How to Be a Pilgrim: Guidebooks on the Norwegian St. Olav Ways and the Heritagization of Religion

The Norwegian St. Olav Ways are currently the largest Northern European project re-institutionalizing pilgrimage as cultural heritage, providing a new framework for vernacular religious practices to a wide audience. In this article we approach the current pilgrimage revival in Northern Europe as par...

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Bibliographic Details
Subtitles:Special Issue: Reframing Pilgrimage in Northern Europe
Authors: Johannsen, Dirk (Author) ; Ohrvik, Ane 1973- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill [2020]
In: Numen
Year: 2020, Volume: 67, Issue: 5/6, Pages: 508-536
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Norway / Olaf, II., Norwegen, König 995-1030 / Nidarosdom (Trondheim) / Pilgrimage / Cultural heritage / Spiritual tourism / Guide
IxTheo Classification:AG Religious life; material religion
CD Christianity and Culture
KBE Northern Europe; Scandinavia
Further subjects:B heritagization of religion
B immersion
B Pilgrimage
B interpretive drift
B pilgrim guidebooks
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:The Norwegian St. Olav Ways are currently the largest Northern European project re-institutionalizing pilgrimage as cultural heritage, providing a new framework for vernacular religious practices to a wide audience. In this article we approach the current pilgrimage revival in Northern Europe as part of a trend toward a heritagization of religion that allows new religious self-understandings to emerge. We analyze pilgrim guidebooks to the St. Olav Ways with regard to their narrative scripts, detailing how they can create expectations, inform the pilgrims’ conduct, and direct their attention toward a history that translates into a heritage. Based on a corpus of published pilgrim journals and diaries, we argue that the guidebooks instruct a process of interpretive drift, which influence the pilgrims toward embracing and embodying a new role within the religious field. The guidebooks invite the pilgrims to take on the role of heirs to a medieval European tradition.
ISSN:1568-5276
Contains:Enthalten in: Numen
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15685276-12341600