Jerusalem in the Late 1800S
Fig. 20.1: Interior, Mosque of Omar, from Volrath Vogt, Det Hellige Land, 1879. Open Access. © 2021 Birger Løvlie, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110639476-021 Birger Løvlie Chapter 20 A City of Murderers? Norwegians in Jerusalem in the Late 1800s Why would Norwegian theologians undertake a troublesome and expensive trip to the Holy Land as early as the second half of the nineteenth century? Volrath Vogt, theologian and high school teacher, went there as early as 1863. At least two other expeditions followed in Vogt’s footsteps, one in 1869–1870, and an- other one in 1886. All journeys resulted in books or extensive reports that tell about long boat trips and fatiguing weeks on horsebacks from Jaffa and Beirut to Jerusalem. The participants of the two last expeditions described themselves as pilgrims, who travelled with Jerusalem as their goal; the place where the most crucial events in Christianity took place. Was the sight of the Holy City worth all efforts? All participants could answer yes to that question, but several of them ex- pressed disappointments. Some ended up naming Jerusalem the City of Murderers, while others put less emphasis on what might seem negative, focusing on God’s promises and plans for the city and the land, and not least with hopes attached to the New Jerusalem. In the second half of the 1800s, there seems to have been a growing interest among Norwegian theologians and laymen in travelling to Palestine; the Holy Land.
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