​7n.2 visits of coastal pilgrimage route to, 113–​14 Church of Norway and bishop’s seat at Trondheim, controversy over, 127–​28 and Catholicization of Norway, concerns about, 127–​28 and climate change, refusal to remain silent on, 209–​10n.26 concerns about veneration of Saint Olav, 146 and Creation and Sustainability coalition, 118–​19 ecumenical group pilgrimage sponsored by, 62 focus on St. Olav, and revival of sacred spaces, 125 framing of Olav as global, interreligious figure, 38, 71, 133, 151, 164–​65, 198n.35 logo, critics of, 153–​54 support for pilgrimage network, 70, 75, 83 women in, 214n.86 Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem) architectural influence on Nidaros Cathedral, 190n.2 destruction of, 32–​33, 189n.35 site of, as former pagan temple, 36 Church of the Nativity (Jerusalem), image of St. Olav in, 37 circumambulation definition of, 15, 185n.37 as research method, 15, 59 climate activism at Cathedral of Hope (Fredrikstad), 179–​80

Index

as goal of pilgrimage, 179–​80 and pilgrimage in Norway, 175–​76 climate change and changing land, 31–​32 Church of Norway refusal to remain silent on, 209–​10n.26 increasing focus on, 175–​76 Norway’s oil and gas wealth and, 19 Norwegians’ talk vs. actions on, 32 rituals about, 209–​10n.26 and sense of place, 176–​77 Climate Pilgrim 2015 (Klimapilegrim 2015), 118–​19, 208n.11 revival of in 2017, 119–​20 coastal pilgrimage route, 113–​17 boats used in, 113–​14, 115 Bodø to Trondheim route, 113–​14, 115 combining of walking, boat, and bus travel, 115 Egersund to Trondheim route, 115 and faith embodied in ancient churches, 114–​15 gendered roles in, 207n.3 inclusion of Selja in, 168–​69 layers of history encountered in, 117 narratives on St. Olav on, 117 official recognition of, 115 and Olsok, arrival at Trondheim for, 120 reopening of, 113–​14, 206n.1 series of churches visited on, 113–​15 somatic experiences, 113–​14 Coelho, Paulo, 69, 99 Comaroff, Jean and John, 47–​48 communitas among pilgrims, 58–​59, 89 vs. contestation, 186n.46 as difference between tourism and pilgrimage, 89 in ecumenical group pilgrimage, 65, 66 as essence of pilgrimage, 179 existential, 77–​78 healing effect of, 105, 108 inclusion of local people along route in, 66–​67

231

physical pain from walking and, 106–​ 7, 179 and priesthood of all believers, 164 signage as form of, 97–​98 Compostela, pilgrimages to, 70 Constantinople, medieval pilgrimage to, 37 Counterreformation, and pilgrimage, 68–​69 COVID-​19 pandemic, effect on pilgrimages, 2, 82 Creation and Sustainability coalition, 118–​19 cruise ships, local people’s hostility toward visitors from, 66–​67 Dahler, Morten, 72–​73 Dass, Peter, 143–​44, 206–​7n.2 DeLattre, Roland, 17–​18 Denali National Park (Alaska), author’s hiking experience in, 97–​98 Denmark, pilgrimage centers in, 78 DiGiovine, Michael, 87 Directorate for Cultural Heritage, Norway (Riksantikvaren), 78–​80 DNT. See Norwegian Trekking Association documentation of pilgrimage experience, on social media, 101–​2 Dovre Mountains, fragility of landscape in, 14 Driver, Tom, 17–​18, 181 Dubisch, Jill, 5–​6, 15, 108–​9 Dukes, Mark, 157, 167–​68, 214n.87 Eade, John, 6, 14 earth ethics of pilgrimage, 117–​18 Eckhart, Meister, 68–​69 ecological sustainability, as issue for pilgrimage in Norway, 14 economic impact of pilgrimage efforts to reduce, 208n.9 increasing importance of, 79

Index

232

ecumenical group pilgrimage to Nidaros Cathedral, 62–​67, 152 author’s participation in, 62 and boundary between pilgrimage and hiking or tourism, 65 churches along route, 63–​64 and communitas, 65, 66–​67 information provided to pilgrims on, 63–​64 language issues in, 66 limited multireligious experiences in, 65–​66 pilgrims’ distance to organized religion, 63–​64 pilgrims’ limited interest in St. Olav, 63 pilgrims’ response to liturgy at Nidaros Cathedral, 63–​64 pilgrims’ inner journey narratives, 63–​64 ecumenical group pilgrimage, physical pain, 64–​65, 95 anger and humiliation, 109–​10 communitas with other pilgrims, 106–​ 7, 179 as diagnostic experience, 111–​12 losing credibility, 64 as initiation rite, 65 pilgrims’ supportive response to, 64–​65 as spiritual transformation, 106–​7 Ekroll, Øystein, 129, 139, 216n.50 emotional experiences of pilgrims connection (with environment, history, self, others), 109–​10 exposure of vulnerability and fragility, 111 liminal state of uncontrolled emotion, 109–​10 as refugee-​like, 112 restoration of emotional balance, 111 surfacing of relationship problems, 109–​10 wide range of, 110, 111 Engler, Hannah, 29, 100–​1 environmental destruction in Norway, 178 environmental effects of pilgrimage, 117–​18

Erkebispegarden (archbishop’s courtyard) at Nidaros Cathedral, and St. Olav’s vigil, 132–​33 Erlendsson, Øystein, 134 ethnonationalism, St. Olav’s construction in opposition to, 38 European Council, designation of pilgrimage routes as “cultural routes,” 7–​8 European Green Pilgrimage Network, 208n.9 European Union, Norway’s relationship with, 11, 12–​13 Fedele, Anne, 96, 105 festivals, Norwegian subculture of (festivalnorge), 61 films about pilgrimage, as draw for pilgrims, 99 flora, sacredness in past, 27 Forest, Jim, 162, 202n.97 Frey, Nancy, 5–​6, 21, 38, 85, 86–​87 Gamle Aker Church, 58–​59 Geirstadalv, Olav, 144 gender, in pilgrimage studies, 90 gender and sexuality, expression and discussion in pilgrimage networks, 11–​12, 185n.29 German Protestant Church, pilgrimages sponsored by, 195n.114 Giske, Trond, 75–​76, 79–​80, 200n.68 God, as not confined to particular space, 32–​33 Golden Legend on Mary Magdalene, 37 Gorringe, Timothy, 176–​77 Gosford Cross, 41 government of Norway conflation of religious and economic features of pilgrimage, 79 encouragement of car and train versions of pilgrimage, 70–​71 focus on Nidaros as center of pilgrimage, 79–​80, 200n.68

Index

support for pilgrimage network, 70–​71, 75–​76, 78–​80, 83 Green Pilgrimage Network, 208n.9 Gregory of Nyssa, 55–​56 Grepstad, Ottar, 216n.48 Grimes, Ronald, 62, 210n.27 Grimkjell (bishop), work to canonize Olav, 48–​49 Gudbrandsdalen route decision to center pilgrimage on, 79–​80 guidebooks on, 99–​101 initial focus on, 10 lack of sustainable maintenance plan, 75 marking of, 75 as one of several routes, 78 pilgrimage centers along, 80 range of scientific and cultural signs along, 73–​74 and St. Olav’s vigil, 133 use by majority of pilgrims, 81 guidebooks, 99–​101 changes in pilgrimage routes and, 99–​ 100, 101 downloadable guides, 99–​100, 101 importance to positive pilgrimage experience, 99–​101 routes without, 101 Gunnes, Gyrid, 153–​54 hagiographic accounts of Christian saints political nature of, 144 on sacredness of nature, 33–​34 hagiography of St. Olav clergy’s reinterpretation for modern audience, 133–​34, 136, 210–​11n.40 problems with, 135–​36 Hallvard (saint) association with Oslo, 39 increasing interest in, 168–​69 medieval Norwegian view of, 51 Haraldsson, Olav. See Olav (saint) Haraway, Donna, 34–​35 hate speech, need to challenge, 3 healing, difficulty of defining, 109

233

healing through pilgrimage as biopsychosociospiritual, 108–​9 emotional healing as motive of pilgrims, 22–​23, 90, 93–​94 healing effects of relationships with other pilgrims, 105, 108 healing experienced by pilgrims, 162 healing of world, as goal, 179–​80 healing power of pilgrimage to Nidaros Cathedral, 108 health benefits of pilgrimage, 94 narrowed focus of consciousness in pilgrimage and, 109 as product of process, 108–​9 and self-​transformation through popular empowerment, 108–​9 Heaney, Seamus, 27 Hebrew Bible, land/​space as central image in, 26–​27 Hessen, Dag, 30, 175–​76 Hillestad, Erik, 167–​68, 174 Hivju, Kristofer, 156 hosts of pilgrims, 83–​85 challenges faced by, 84 and hospitality fatigue, 84–​85 pilgrims’ abuses of hospitality, 83–​84 and pilgrims vs. tourists, indistinct line between, 83–​85, 88 religious services offered by some, 201–​2n.88 roles of, 83–​84 human nature, as interspecies relationship, 34–​35 human rights discourse, association of Olav with, 171 Hund, Tore, 48–​49 hymns as blend of history, heritage, and faith, 143–​44 at coastal churches, 206–​7n.2 as comfort to tired walking pilgrims, 143–​44 and interpretation of Olav’s life, 144–​46 for mass on Olsok, 144, 145–​46 pilgrims’ interest in, 143–​44

Index

234

hymns (cont.) pilgrim-​themed, 146–​47 Protestants’ strong tradition of, 143–​44 role in ritualizing pilgrim tradition, 146–​47 as St. Olav’s vigil (Olavsvaka), 134–​35, 137–​38, 140–​41 theological confusion in, 144–​46 traditional Norwegian, focus on the sea, 143–​44, 206–​7n.2 iconography of St. Olav, 172–​74 with creature near his feet, 173 political significance of, 216n.51 standing on human figure with Olav’s face, 129–​30, 170–​71 standing on underligger (“underlyer”), 129–​30, 172–​73, 209n.24 sword and axe in, 216n.50 identity Catholic Church and, 50–​51 Christian, as translocal, 40–​41 Christian conversion of Norway and, 40–​41, 48 churches and, 92–​93 connection to landscape, 30 European, creation and change in, 11–​ 12, 13 globalization of, 164–​65 individual and community, pilgrims’ construction of, 8–​9, 13–​14, 17–​ 18, 22, 23 loss of, in West, 31–​32 and pain experienced by pilgrims, influence of, 104–​5 pilgrim networks and, 28–​29 religious, ethnic, and national identities, pilgrimage’s effect on, 11–​12, 28–​29, 73, 110–​11, 165–​66 ritual and, 159–​60 sacred sites and, 3–​4, 7, 26–​27, 152 saints and, 36–​37, 50–​51 travel encounters prompting reimagining of, 87, 203n.102

identity, Norwegian association with outdoors, 30 contested elements, issues of, 2, 3–5, 13, 32 Image and Pilgrimage (Turner and Turner), 86–​87 immigrants intolerance toward, need to challenge, 3 participation in pilgrimage, 91 See also refugees indigenous peoples appeal of Hebrew Bible to, 188n.3 land/​space as sacred to, 26–​28 See also Sami Inge, John J., 176–​77 Innovation Norway, 69 international understanding, promotion through pilgrimage, 4 interreligious pilgrimage, nature of, as issue, 65–​66 Jacob at Bethel, 26, 181 James (saint), 37, 38 Jansen, Willy, 11–​12 Jensen, Roger, 215n.39 Jerome (saint), 55 Jerusalem images of, in Nidaros Cathedral (Trondheim), 32–​33, 53 medieval pilgrimage to, 32–​33, 36 pilgrimage to, Muslim conquest and, 37 Scandinavians’ pilgrimages to, 39 as sight of pilgrimage for several religions, 36 Johnson, Elizabeth, 167–​68 Jørgensen, Nanna, 94, 108–​9 Jotuns, in early belief system of region, 30–​31 Kallen, Knut, 118–​19 kenosis, 163 Kerkeling, Hape, 99 Kinn, as medieval pilgrimage site, 39 kirkerommet of, 61

Index

Korsbrekka, cross erected by St. Olaf at, 33–​34 Kristiansen, Oddmund, 148–​49 kroppstro (body faith), pilgrimage experience and, 104–​5 Kystpilegrimsleia coastal route, guidebooks for, 101 Lagerkvist, Pär, 116 landscape activation of memories by, 160 communication with bodies of pilgrims, 103–​4 connection of identity to, 30 and insights gained by pilgrims, 161 and landskapslykke (landscape happiness) in pilgrimage, 175–​76 mapping of miraculous events of St. Olav’s life onto, 121–​22 remapping as Christian, after conversion, 121 rituals’ marking of sacred nodes in, 122 and sacred places, 175–​76 spiritual experiences derived from, 164 See also ritual geography of pilgrimage in Norway; sacred geography/​ sacred spaces land/​spaces human relationships with, 34–​35 of Norway, as transformed by human agency, 30, 31–​32 range of significances inherent in, 34–​35 walking through, as way of connecting to history, place, and people, 27–​28 land/​spaces, sacredness of as invisible to modern people, 27, 31–​32 in many cultures, 26–​28 Lär mig att älska (Helland), 146–​47 Latour, Bruno, 29–​30 Legat, Allice, 27 Lerdahl, Beate Iren, 139–​40 Letter to Christian Nobility (Luther), 57

235

Lian Resort, and St. Olav’s vigil, 132 Lidell, Elisabeth, 163 liminality of pilgrim experience, 59, 93–​ 94, 109–​10, 163 Lindström, Hans-​Erik, 89, 163, 165–​66, 199n.61 liturgies complex emotions responses evoked by, 130–​31 definition of, 130 role in establishing sites and routes, 130–​31 liturgies at Nidaros Cathedral conflicts over, 146 narrative coherence, lack of, 136 regular changes in, 135–​36 theological unity, lack of, 146 Ljoset over landet dagna (hymn), 144–​45, 211n.46 local stakeholders in pilgrimage, 83–​85 See also hosts of pilgrims Lochtefeld, John, 15, 185–​86n.41, 187n.62 Loki, in early belief system of region, 30–​31 Luthen, Eivind, 70, 71–​72, 76, 99–​100 Luther, Martin Dukes’ artwork and, 157 on humans as simultaneously sinners and saints, 157 on pilgrimage, 56–​57 on pilgrimage and parish life, 26, 175 Marshall, George, 32 Märtha Louise, 77 Mary (mother of Jesus), medieval Norwegian view of, 51 Maryan pilgrimages as ethnocentric and patriarchal, 11–​ 12, 153–​54 focus on miracles and atonement, 21 Mary Magdalene, Golden Legend on, 37 McFague, Sallie, 179–​80 medieval pilgrimage, focus on Jerusalem, 32–​33

236

medieval pilgrimages in Norway to coastal monasteries, 49 evolution into lower-​class phenomenon, 39 focus on local sites, 39 four main sites of, 39 mix of land and sea transport used in, 113–​14 routes for, 39 to site of St. Olav’s tomb, 49 medieval pilgrimages in Western Europe, 36–​37 focus on local pilgrimage sites, 36–​37 and saints’ graves located beyond saints’ historical range, 37 trade routes and, 42 Metz, Johann Baptist, 169 Midtgard (realm of people), in early belief system of region, 30–​32 Mikaelsson, Lisbeth, 76 minority populations, participation in pilgrimage, 91 monasteries, Reformation and, 68–​69 multiculturalism, as basis of friendship between peoples, 165–​66 Muslims, intolerance toward, need to challenge, 3 National Pilgrimage Center (NPS) as department under NDR, 76 functions of, 79, 199n.64 headquarters in Trondheim, 79–​ 80, 208n.5 and statistics on pilgrims, 80–​81 Nazi occupation of Norway, and St. Olav’s legacy, 153, 173–​74, 213n.79 NDR. See Nidaros Domkirkes Restaureringsarbeider Nelson, Janet, 193n.55 Nidaros Cathedral (Trondheim) architectural style of, 126–​27 as both sacred space and common ground, 124 as burial place of King Olav, 2, 19–​20

Index

as center of pilgrimage network, critics of, 76 construction of, 53 cruise ships’ busing of passengers to, 122–​23 as destination for pilgrimage, 2, 7–​ 8, 19–​20 early pilgrimages to, 69–​70, 71 entrance fee for, 125–​26 fire in (1531), 54 first view from approaching ships, 123 first view of, by walking pilgrims, 123 as focal point of pilgrimage network in Norway, 123 goals of pilgrims at, 123–​24 guided tours and free-​ranging guides, 126 healing power of pilgrimage to, 108 imagery of Jerusalem and Holy Land in, 32–​33, 53 images tying St. Olav to Christ and Jerusalem, 32–​33 interior, described, 125–​30 as medieval pilgrimage site, 39 modern tourist center at, 125–​26 mysterious aura of, 129–​30 Norwegian visitors as less interested than European tourists in, 126 number of visitors per year, 209n.19 Olavsfest events at, 154–​55 as Olsok site, 59, 123, 124, 125 and other regions of Norway, cool relations with, 127–​28 pilgrimage reflected in architecture of, 53 pilgrimages to, early guidebooks, 70 pilgrim priest position added at, 71 as presumed location of St. Olav’s body, 128 Prinsesse Märtha Louise’s wedding in, 77 as quiet and dark, 125–​26 and reshaping of St. Olav to support egalitarian and communal values, 167 and revival of pilgrimage, 75

Index

role in nation-​building, 124 and Sami, formal recognition of, 147, 148–​50, 212n.59 sermons, themes of, 162 square in front of, typical activities in, 123, 124 staff, important role in pilgrimage experience, 125 as symbol of national unity, 127–​28 tensions in historical significance of, 127 tourists’ outnumbering of pilgrims at, 122–​23 variety of programs, 125 visitors to, as mostly in tourist mode, 123–​24 See also liturgies at Nidaros Cathedral Nidaros Cathedral, octagon in, 53, 128, 190n.2 as assumed site of St. Olav’s remains, 128, 129 iconographic significance of, 128 sleepers near, during St. Olav’s vigil, 142 Nidaros Cathedral, pilgrimage to author’s experience of, 58–​59 guidebooks for, 60 increasing traffic as goal for, 60 infrastructure along route, 60 low number of pilgrims, 60 route as space in itself, 61 shorter car and train versions, government’s encouragement of, 60 walking version, time required for, 60 See also ecumenical group pilgrimage to Nidaros Cathedral Nidaros Cathedral, west front of completion date of, 126–​27 iconostasis of, 124, 127, 208n.9 popularity with tourists, 127 theme of iconostasis on, 129–​30 Nidaros Domkirkes Restaureringsarbeider (NDR), 76, 151–​52 Nidaros pilgrimage center (Nidaros Pilegrimsgard, NPG), 80, 200n.69 Nidaros Pilgrim Center (NPG), 208n.5

237

Nordkapp, and Climate Pilgrim 2015, 118–​19 Norgaard, Kari, 32 Norse culture deities, in early belief system, 30–​31 as patriarchal, 46 See also Viking culture northern Norway, adding pilgrimage routes in, 10 Norway commitment to international cooperation, 11 as constitutional monarchy, 77 early inhabitants of, on three realms of world, 30–​31 first diocese in, 191n.33 founding of, 12–​13 increased polarization in, 3 Olav Tryggvason’s role in, 46–​47 uniting of, kings responsible for, 46–​47 and UN Paris climate agreement, 187n.61 See also government of Norway Norway, Christianization of, 18–​19, 39–​41 absorption of local pre-​Christian traditions, 41 and adoption of Christian saints, 50 and assimilation of Viking culture, 51, 193nn.73–​74 and church as artificial kin group, 50–​51 and connection to larger Christian world, 40–​41, 46 and local saints, development of, 50–​51 long period of contact with Christian lands, 39–​40, 41, 47–​48, 68 as nation-​building tool, 46–​47, 48–​49, 68, 190n.19 and pilgrimage as tool for national unity, 68 and remapping landscape as Christian, 121 role of political leaders in, 39–​40 St. Olaf ’s role in, 46–​47 St. Sunniva and, 43–​44, 51 See also Scandinavia: Christianization of

238

Norway, oil and gas industry in climate change and, 19 and influx of migrants, 19 large contribution to climate change, 32 social impact of wealth from, 12–​13 Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren), 75 Norwegian kings, as keepers of St. Olaf ’s legacy of justice and peace, 170 Norwegian Labor Party (AP), and terror attack of July 22, 2011, 3 Norwegians frequent air travel by, 187n.61 migrations to United States, 19 religious faith, as informal and non-​ institutional, 5–​6 See also identity, Norwegian Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT) mission of, 73 pilgrimage routes on maps of, 73–​ 74, 92–​93 signs and maps by, usefulness to pilgrims, 98–​99 NPG. See Nidaros pilgrimage center NPS. See National Pilgrimage Center ocean care for, unity of religious and nonreligious people in, 120 plastics, Cathedral of Hope and, 120 traditional Norwegian hymns’ focus on, 143–​44, 206–​7n.2 Olavi, Passio, 169–​70 Olav (saint) (Olav Haraldsson) ability to serve as role model as issue, 151, 153–​54, 167–​68 arm bone of, in St. Olav Catholic Church in Oslo, 129 association with Nidaros, 39 canonization of, 48–​49 Catholic efforts to claim, 127–​28 and Christianity as part of nation-​ building project, 48–​49 Christianization of Norway, 18–​19 Christian supersessionism and, 145

Index

churches and chapels dedicated to, 19–​20 churches built by, 133–​34 Church’s concerns about sliding into veneration as saint, 146 Church’s focus on, and revival of sacred spaces and pilgrimage, 125 Church’s packaging of, 129–​30 coastal pilgrimage route narratives about, 117, 207n.5, 207n.7 conversion to Christianity, 46–​47 critical engagement with, and pilgrimage as kenosis, 165 critical hagiography, development of, 174 as dangerous memory, 169 death of, 48–​49, 122 death, designation as martyrdom, 51–​52 death, site of, as pilgrimage destination, 68 as flawed person who transcended his limits, 170–​71, 173 focus of pilgrimage on, and exclusion of other saints, 79–​80 as image of inner struggle in everyone, 167–​69 image of wheat grain associated with, 145–​46, 211n.50 images of, in Church of the Nativity (Jerusalem), 37 legends about, blending with Norse legends, 33–​34, 43, 51–​52, 121, 209n.24 legends about, persistence of, 33–​34 mapping of miraculous events of life onto landscape of Norway, 121–​22 medieval conceptions of, 9–​10 modern intercultural and interreligious presentation of, 9–​10 multiple pilgrimage sites related to, 68 other regions of Norway and, 127–​28 purely historical treatments of, 174 relics, Orthodox parade using, 209n.22 role in pilgrimage network, tensions in, 166

Index

as saint of the people, 33–​34 shrine, past locations of, 74–​75 spread of cult of, 52, 54 as symbol of national independence, 125 as symbol of peaceful, egalitarian king, 53–​54 theological appropriation of, 71 travel to Selja, 44 and uniting of Norway, 46–​47 wells associated with, 33–​34, 63, 196n.9 Olav, body of move to several churches, 54, 122 move to Trondheim, 122 moving of, by anti-​Reformation forces, 150–​51 Nidaros Cathedral as assumed site of, 54, 128, 129 Olav, celebration of and concerns about Catholicization of Norway, 127–​28, 129–​30 and marginalization of Sami, 147, 149 political and religious implications of, 153 Olav, heritage of (Olavsarven) framing as global, interreligious figure, 38, 71, 133, 151, 164–​65, 198n.35 reshaping to support egalitarian and communal values, 167–​69 rule of justice and peace as, 170–​72, 215n.39 Trondheim Catholics’ efforts to claim, 142–​43 Wagle’s reshaping of, 134, 136, 173–​74, 210n.37 Olav, life of, 19–​20 honest reckoning of, in counterimperial reading, 169–​72 as problematic for many, 38, 71, 129–​30, 145–​46, 153–​54, 156, 169–​70, 173–​74, 216n.46 as reminder of dark side in everyone, 174 treatment in hymns, 144–​46 various readings of, 169–​70 Olav, sainthood of Archbishop Øystein’s role in, 52–​54

239

importance to Christianization of Norway, 46–​47 miracles, 49, 52, 53, 54, 133 as part of nation-​building project in Norway, 49–​50 political motivations for, 52–​53, 194n.84 Olavsbrev (pilgrim’s passport), 62, 80–​81, 196n.8, 200n.74, 200–​1n.75 Olavsfest, 20, 150–​52 addressing injustice and social inequality as focus of, 152, 153–​ 54, 155 author’s participation in, 67 Catholic and high church elements in, 151–​52 celebration of arriving refugees (2016), 155 celebration of diversity in, 156–​57 changes over time in, 151–​52 as diverse, multicultural, and multireligious, 151 engagement with problematic life of Olav, 153–​54, 155, 156 events at Nidaros Cathedral during, 154–​55 events included in, 150 growth of, 150, 152, 154 interrogation of saint concept at, 167–​ 68, 174 invitations to bishops of other diocese to participate in, 127–​28 management and funding issues of 1990s, 152 media coverage of, 154 message of, reshaping to fit globalized and multicultural world, 151 Olavsfestdagene as prior name of, 183n.5 Olsok as beginning of, 151 as originally a church music festival, 151 origin of, 151 programs and themes of, 153–​54, 157–​58 and reshaping of St. Olav to egalitarian and communal values, 167–​68 topics addressed in, 4 variety of people participating in, 151

Index

240

Olavskilden, 196n.9 Olavsvaka. See St. Olav’s vigil Olsen, Karen Haugom, 140 Olsok (St. Olaf ’s feast day), 20 author as volunteer at, 59, 61 as beginning of Olavsfest, 151 celebration at Nidaros Cathedral, 59 children’s activities, 139 coastal pilgrimage route and, 120 date of, 134–​35 early celebration of, 49 ending of celebration during Reformation, 150–​51, 213n.66 first celebration of, 125 growth of interest in, 152 history of, 150–​51 mass on, 144, 145–​46 Nidaros Cathedral as site of, 123, 124, 125 pilgrims’ celebration of, 59 pilgrims’ timing of pilgrimage to attend, 82 revival in 1980, 151 ritualizations around, 157–​58 rituals in, 128–​29 St. Olav as both present and absent in, 129–​30 St. Olav’s viability as role model as issue in, 151, 153–​54 spread of, 54 terror attack of July 22, 2011 and, 4 Orsi, Robert, 5 Orthodox Church, claims to St. Olav heritage, 45–​46 Oslo airport, advertisements for pilgrimage to Trondheim, 60 author’s move to, 67 as medieval pilgrimage site, 39 pilgrim center in, 58–​59, 108, 119 route of pilgrimage from, as disputed, 75 Østang, Øystein, 79n.63, 139 Øystein (archbishop of Nidaros) design of octagon in Nidaros Cathedral, 128

role in Olav’s sainthood, 52–​54, 194–​95n.92 as unfamiliar to pilgrims, 136 Paris climate agreement, Norway and, 187n.61 Passio et miracula beati Olavi, 53–​54 controversy surrounding, 135–​36 reading of, at St. Olav’s vigil, 134–​ 36, 137–​38 readings from, at walking service prior to St. Olav’s vigil, 133 on St. Olav, 169–​70 peace-​builder’s toolkit, pilgrimage as part of, 152 Peetz, Monica, 99 Peterson, Eugene, 212n.51 petroleum, and plastics, 120 See also Norway, oil and gas industry in Pettersen, Margunn, 101, 206n.1 Pilegrim i Nord boat pilgrimage, 96–​97, 117 Pilegrimsfelleskapet St. Jakob, 70, 71–​72 Pilegrimsleden website, pilgrims’ use of, 102 pilgrimage as ancient practice in many religions, 36 as both spiritual and material, 4–​5 Christian critiques of, 54–​56, 68–​69 as complex chains of memory, 166 and connection between people, church, and cosmos, 179–​80 Counterreformation and, 68–​69 and dying toward oneself, 162 effect on religious, ethnic, and national identities, 28–​29 encounters mirroring self in, 87 euphoria following, 107–​8 four main types of, 186n.43 and geopolitical issues, 12 healing, truth, and reconciliation as goal of, 181 increasing interest in, 1–​2 as kenotic movement, 162–​63, 165 as kinetic ritual, 29, 159–​60

Index

and landskapslykke (landscape happiness), 175–​76 as layered ritual complex, 16–​17 and liminal transition, 163 local, as more affordable and safer for women and youth, 90, 203n.5 Luther on, 56–​57 narration of, political and theological consequences of, 3–​4 new insights gained from, 162–​63 and openness to unexpected encounters and events, 162 as political engagement, 164–​66 promotion of international understanding by, 4 Protestant, as under-​studied, 7–​8 Protestant reconstructions of, and risk of exploitation, 161 relative wealth required for, 90–​ 91, 203n.5 scholars’ focus on Catholic or Orthodox forms, 6 seven classical concepts of (Lindström), 163 as shape-​shifting activity, 181 as social ritual, 101–​2 source of author’s interest in, 1–​2 tension between physical and spiritual aspects of, 54–​55 and “the zone,” time required to reach, 94–​95, 105–​6 as way of being, 162–​63 See also healing through pilgrimage pilgrimage in Europe as initially limited to wealthy, 39 majority of pilgrims as women, 90 and reinforcement of international European ties, 11–​12 resurgence in twentieth century, 7 pilgrimage in Norway and climate activism, 175–​76 and communitas vs. contestation, 186n.46 destruction of sites after Reformation, 68–​69

241

as discouraged after Reformation, 7–​8, 20, 39 diversity issues in, 91 as ecumenical, 6 emphasis on the local, 175 and existential communitas, 77–​78 global just society as goal of, 175 to grave of St. Olav, origin of, 49 guidebooks on, 58, 60 high cost of, 200n.70 ignoring of Olav’s dark past in, 171 integration of other forms of spirituality as goal of, 177 lesser-​known routes, 69 marginalization of Sami and, 147, 149 as opening for reentry to Christian practices, 175 and paucity of Protestant theologies of pilgrimage, 56 Prinsesse Märtha Louise and fiancée’s participation in, 77 as Protestant form of pilgrimage, 57 questions animating analysis of, 23 resurgence in twentieth century, 5, 7–​9 safety for female pilgrims, 90 secularization of, as issue, 202n.96 sense of community developed by, 6 small scale of, 14 tensions and ambiguities in, 166–​67 types of pilgrims encountered, 59 See also Nidaros Cathedral, pilgrimage to pilgrimage network in Norway beginning shortly after St. Olaf ’s death, 20 Church of Norway support for, 75, 83 economic viability, failure to achieve, 76 government support for, 70–​71, 75–​76, 78–​80, 83 groups founded to support, 70, 71–​73 human body as part of sacred geography of, 179–​80 national network, efforts toward, 75–​76 new paths, approval procedure for, 78–​79

242

pilgrimage network in Norway (cont.) number of paths, increase in, 78–​79, 199n.62 ongoing engagement with difficult and dangerous pasts, 166–​67 range of scientific and cultural signs along, 73–​74 response to terror attack of July 22, 2011, 4 secularized reconstruction of Norway’s Christian traditions in, 9–​10 space in, as embedded in narratives of past and present, 29 pilgrimage network in Norway, effort to reconstruct, 69–​71 blend of purposes in, 71 Church of Norway and, 70 creation of single pilgrimage system, 69 DNT as partner in, 73–​74 first pilgrims, 69–​70 focus on Olav and Nidaros, 69 and meaning of pilgrimage, as issue, 73–​74 and pilgrim fellowships, 72 and reconstruction of sainthood, nationhood, and sacred geography in, 9–​10 types of entities included in, 6–​7 volunteers and, 71–​73 pilgrimage networks as cacophony of rituals and meanings, 181 constituent elements of, 29–​30 definition of, 6–​7, 28–​29 efforts to reconstruct, 69 in Europe, resurgence in twentieth century, 11 fluid boundaries between secular and sacred in, 34 and identity, 28–​29 as ritual geography, 17–​18 as ritual networks, 30 sacred spaces generated by, 28–​29 and seamless fabric of nature-​ culture, 29–​30

Index

spaces linked by, 34 as trans-​species systems, 30 pilgrimage organizations in Norway, 71–​73 pilgrimage priests in pilgrimage centers, 78, 80 support for pilgrims, 83 pilgrimage routes new, integration into existing networks, 120 in Northern Europe, as lesser known, 7 predictability of, as part of experience, 98–​99 See also signs along pilgrimage route pilgrimage routes, changes in, 28 guidebooks and, 99–​100, 101 social media updates on, 102–​3 pilgrimage routes in Norway adding of routes to, 10–​11 ecological sustainability as issue in, 14 social media pages on, 102–​3 and importance of good signage, 98–​99 infrastructure development, 7–​8, 14 initial focus on route through Gudbrandsdalen, 10 as lesser known, 4–​5, 7 nine official routes, 14 redevelopment of, 2 pilgrimage sites. See sites of pilgrimage pilgrim center in Oslo, 58–​59, 108, 119 pilgrim centers, 58–​59 accommodations at, 80 blessings and masses for pilgrims, 130–​31 establishment of, 78–​79 financial pressure on, 80, 200n.71 and guidebooks, 101 mission of, 80 in Norway, 80 pilgrimage priests in, 78 staff of, 80 in Sweden, 78 See also Nidaros pilgrimage center (Nidaros Pilegrimsgard, NPG) pilgrims authenticity, debate on, 90

Index

as balanced between extremes, 158 casual bonds formed by, as positive experience, 89 critical engagement with spirituality of, as necessary in Protestant context, 166 insights gained by, sources of, 161 narratives of, as highly intertextual, 77 nomadic polyamory of place in, 179–​80 seven key words for (Lindström), 163 Pilgrims Crossing Borders, 205n.12 pilgrims in Norway ages of, 82 Christianity as largely aesthetic context for, 77 concerns about St. Olaf ’s violent life, 38, 71, 129–​30, 145–​46, 153–​54, 156, 169–​ 70, 173–​74, 216n.46 construction of individual and community identities, 8–​9, 13–​14, 17–​18, 22, 23 construction of own version of pilgrimage, 17 “conversion” experience of emotional opening, 77–​78 Emmaus moments, 96 emotional effect of, 77–​78 foreign, goals and interests of, 91–​92, 101 foreign, measures to avoid high prices in Norway, 91–​92, 200n.70 gender of, 82 and guides, advantages and disadvantages of, 96–​97 healing experienced by, 162 increasing number of, 81 limited background knowledge of, 136–​ 37, 144–​45 limited knowledge of pilgrimage route or purpose, 73–​74 local/​domestic, goals and interests of, 91–​93 long-​distance vs. short-​distance, 81 as mostly wealthy, white, and retired, 60, 196n.2 nationalities of, 82

243

negotiation with complex systems surrounding pilgrimage, 17–​18, 186n.47 pilgrim passport stamps to document progress (Olavsbrev), 62, 80–​81, 196n.8, 200n.74, 200–​1n.75 pilgrims of liminality, 93–​94 public interest in, 60 reluctant first-​timers transformed into serial pilgrims, 58–​59 resistance to pilgrimage-​as-​atonement idea, 21–​22, 107–​8 and St. Olav, limited interest in, 22, 38, 59, 63, 73–​74, 169–​70 single vs. group pilgrimage, advantages and disadvantages of, 95–​99, 110 and spirituality drawn from embodied relationality, 164 statistics on, 80–​81, 82, 90–​91, 92–​ 93, 204n.8 See also bodies of pilgrims, pain experienced by; communitas among pilgrims; ecumenical group pilgrimage to Nidaros Cathedral; emotional experiences of pilgrims pilgrims in Norway, motives of, 21–​23, 93–​ 95, 180–​81, 187–​88n.67 activist’s raising of awareness, 94, 159–​ 60, 204–​5nn.11–​12 beauty of landscape as, 21–​22 as complex, 5–​6, 21, 159–​60 curiosity or sightseeing as, 55–​56, 57 emotional healing as, 22–​23, 90, 93–​94 inner balance as, 77 interaction with other pilgrims as, 91–​92 isolation and quiet as, 91–​92, 204n.8 non-​religious, 130–​31 as perhaps unknown at start of pilgrimage, 160 recovering religious and national roots as, 77–​78 stated motives, as not always accurate, 130–​31 stress reduction as, 21, 61–​62, 93 time to reflect as, 93–​94

244

pilgrims in Norway, support for, 83–​85 overlap with tourism supports, 83–​85 See also hosts of pilgrims; pilgrim centers; support systems for pilgrimage network Pilgrim Stories (Frey), 85 Pilotprosjektet Pilegrimsleden, 70 place as driver of ritual complex, 17 sense of, recovery in pilgrimage, 175–​77 See also sites of pilgrimage political aspects of pilgrimage, 164–​66 popular music, Norwegian, pilgrimage themes in, 212n.52 prosjekt pilegrimsmotivet, 75–​76 Protestants, strong interest in hymnody, 143–​44 Quisling, Vidkun, 213n.79 Raju, Alison, 99–​100 REDO. See Ritual and Democracy (REDO) project Reformation critiques of patron saints, 173–​74 critiques of pilgrimage, 54–​55, 166, 168 discouragement of pilgrimage, 7–​8, 20, 39, 68–​69 ending of Olsok, 150–​51, 213n.66 and monasteries, 68–​69 Norway’s religious setbacks in, 54 preservation of St. Olav’s legacy during, 150–​51 refugees celebration of, at Olavsfest, 155 closing of Norway’s borders to, 155 See also immigrants Refugees Welcome to Norway, 155 relics, paucity of Protestant theology on, 56 research method, 15–​16, 185–​86n.41 circumambulation as, 15, 59 mixed components of, 16

Index

right wing opposition to democratic values, 13–​14 as xenophobic, authoritarian, and misogynist, 3 See also ethnonationalism right wing voices calls for suppression of, 3 troubling increase in, 13–​14 ritual about climate change, 209–​10n.26 addressing of problems through countervailing practices, 17–​18 effect on democratic values, REDO research on, 13–​14 interpretation of reality through, 17–​18 marking of sacred nodes by, 122 Olsok and, 157–​58 source of author’s interest in, 1 theory of, 210n.27 Ritual and Democracy (REDO) project, 2, 13–​14, 58 ritual at Nidaros Cathedral during pilgrim season, 131–​32 four types of, 131 questioning of icons and sainthood, 157 See also Olsok (St. Olaf ’s feast day); St. Olav’s vigil (Olavsvaka); services for pilgrims at Nidaros Cathedral; walking service prior to St. Olav’s vigil ritual complex, pilgrimages as, 16–​17 pilgrimage in Norway and, 17 pilgrimage networks and, 30 pilgrims’ negotiation with, 17–​18, 186n.47 place as driver of, 17 and renegotiation of relationship between self, sacred, and society, 160 as ways of interpreting lives and framing transformations, 159–​60 ritual geography of pilgrimage in Norway and circumambulation of physical and cultural boundaries, 30 and myth of Norwegians’ closeness to nature, 30, 32

Index

Røldal Church, 146–​47 Rollo (Viking chief), 193n.55, 198n.35 Roman Empire collapse of, and pilgrims’ focus on local sites, 36–​37 and Scandinavian exposure to Christianity, 39–​40 roses and Olavsfest, 139 and St. Olav’s vigil, 132–​33, 139 rule of justice and peace as core of Jewish and Christian traditions, 170 as heritage of St. Olav, 170–​72, 215n.39 sacraments, and God’s engagement with world, 176–​77 sacred geography/​sacred spaces and Christianity as religion of salvation through places, 176–​77 Christian views on, 33–​34 churches and Cathedrals as, 148–​ 49, 176–​77 and climate activism, 175–​76 as everywhere and nowhere, 160 human body as part of, 179–​80 and identity, 3–​4, 7, 26–​27, 152 integration of other forms of spirituality as goal of, 177 Jerusalem and, 32–​33 liturgy and, 130–​31 and local lore, 33–​34 as mobile signifiers, 32–​33 Norway’s pilgrimage network and, 7, 8–​10, 28–​30, 52 overwriting of past sites, 36, 41, 51 presence of God in, 26 ritual and, 122 Sami and, 147, 149–​50 and universe as sacramental, 176–​77 See also landscape; land/​spaces; sites of pilgrimage St. Clement’s Church (Trondheim), 74–​ 75, 133–​34

245

St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church (San Francisco), 157, 214n.87 sainthood efforts to expand racial and cultural diversity of concept, 167–​68 efforts to expand to include all people of God, 168 feminist reconstruction of concept, 168 St.Olavleden (St. Olav’s Path), guidebooks for, 99–​101 St. Olav’s Foundation, 151 St. Olav’s vigil (Olavsvaka), 134–​43 choir music at, 139–​41 hymns sung at, 134–​35, 137–​38, 140–​41 many pilgrims’ limited understanding of, 136–​37 morning mass following, 137–​38, 142–​43 and mysterious roses left in Cathedral, 139 opportunities for meditation, silence and prayer in, 139–​40 pilgrims and staff sleeping in chapel, 142 pilgrims’ feelings about, 137–​38 readings and liturgies at, 135–​36, 137–​38 recent changes to, 137–​38 themes of, 134–​35 yoga at, 135–​36, 139–​40, 141 St. Olav Ways actors in development of, 8 eastern route, first day of, in Oslo suburbs, 20–​21 efforts to include more female saints in, 168–​69 European Council designation as cultural route, 8 infrastructure development, 8 layered types of pilgrimages in, 186n.43 marketing of, 69 modern path of, sites of migration along, 20–​21 pilgrimage networks beyond, 6–​7 prioritization of, in Norwegian pilgrimage system, 69 redevelopment of, 6–​7

246

saints as also sinners, 157 as flawed people who transcend their limits, 170 graves or relics, as sites of medieval pilgrimages, 36–​37 hagiographies, varying goals of, 170 as image of inner struggle in everyone, 167 interrogation of concept in pilgrimage network, 167–​68, 174 legends about, blending with pre-​ Christian legends, 33–​34, 43 Luther on, 57 medieval stories about, as troubling for modern pilgrims, 38 patron, as contrary to Norwegian egalitarianism, 173–​74 paucity of Protestant theology on, 56 as politicized figures, 38 source of author’s interest in, 1 stories of, as shaped by others for various motives, 170 and two models of sainthood, 167 Sallnow, Michael, 6, 14 Sami beliefs of, as inconsistent with St. Olav’s pilgrimages, 149–​50 Christian supersessionism and, 145 and environmental destruction in Norway, 178 environmentally sustainable lifestyle of, 149–​50 handicraft of, 212n.56 invisibility in colonial representation, 147, 148 oppression under colonial policies, 147–​ 48, 149–​50 recognition of, in Nidaros Cathedral, 147, 148–​50, 177, 212n.59 religiocultural traditional environment history, recovery of, 177 territory, pilgrimage in, 149, 212–​13n.61 Sami Day, 149 Samson, Judith, 185n.29

Index

Scandinavia Christianization of, 39–​41, 47–​48 sacred sites of pilgrimage in, 39 slaughtered ruler-​saints in, 194n.82 See also Norway, Christianization of Scandinavians coastal, long history of travel, 18–​19 long history of intercourse by sea with neighboring lands, 42 pilgrimages to Holy Land and distant sites, 39 Schengen agreement, 11, 13 Schultz, Anette Foged, 163 secularism in Norway, 4–​5 Selberg, Torunn, 202n.96 Selja Catholic and Russian Orthodox claims to religious heritage of, 45–​46 and Climate Pilgrim 2015, 118–​19 episcopal seat established on, 43 inclusion in coastal pilgrimage route, 168–​69 as medieval pilgrimage site, 39, 42 modern celebration of St. Sunniva’s Day, 45 modern pilgrimages to, 45–​46 monastery founded by Seljumanna on, 43 as national symbol, 44 as numinous location in pre-​Christian times, 44 pilgrimage routes on, 192n.43 Saint Olav’s visit to, 121–​22 as true cradle of Norwegian Christianity for some, 118–​19 Seljumanna, 39, 43, 44–​45 Seljumannamessa pilgrimage, 45, 191n.40, 192n.43 Sense of Place, The (Heaney), 27 Sepp, Tina, 8 services for pilgrims at Nidaros Cathedral, 132 signs along pilgrimage route as form of communitas, 97–​98 importance for positive experience, 97–​99

Index

Singsaas, Tor, 44, 148–​49, 212n.59 sites of pilgrimage appropriate locations for, 152 local, pilgrims’ focus on, after fall of Roman Empire, 36–​37 in Norway, destruction of, in Reformation, 68–​69 places shared among several religions, 36 role of liturgies in establishing, 130–​31 in Scandinavia, 39 See also place Skeie, Tore, 216n.46 social effectiveness of pilgrimage, many avenues for, 110–​11 social media calls for suppression of right wing voices on, 3 presence of pilgrimage routes, 102–3 Solnit, Rebecca, 4–​5 Steinsland, Gro, 51–​52 St. Hallvard’s Pilegrimsfelleskap, 72 Stiklestad, and Norwegian Nazis, 213n.79 Stiklestad, Battle of, 48–​49, 68 Stiklestad route, and St. Olav’s vigil, 133 St. Olav Pilgrim Association, 72 Stoltenberg, Jens, 3 Strausberg, Michael, 87 St. Sunniva Association, 72 Sunniva (saint) association with Bergen, 39, 192n.45 association with Selja and Kinn, 39, 42 elements of life echoing other legends, 43, 51 increasing interest in, 168–​69 life of, 42 local legends about, 43 modern celebration of St. Sunniva’s Day, 45 naming of women’s choir at Nidaros Cathedral after, 134–​35 pilgrimage association of, 192n.43 St. Olav’s association with, 121–​22 spread of reputation, 68 statue of, on Selja, 192n.43

247

as symbol of arrival of Christian faith, 44 theological/​psychological needs met by story of, 43 Sunnivaleden (Kinn to Selja pilgrimage route), 45–​46 Sunnivaleia pilgrimage (Sunniva route), 192n.43 supersessionism, Christian, 145, 211n.50 support systems for pilgrimage network, 78–​80 agencies and individuals involved in, 83 environmental, religious, and economic tasks in, 79 pilgrimage centers established, 78–​79 See also National Pilgrimage Center (NPS); pilgrims in Norway, support for Sverresborg Church, and walking service prior to St. Olav’s vigil, 133 Sweden pilgrimage centers in, 78 theological discussion on pilgrimage in, 199n.61 Swedish Church, disestablishment of, and pilgrimage, 69–​70 Syria, refugee crisis in, 67 Tauler, Johannes, 68–​69 Taylor, Charles, 5 terror attack of July 22, 2011 as attack on core values of Norway, 3–​4 as frame for this research, 2 goals of, 3 legacy of St. Olav and, 153 Norwegians’ response to, 3 and rise of right wing views, 156–​57 as white supremacist attack, 2 theologies of pilgrimage, 161–​64 Biblical story of road to Emmaus and, 162 range of influences on, 161 viable, as goal of Norway’s pilgrimage network, 166–​67 Thomas a Kempis, 68–​69 Tingelstad Church, lectures at 800-​year anniversary of, 34–​35

248

Tlicho Dene, 27–​28 Tomlin, Graham, 55–​56 tourism encounters mirroring self in, 87 in Norway, 20 tourism and pilgrimage, blurred line between, 85–​88, 186n.45, 187n.62, 202nn.96–​97 arguments for lack of difference, 94 communitas of pilgrims and, 89 critiques of, 76 in early Christian pilgrimage, 86, 201n.82 and hosts’ experience, 83–​85, 88 locals’ view of tourists and, 88 overlap of support system and, 83–​85 and pilgrimage routes on DNT maps, 73–​74, 92–​93 short and non-​walking pilgrimages and, 86–​87 trail signage and, 98–​99 trickster Loki, in early belief system of region, 30–​31 Trondenes Church, 117 Trondheim as base of Olav Tryggvason, 46–​47 bishop’s seat at, as controversial, 127–​28 Catholic Church in, and Olav’s legacy, 142–​43 as center for pilgrim practices, 76, 79–​ 80, 208n.5 check-​in point for pilgrims, 208n.5 development as capitol city, 53 early pilgrims to, 68 and effort to reconstruct pilgrimage network in Norway, 69–​70 founding of, 74–​75, 122 location of, 74–​75, 122–​23 millennial anniversary celebration, 75 as modern cruise ship port, 122–​23 Nidaros Cathedral as main attraction in, 122–​23 pilgrims in, layers of history and meaning encountered by, 122 as resting place of St. Olav, 122

Index

Tryggvason, Olav as likely builder of first Christian church, 44 and Christianity as part of nation-​ building project, 48 conversion to Christianity, 46–​47 forced baptism of subjects, 48 founding of Trondheim, 74–​75, 122 Nidaros/​Trondheim as base of, 46–​47 travel to Selja, 44, 192n.45 and uniting of Norway, 46–​47 Turner, Victor and Edith, 29, 36–​37, 68, 77–​78, 86, 186n.43 Tweed, Thomas, 5, 28–​29 Uddu Per Kvistad, 75–​76, 198n.45 Uddu report, 75–​76, 198nn.45–​ 46, 206n.1 United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP, 2015), 118–​19 universe as sacramental, and sacred places, 176–​77 Utgard (realm of chaos powers), in early belief system of region, 30–​31 Våje, Per Ivar, 118–​19 Vegge, Einar, 147, 160, 161 verdiskapning, 75 Verket, Lars, 104–​5 vigil. See St. Olav’s vigil (Olavsvaka) Viking culture difficulty of assimilating into Christian culture, 51, 193nn.73–​74 gift-​based power structure of, 193n.73 See also Norse culture Vikings atrocities, Norwegian deemphasis of, 171–​72, 216n.48 raiding of monasteries, and contact with Christianity, 47–​48 volunteers on pilgrimage network as access to pilgrimage for economically and socially vulnerable, 90–​91 effort to reconstruct network and, 71–​73 ethnic diversity of, 156–​57

Index

as financially necessary, 76 legendary volunteers, 72–​73 work in pilgrimage centers, 80 Wagle, Finn reshaping of St. Olav’s story by, 71, 134, 136, 173–​74, 197–​98n.33, 210n.37 on value of pilgrimage, 162–​63 walking and empathy for refugees, 165–​66 and forced attention to body, 179 as political project, 165–​66 See also bodies of pilgrims, pain experienced by; ecumenical group pilgrimage walking service prior to St. Olav’s vigil, 133–​34 and clergy’s reinterpretation of St. Olav’s hagiography, 133–​34

249

route of, 133–​34 themes and readings, 133 The Way (film), 58–​59, 99 websites on pilgrimage in Norway, pilgrims’ use of, 102 Wergeland, Hakon, 153 Winkelman, Michael, 108–​9 Winroth, Andrew, 48, 49–​50, 190n.19 women in Church of Norway, 214n.86 empowerment through pilgrimage, 90 increasing role in Olavsfest, 156–​57 role in medieval Scandinavia, 42, 46 saints, efforts to increase inclusion of in St. Olav’s Ways, 168–​69 scarcity in Nordic Protestantism, 42 world, healing of, as goal of pilgrimage, 179–​80