The Cross shows the way:- Pilgrimages to Trondheim - the Jerusalem of the North

I want to start with a claim: – In the 12th and 13th centuries Trondheim was the Jerusalem of the North, a deliberate attempt to create a centre of gravity for Christianity in Northern Europe, on the lines of Santiago in the West, Rome in the South and Jerusalem in the East, and the way North to St Olav was an important and integral part of the cult of St Olav.

I shall return to this claim later and evaluate if the material I have presented in the meantime supports or refutes it. But first we must look at what a pilgrim is and what they did.

The Swiss–Finnish pilgrim researcher Christian Krøtzl says in a book from 2003:– Nidaros was the absolutely most important pilgrim goal in Scandinavia throughout the whole middle ages, from around 1030 until the reformation 500 years later. Sagas, reports of miracles, diplomas, archaeological and topographical material all combine to tell about this, far more than for any other Scandinavian pilgrimage destination. It was first in the late Middle Ages that Vadstena also became a pilgrimage centre. Most people went on a pilgrimage once in their lives, at least in the later Middle Ages when pilgrimages became a popular movement.

In the Christian context a pilgrim is someone who travels to holy places both to pray for help and to give thanks for help, and to do penance for wrong things he or she has done, as here at the gravestone of Rike–Ragna from Eidfjord, who killed her husband and had to travel to the grave of St James and build a church in her home town. The Latin word "peregrinus" means someone who is a stranger or a foreigner, a traveller, and the pilgrim appears to us as a person with a double identity. We fear the strange and the unknown because it is unfamiliar and beyond our control, while at the same time being attracted by it because it brings with it news and impulses from the world 'out there'. This dual attitude to pilgrims is one we meet frequently during the 500 years there were pilgrimages through our country, both to Nidaros and to other, less well–known holy places around the land. In a while we shall see how this ambivalence towards the pilgrim is demonstrated in the preserved source material.

It was worth travelling a long way to a holy place, because the power was stronger there than by just praying to the saint at home; there was a greater presence of the sacred. Relics were a concrete manifestation of the supernatural.

Pilgrimages are an important part of many religions, and the journey or path itself can be just as important as the actual reaching of the goal. The life of a human–being on earth can be seen as a journey from cradle to grave, and the goal is death and the hope of eternal life in paradise. The journey can be an attempt at coming nearer to and perhaps meeting the divine. Jesus' journey on earth is a clear inspiration and example for the pilgrim, and an extremely important work of Christian literature is John Bunyan's 'The Pilgrim's Progress' from 1678, where the pilgrim is used also in a Protestant context as an image of the journey along the road to Paradise.

Most Norwegians probably express their religious longing through ritual walks in nature in all seasons, whether on foot or on skis. This also finds public expression in nature poetry used in death announcements instead of theological wording which is felt by most people to be far too disturbing or embarrassing.

The pilgrimage is both an external process:– a strenuous journey that purifies the body and cleanses it of rubbish, and an internal process: – the pilgrimage becomes a mental journey into one's self.

Where monks carry out this journey mentally by fasting and prayer inside a monastery, the pilgrim makes a physical, but also a mental journey, to a particular goal and home again.

All established religions have pilgrims and pilgrimages to places that have been counted as especially holy or important:

The Hindus go on pilgrimage to the Ganges and Benares and a number of places from the Himalayas to South India.

The Muslims go on pilgrimage especially to Mecca, but also to pilgrim graves in Sufism.

The Jews travel to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to pray.

The Christians first went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome, and then to the graves of apostles and saints, later also to miracle–performing pictures and statues.

The phenomenon of the Christian pilgrimage began early in the fourth century, when Christians started travelling to Palestine to see for themselves the biblical sites and to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and the apostles, an activity that continues to be just as popular today. Above all it was considered most important to visit Bethlehem and the nativity church and Jerusalem and the three places there connected with Jesus' passion: – the Last Supper, the crucifixion and the tomb. In addition were also places like the garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives, the pool of Siloam and other places mentioned in the Bible.

Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, travelled to Palestine in 326, where in a miraculous way she discovered the cross of Christ. This was the start of pilgrimages. Already around the year 330 Bishop Eusebius wrote a work about the holy places in Palestine which made them known in Western Europe. At the same time the emperor Constantine began an enormous project of digging out Golgatha and Jesus' tomb, which had been concealed by large amounts of earth and building rubble after the destruction of the Jewish town during Emperor Hadrian's reign in the decade of 130. By an apparent miracle he found both of them. Both the cliff of Golgatha and Jesus' tomb were built into an impressive construction with a basilica and a rotunda. The aim was to show these holy places and make them accessible, and in so doing they became the absolutely most important pilgrimage goals for Christians. As early as in 333 we know that a pilgrim from Bordeaux in Western France visited Jerusalem.

In the 7th century Jerusalem was conquered by the Muslims, and after that few pilgrims visited. However the city was re–taken by the Christians in 1099 during a crusade and held for nearly 200 years up to 1291. In these 200 years large numbers of pilgrims visited the city, including many from Norway, both kings and ordinary people.

The most well–known of these are probably Sigurd Jorsalfar and Earl Erling Skakke, but these led large expeditions with at least a couple of hundred participants. These people brought many impressions and impulses back to Europe, not least concerning the Church of Jesus' grave ('Holy Sepulchre') and more precisely a spot in the middle of the church between Golgatha and the grave was right from the early Middle Ages reckoned to be the midpoint of the flat earth in Christian geography, and you can still see it marked as such in the Sepulchre church. The world map of the Middle Ages was drawn from the perspective of Jerusalem, and we were on the periphery, right on the edge of the earth. (See map in part 4)

Constantine the Great's burial church was partly re–built in a smaller format by the crusaders, and this design from the 1100s was often copied in new churches throughout Europe.  It was without doubt a great moment for the pilgrims when they first set eyes on Jerusalem after a long and difficult journey. This place was called 'Gledesbakken' (in Latin Mons Gaudii) and in French and English Montjoie or Mount joy. Here they at last saw Zion, as the city was also called. Zion was actually King David's fortress and stood on a cliff on the outskirts of Jerusalem. According to tradition it was here that the last supper took place and the risen Jesus showed himself to the apostles.

Near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a few hundred metres away, stood a big hospital where pilgrims could get board and lodgings. The hospital was dedicated to John the Baptist, and here began the Order of St John, a military order of monks whose job was to protect pilgrims on the way to and from the holy places. This order became established in a monastery with a hospital in Værne in Østfold as early as the 1100s, especially organized to receive the King's retainers.

After Jerusalem the most important pilgrimage destinations in the early Middle Ages were the graves of the apostles in Europe. Constantine the Great also built great basilicas over the tombs of Peter and Paul in Rome, which was the main seat of Western Christianity. Due North of Rome, where the Scandinavians got their first glimpse of the city, we also find a 'mount of joy', Monte Gaudii, which the Icelandic abbot Nikolas Bergsson refers to as 'Feginsbrekka' in his travel guide from the 1150s (Old Norse for mount of joy).

A few hundred years later the grave of the apostle James (Santiago) was also discovered in Galicia in North West Spain. Outside Santiago we also have a 'mount of joy', here called Monte del Goso. On the European continent these three graves were the most important pilgrim goals during the whole of the Middle Ages.

As Christianity gradually spread outwards in Europe from the 5th and 7th centuries until we can say that the whole of Western Europe was Christian around the year 1100, a number of martyrs and saints were created who had been killed because of their faith. (Cologne Crypt) In addition a number of relics were brought in from the ancient central Christian sites around the Mediterranean. In the 11th and 12th centuries important relics were collected or stolen, like St Nicholas who came to Bari, Italy, the three wise men who came to Cologne and, after the sack of Constantinople in 1204 significant items came to Western Europe, especially things from the Byzantine emperors' collections of Christ relics that went to the French King in Paris, and two bits of which also went to Norway, first to Bergen in 1274 and to Oslo in 1304.

It was quite clearly important for the establishment of the new religion to show that it had roots locally and regionally and was not just an imported system without a home base. We therefore see a conscious effort in most countries and church provinces to bring forward their own candidates for sainthood and to document signs and miracles that had occurred in connection with them.

There was also quite clearly a strong wish among lay people to have something concrete to look at or to pray to, not just a theoretical faith. We know that the old religion was largely a nature religion, with many holy places out in nature, and also an ancestral cult where burial grave mounds were held in veneration. We know little about this, but there are numbers of old deity names in our place names, pointing to a widespread popular cult in daily life.

We also therefore see that there was a conscious effort to replace the old religion and religiosity with a new one, not only in the churches, but also through the popular religiosity and through trying to make the landscape more Christian. This had not just a theological purpose, but was to do with how the whole world was perceived – a cosmological view if we want to use such terms.

No–one doubted that the world was an insecure and dangerous place, filled with evil powers that posed a threat to both people and animals. It was above all in the wild nature and in the darkness that such powers thrived. There were apparitions, water–sprites, ghosts, trolls, pixies and spirits – all names people had given to some of the dangerous and evil powers who lived in the wild nature outside the small secure islands of culture where human beings lived. The holy places like Rome, Jerusalem, Santiago, Nidaros and many others were connected with a slender network of paths through areas with dangerous people and nature. Outside the familiar and local area – the microcosm – was the big wide world – the macrocosm – an unknown and dangerous place, and maps were almost unheard of.

The fight between the good and evil powers is the foundation of popular religiosity, and we see it still exemplified today in books like Harry Potter and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Goodness is weak at the beginning, but can win through with the help of strong will and faith and the refusal to give in to evil and negative powers.

There was therefore a need to protect oneself against evil. In Christianity the symbol of protection against evil is first and foremost the sign of the cross. It is a well known fact of folk religion that crosses were painted over doors to protect people and animals from evil powers. On the purely personal level it was important for Christians to cross themselves to receive protection. But we also find a number of local Olav traditions in the form of sagas and legends that are still in current use. Olav is the only saint who has left traces of himself in the Norwegian landscape. He represents the only positive counter force in a landscape otherwise dominated by the dangerous and the threatening. Unfortunately little systematic work has been done in this field during the last two generations.

1. What is a pilgrim and what did they do?