Numen 67 (2020) 508–536 brill.com/nu How to Be a Pilgrim: Guidebooks on the Norwegian St. Olav Ways and the Heritagization of Religion Dirk Johannsen Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
[email protected] Ane Ohrvik Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
[email protected] Abstract The Norwegian St. Olav Ways are currently the largest Northern European project re- institutionalizing pilgrimage as cultural heritage, providing a new framework for ver- nacular 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 with- in the religious field. The guidebooks invite the pilgrims to take on the role of heirs to a medieval European tradition. Keywords pilgrimage – heritagization of religion – pilgrim guidebooks – immersion – interpretive drift © Dirk Johannsen & Ane Ohrvik, 2020 | doi:10.1163/15685276-12341600 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0Downloaded license. from Brill.com10/04/2021 10:57:22AM via free access How to Be a Pilgrim 509 1 Pilgrimage as an Immersive Heritage Encounter In recent decades, cultural heritage has become a core concept for adminis- tering the past on a global scale (Blake 2000; Meskell 2015).