The empirical basis for this analysis is fieldwork in the landscapes in question (interviews and participant observation) and close reading of promotional websites and other textual material published by pilgrimage agents online and in print. Participatory observation was conducted between 2019 and 2021 during an organized pilgrimage along the Sunniva Route (in 2019), along stretches of the Gudbrandsdal Route (in 2020 and 2021), at the regional pilgrimage centres in Oslo and Trondheim and during events at Selja and Nidaros Cathedral. These events include the annual services for the historical holy days of St Sunniva and her followers, the Seljumen (Seljumannamesse, 8 July) and St Olav (Olsok, 29 July). I also worked as a volunteer at the pilgrimage centre in Selje for three weeks in the summer of 2020. I combine ethnographic fieldwork with document analysis to shed light on how narratives and places are merged in visual and textual utterances in different media (websites, pilgrimage credentials, signpost along the routes).

I apply two categories of pilgrimage agents: accommodators and pilgrims. The main difference, and the practical reason for applying these as analytical categories, is how a person (at a given time) is involved in pilgrimage from either a practice perspective (identifying as a pilgrim, participating in pilgrimage) or from an administrative perspective (as an accommodator, e.g., through organizing pilgrimages and developing, managing and promoting routes) (Lunde 2022). Importantly, there are frequent overlaps between these categories. As recently emphasized by Simon Coleman (2021) and Ian Reader (2024), to understand pilgrimage one ought to include accommodators of pilgrimage and pay attention to the infrastructure that shapes and upholds the phenomenon in various ways, in addition to focusing on the most common theme of pilgrimage studies, namely pilgrims and their motivations. What I refer to as accommodators includes volunteers in pilgrimage confraternities, project managers of pilgrimage projects in Selje municipality and the diocese of Bjørgvin and employees of the St Olav Ways. A total of sixteen interviews with pilgrimage agents were conducted between 2019 and 2021. The interviews focus on how pilgrimage in Norway is developed as administrative projects on different scales (from grassroots initiatives to government-funded projects), including how the phenomenon has been translated from the historical, religious practice to be framed as outdoor recreation and part of the cultural heritage for the regions where the shrines are located (primarily the West Coast area and the region of Trøndelag) as well as of the Church of Norway. Personal motivations and reflections about participating in pilgrimage through practice and as “pilgrim bureaucrats” (Interview Trondheim 16.06.19 no. 1) were also touched upon (see Lunde 2022; 2023). Interviews are referred to by the location and time they took place (e.g. Interview Bergen 20.05.19).

Following Ülo Valk and Daniel Sävborg (2018), place-lore is defined as narratives associated with specific places, traditions that focus on natural and cultural surroundings, and to relations between tangible reality and storyworlds. These relations thus describe what I refer to as geographical and narrative landscapes constituting contemporary pilgrimage landscapes. The core of place-lore is relations between stories, places and people:

Valk and Sävborg (2018:19) draw attention to how legends take place, they are not detached from the environment. They also emphasize how place-lore contains elements from different times that can be added to and how it is in constant formation. The temporal dimension of the concept makes it apt to analyse how contemporary pilgrimage landscapes are storied through references to historical and legendary sources from different times that are revived in the present. This concords with Coleman and Elsner’s (1995) definition of pilgrimage landscapes referred to in the introduction and Marion Bowman’s (2012) notion of restored and restoried landscapes (in her case the landscapes associated with Arthur and Bridget in Glastonbury). I focus on how restorying of place is done in reference to and at geographical places. As the examples will show, although pilgrimage accommodators frame the routes through the stories of saints, these stories are not always pronounced or seemingly in focus during a pilgrimage (cf. Jørgensen et al. 2020). However, they can surface at given points along the journey for individual pilgrims and provide the direction of the physical journeys in both a spatial and metaphorical sense.

The constant formation of place-lore (Valk & Sävborg 2018) implies that storied places are dialogical (cf. Bakhtin 1986). Restorying of place is contextually dependent, in that places are attributed political significance and hold different kinds of meaning (and accessibility) at any given time (cf. Tuan 1977; Massey 2005; Tilley 2006; Selberg 2007; Isnart & Cerecalez 2020). What Doreen Massey (2005) refers to as spatio-temporal processes entail viewing places as open and internally multiple, not intrinsically coherent. Therefore, what she refers to as “the throwntogetherness of place” demands negotiation rather than an assumption of pre-given coherence (Massey 2005:141):

In similar terms, Torunn Selberg (2007) addresses how places are made into something more than the here-and-now through stories about the past, which becomes part of the experience of the place in the present, depending on time and interpreter. In the cases discussed here, this provides flexibility in how to frame pilgrimage as cultural heritage and outdoor recreation as well as religious practice. In the following, I address the historical grounds for the current restoryings of the shrines at Selja and Nidaros and sources for how these saints have been paired historically.

The island of Selja, facing the Stad peninsula, is located along what historically was an important fairway along the Norwegian West Coast. It held the status of a religious centre in large part because of the legend of St Sunniva. The religious centre consisted of the Sunniva Church and cave and the Benedictine monastery dedicated to the English proto-martyr St Alban (Hommedal 1993, 1997, 2018). The shrine is now traceable as a large stone terrace, the ruins of a Romanesque stone church, and a rock shelter with a cave. St Sunniva was probably not a part of the veneration of saints at Selja from the start, and it is likely that her legend was developed in stages, St Sunniva becoming a personification of the more anonymous group of holy persons at Selja (Rekdal 2003; Ommundsen 2010; O’Hara 2009). Still, she has a long history as the patron saint of Bergen (Bergensium patrona) following the translation of her reliquary to that city in 1170. She is also named Patrona Norvegiae, the patron saint of Norway (Bjelland 2000; Ommundsen 2010). The source material about pilgrims to Selja is scarce, but textual and archaeological sources indicate that there most likely were pilgrimages to Selja from the mid-eleventh century (Bjelland 2000; Hommedal 2018). There are also some indications that Kinn was visited by pilgrims, likely in the context of travels to Selja and/or Nidaros. Both the Latin legend and the Norse saga literature mention miracles and signs at Selja and at Kinn (Bjelland 2000:164, 174–176).

The Latin hagiographical account of the legend of Sunniva (transmitted in four fragments) is called Acta Sanctorum in Selio. It was probably written for the translation of St Sunniva around 1170, possibly based on oral traditions from the eleventh century (O’Hara 2009; Ommundsen 2010). According to this narrative, Sunniva was a Christian Irish queen who fled a heathen suitor by setting out in boats without sails or oars with her followers the Seljumen, drifting to Selja. When mainlanders suspected them of stealing sheep they had grazing on the island, they asked their chieftain to kill them. Sunniva and her followers retrieved into a cave and prayed to God for deliverance. This came in the form of the cave collapsing, and they were saved from their persecutors by being martyred. The legend tells that the remains of the Seljumen were discovered by King Olav Tryggvasson and his bishop in 996 along with the body of St Sunniva, lying in the cave as if sleeping. The legend adds that there was a pleasant smell in the cave when the holy people were discovered. St Sunniva was sanctified, and a church was built on the island in her honour with her reliquary on the altar (see Rindal 1997; Ommundsen 2010). The motifs in the legend are known from many other hagiographical legends, particularly the subgenre of Christian martyr-virgins that goes back to the fifth century (Antonsson 2021; O’Hara 2021). A version of the Sunniva legend is also found in the Norse sagas, in The Saga of Olav Trygvasson by Oddr Snorrasjon Munk (c. 1190) and an elaboration of this version in Flateyjarbók, written between 1385 and 1395 (Rindal 1997:268; Tordsson & Torhallsson 2014:417). The hagiographical legend and saga literature thus connect St Sunniva and Selja to King Olav Tryggvasson as well as King Olav Haraldsson, the latter known as St Olav in his saintly afterlife.

The historical king Olav Haraldsson was in power for periods between 1015 and 1028. According to hagiographical legends and saga literature, he died in the battle of Stiklestad in 1030, was canonized in 1031 and translated to the location of what became Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim (historically named Nidaros). St Olav is Norway’s national saint; rex perpetuus Norvegiae (the eternal king of Norway) (Steinsland 2010; Skeie 2018). Nidaros held the status of the ecclesiastical capital of the country due to the sepulchral church of St Olav and as an archdiocese from 1152/53 until 1537. This was an important shrine on the Northern European scale. Churches were also dedicated to St Olav in the other Nordic countries and elsewhere in Europe (Steinsland 2010). There are rich ecclesiastical and folkloristic traditions about St Olav/Olav the Holy (Sankt Olav, Olav den Hellige) that this article will only scratch the surface of. Medieval sources include the twelfth- and thirteenth-century saga literature, Snorri Sturluson’s Saint Olav’s Saga (part of his Heimskringla, c. 1230), being among the most well-known, ecclesiastical and folkloristic legends (with Passio Olavi prominent among these texts) and official documents such as law texts (Bjelland 2000; see also e.g. Bø 1955; Henriksen 1985; Langslet 1995; Skeie 2018; Hodne 2021). What is implied by St Sunniva and St Olav being a saintly pair in historical sources?

Historical depictions of St Sunniva and St Olav as a saintly pair are mainly from (or narratives are placed in) the West Coast, that is, the area that St Sunniva is most strongly associated with. Most of the 27 sculptures and paintings from medieval church art depicting St Sunniva stem from coastal areas. She is a patron of mercantile seafarers, who often could need a protector in the perilous waters around Stad. Combined portraits of St Sunniva and St Olav are found at seven of these (see Kroesen 2021). One of the earliest textual sources to mention the shrine of St Olav is Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum (The History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen) written by the German monk Adam of Bremen around 1070. This text includes a reference that has been interpreted as the first mention of the people holy at Selja: a cavern of the ocean in the north where miracles take place and that Olav (unspecified which one) built a church. Moreover, a reference is made to a similar martyr-virgin legend to that of St Sunniva, namely the story of St Ursula of Cologne and the 11,000 virgins (see Bjelland 2000; Hommedal 2018; Antonsson 2021). Another narrative connecting Selja and Olav Haraldsson is found in Snorri Sturluson’s Saint Olav’s Saga. According to Snorri, Selja (the island of Sæla) was the place where Olav Haraldsson landed when he came back to the country to reclaim power in 1015:

The event symbolically and quite literarily makes Olav take root in the country. This took place around twenty years after King Olav Tryggvasson discovered Sunniva and the Seljumen in the cave at Selja according to legend (in 996). Sæla means luck (Hommedal 2018). The text does not elaborate on why it was deemed lucky to land on this island. Commenting on the significance of this story, Alf Tore Hommedal (2018:63) remarks: “for the historians writing the king’s history in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, it must also have been important to connect the future holy king to Norway’s first Christian sanctuary.” St Sunniva is not mentioned in this story, nor elsewhere in Snorri’s sagas of the Norwegian kings (Rindal 1997). However, St Sunniva and St Olav are mentioned together several times in other saga literature, such as in Sverrir’s Saga and Håkon Håkonsson’s Saga (Bjelland 2000). Ragnhild Bjelland (2000:161) remarks that the utterances in these sagas are located in Bergen, the main area of the Sunniva cult. This exemplifies connections between Selja and Olav Haraldsson as well as between St Sunniva and St Olav in historical sources, visual as well as textual. In the following, I move from the “there” of these stories to the “here” of the contemporary uses of these sources that demonstrate the “throwntogetherness” of place (Massey 2005).

The ecclesiastical and vernacular traditions of the lives, martyrdoms and translations of St Sunniva and St Olav and the veneration that followed in their saintly afterlives in the Catholic period of Norwegian history (c. 1000 to 1537) is the foundation for the current restorying of their shrines and the development of routes leading there. The shrine of a saint localizes the holy through the presence of an invisible person and her or his earthly remains (Brown 2015). However, St Sunniva and St Olav are no longer present at their historical shrines. As in other European countries, the upheavals of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation radically changed the religious landscape theologically – and largely also geographically and materially (Walsham 2011; Anderson 2019). With the Reformation of Denmark-Norway in 1537, the veneration of saints was banned, and in effect pilgrimage as a pious practice was discontinued (at least as part of official religion, Laugerud 2018). The reliquaries of St Sunniva and St Olav were removed from their shrines, and it is not known what happened to them (see e.g. Steinsland 2010; Hodne 2021; Ommundsen, Hommedal & O’Hara 2021).

The time span of a millennium from the storying to the restorying of the landscapes of St Sunniva and St Olav includes the Catholic era, the Reformation and the, so to speak, translations, of religious history and shrines into cultural memories from the late nineteenth century. The shifting interpretations of St Olav and Nidaros Cathedral from (quite literarily) Catholic relics to central national symbols and cultural memories in the context of national romanticism from the late nineteenth century are important to consider for an understanding of the contemporary pilgrimage developments (see e.g. Amundsen 2002; Mikaelsson 2008).

The historical changes in political, religious and cultural contexts between the tenth century and the present-day pilgrimages entail an ambivalence regarding the role of the saints in the Lutheran and secular context of today’s Norway for the development of pilgrimage routes to “saintless” shrines (cf. Selberg 2006:141). It is not mainly the Catholic pilgrimage tradition that is being revived through the pilgrimage projects in question, although Catholic (and Orthodox) pilgrimages are organized to the same locations. Arne Bugge Amundsen (2002) points out how the movement of pilgrimage from historical references to geographical landscapes entail connections between well-known stories and practices that have not been linked in this way since before the Reformation. This requires using historical raw material with both historical and symbolical weight, namely the medieval St Olav tradition and Nidaros Cathedral as the cultural, symbolical and physical core (Amundsen 2002:149, 168). This is also true for Selja and St Sunniva (see Mikaelsson 2005; Selberg 2005, 2006, 2019). With the reliquaries of the saints absent, and the shifting context from a Catholic to Lutheran, and increasingly to a secular and multireligious society, the absent saints and locations of their (former) shrines are transformed into roots for current revivals of pilgrimage through the notions of tradition and heritage as well as religious history. To understand the current reframing of pilgrimage in Norway it is also important to consider the significant degree of inspiration from international pilgrimage developments.

What I address here is not pilgrimage as an all-encompassing phenomenon, but the contemporary pilgrimage phenomenon spearheaded by the Camino de Santiago to the shrine of St James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Pilgrimage routes rooted in historical shrines emphasize walking across large parts of Europe and other parts of the world as networks of marked routes (cf. Margry 2008; Reader 2014; Bowman & Sepp 2019). It is not a given that saints, or religious motivations, are the primary focus of this kind of pilgrimage to (historical or active) shrines. Pilgrimage of this kind is not only “destination-oriented travel” but has developed into a cultural field where “the process of the journey” is an integral part (Sánchez & Hesp 2016:4). Different geographical locations and histories of shrines are likened and draw inspiration from each other but can also be places of contestation, such as between secular and religious discourses (Eade & Sallnow 1991). The development of pilgrimage landscapes accommodated for walking in Norway (and the Nordic countries) is part of what Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch (2013:41) describes as “a global trend but also retains some regional characteristics”. The development of pilgrimage routes and framing of shrines as contemporary pilgrimage destinations are grounded in motivations such as, but not limited to, developing cultural heritage and local economies and practised as religious ritual as well as outdoor recreation (cf. Frey 1998; Österlund-Pötzsch 2013; Reader 2014; Coleman & Eade 2018; Bowman, Johannsen & Ohrvik 2020; Murray 2021).

The Sunniva Route and the St Olav Ways shed light on the extent of what Marion Bowman and Tiina Sepp (2019) call the Caminoization of pilgrimage. Indeed, the St Olav Ways is one of their examples (see also Mikaelsson 2019). The notion of Caminoization is useful to shed light on how the local shrines and place-lore of the Norwegian cases are dialogical and processual (cf. Tilley 2006; Coleman 2024). It concerns the framing and administration of routes rooted in religious history and cultural heritage (religion as resource more than as authority – see Kraft 2007), not only on local or national scales but also established by transnational agents such as UNESCO and the Council of Europe (see e.g. Schrire 2008; Murray 2021). Inspiration from the Camino is visible along the routes, accommodated for long-distance hikes and signposted with branded way-markers. The logos of the Sunniva Route and St Olav Ways addressed in the introduction (see Figure 1) are inspired by the way-markers along the Camino; the scallop associated with St James and a cross. Another example of Caminoization is pilgrimage credentials.

When I attended the annual organized walk along the Sunniva Route in 2019, the pilgrims were provided with a pilgrimage credential (see Figure 2), designed in collaboration between the tourist information in Selje and the Confraternity of St James Norway (based in Oslo). The image on the front page depicts St Olav and St Sunniva with halos and crowns, with their attributes (an axe and orb and a stone respectively). The two saints share the attribute of being royal saints – and are distinct by being female and male, a saintly queen and king. The motif derives from the tabernacle shrine of Granvin Church (see Kroesen 2021).

This type of document is produced for use along pilgrimage routes including the St Olav Ways and the Camino, signifying that this is a pilgrimage rather than another form of hike. It also has the practical function of being stamped along the way to document the journey, a requirement for receiving the diploma La Compostela in Santiago de Compostela, and to receive the Olav Letter upon arrival at Nidaros. The location of the arrival point where the credential will serve as documentation is not specified in the credential provided for the Sunniva Route pilgrims, nor is there a diploma designed for pilgrims arriving at Selja. The credentials were only stamped at the tourist information in Selje. It had no practical function as part of the infrastructure and administration of the pilgrimage like the more explicitly Caminoized credential for the St Olav Ways. Rather, the credential provides a visual expression of and addition to the pilgrimage place-lore of the Sunniva Route through the image of the medieval depictions of the patron saints carried along the way, as well as textual reminders of their stories and places. Both the similarities in and the distinctiveness of the historical significance of the saints for their landscapes are addressed in the passport: “In this passport we have emphasized Selja (the coast/district) and Trondheim (city). The one is symbolized by a female saint, St Sunniva, the other by St Olav. Both places have their own history, but they are also connected.”

In the following, I outline the development of the Sunniva Route and St Olav Ways (see Figure 3) with emphasis on examples of how geographical and narratives features relate to the pilgrimage landscapes of the past as well as other pilgrimage places in the present.

The Sunniva Route (Sunnivaleia) began as a local initiative by agents living close to Selje and Kinn around 2007. At that time pilgrimages to Selja had been organized for several years but not as a marked and accommodated pilgrimage route. An important event for connecting pilgrimage stories and practices (cf. Amundsen 2002) was the anniversary for Selja as “sacred for 1000 years” in 1996 – dated after the year when the Sunniva legend says that she was discovered and canonized (see Rindal 1997). The motivation to connect Kinn and Selja through a pilgrimage route was the legend of St Sunniva (Balog 2015). Other motivations and inspirations included the pilgrimages of one of the initiators in Lier around St Hallvard’s day, 15 May, in the 1990s and along the Camino de Santiago in the early 2000s. These experiences of pilgrimage from a practice perspective informed her idea of establishing a pilgrimage route in her local area from an administrative perspective when she became the vicar of Selje (the mainland community and municipality close to Selja). The vicar detailed how she relates to the legend about and figure of St Sunniva during our interview:

This resonates with the text on the website for the Sunniva Route: the legend about her was important for the Christianization of Norway. Personally, St Sunniva becomes relatable for her in that she committed herself to God, concordant with her view of pilgrimage as a metaphor for her life as a journey where God has set a goal (Interview Bergen 20.05.19).

Other initiators in this project include the vicar of Florø (the mainland community close to Kinn) and a local tourist guide from the same area (Interview Bergen, 20.05.19). In 2013, this group established the Confraternity of St Sunniva. The main activity of the confraternity is to organize group pilgrimages each summer along the Sunniva Route, via stretches on foot and by boat.

The website sunnivaleia.no, quoted in the introduction, is the digital information channel of the confraternity about the Sunniva Route. The page about organized pilgrimage tours explains that a nature guide and a priest (from the Church of Norway, Dnk) accompanies the pilgrims (sunnivaleia.no). This exemplifies what Österlund-Pötzsch (2013) refers to as Nordic pilgrimage as both part of a global trend and having regional characteristics, in this case through framing pilgrimages both as spiritual journeys and as part of outdoor recreation. It is emphasized in the information provided to pilgrims that the devotional aspects of the journey (prayers, psalms, readings from the Bible) are voluntary (Field notes 2019). When I attended the organized pilgrimage along the Sunniva Route in 2019, three volunteers accompanied the pilgrims: a priest from Dnk, a local woman who have walked the Camino and a German pilgrim who has lived in Norway for many years and who is associated with the pilgrim confraternity in Hamburg. Around ten people attend each year, the majority aged 50 and over. Several of the pilgrims attending the Sunniva pilgrimage in 2019 had also walked some of the St Olav Ways, including the Gudbrandsal Route and organized sailings along the Coastal Pilgrimage Route. Through a collaboration between the Confraternity of St Sunniva and the pilgrimage confraternity in Hamburg, many German pilgrims attend the annual walks (Interview Bergen 20.05.19, Field notes June 2019).

It is emphasized on sunnivaleia.no that the coastal landscapes offer pilgrims different experiences than the inland routes. Although not explicitly stated, this is a reference to the St Olav Ways and the pilgrimage routes (only) accommodated for walking (Interview Bergen 20.05.19). This comparison between the geographical landscapes, inland and coastal, and stretches by boat in addition to on foot implies some of the contestations that have been part of the development of contemporary pilgrimage routes. A core source of contestation has been the framing of the St Olav Ways as a national pilgrimage venture funded by governmental ministries in Norway. The project group for the Sunniva Route make the comparison to the St Olav Ways explicit in interviews with local newspapers, emphasizing seafaring pilgrimages as historical and traditional (Fjordenes Tidende 29.10.08). For the occasion named “the first coastal pilgrimage conference” in Selje in 2010 (Myren 2010), a representative of Selja municipality summarizes what appears to be a common sentiment at the time: “We do not instigate a competition between saints or a pilgrimage championship, but it is not for nothing that Sunniva and Olav stand side by side on the western frontal of Nidaros Cathedral” (Myren 2010). A similar notion was expressed during a conference about St Sunniva in Bergen in 2019. One of the speakers emphasized the importance of St Sunniva in the context of contemporary pilgrimage by stating: “We need a saintly balance” – in reference to St Olav as the counterpart (Field notes Bergen 2019).

The St Olav Ways (St Olavsvegene) is the major pilgrimage route project in Norway, in the sense of being the best funded project, the largest geographical network of routes and the most frequented by pilgrims. It was initiated in the 1990s and developed through several projects by a range of agents on local, regional and national levels. Ideas and motivations from pilgrimage agents in the 1990s included, among other things, individual journeys to Santiago de Compostela from the 1970s (Interview Tønsberg 08.05.21), interest in cultural history along the old roads across Dovre Mountain and other historical routes to Nidaros (Interview Oslo 24.08.20) and the opportunity of combining cultural heritage management with furthering and accommodating for outdoor recreation (Hage 1996; DN-note 1998-2; Interview Trondheim 16.06.19). How agents relate and highlight the historical and religious traditions varies. Some emphasize the pilgrimage routes as accommodated paths for outdoor recreation along routes with historical depth (see e.g. Luthen 1992; DN-note 1998-2), while others reinterpret the religious significance of pilgrimages and the figure of St Olav as constitutive elements of pilgrimage renewals (Interview Trondheim 31.07.19; see e.g. Bakken 1997; Jensen 2015; Vegge 2014). The notion of the heritage of St Olav (Olavsarven) is a constitutive element for framing the St Olav Ways. In the national strategy for pilgrimage, it is stated that all the St Olav Ways must be “anchored in the heritage of St Olav” (the Ministry of Church and Culture 2012). This is also addressed in the presentation of the routes online:

What the heritage of St Olav entails and how to relate to this is debated in pilgrimage milieus as well as in other contexts, such as for the annual Olavfest in Trondheim and Spelet om heilage Olav, the historical play about the martyrdom of Olav Haraldsson performed at Stiklestad (the place of this event in 1030). This is not the place to go into these debates. For the context of pilgrimage place-lore, it is sufficient to underline that there is a plethora of ways to restory places through the notion of “the heritage of St Olav” by various agents that stretch beyond the locations of his death and canonization (see e.g. Kjølsvik 2014; Mikaelsson 2019). As formulated by a project manager of the St Olav Ways: “There is some sort of story of Olav around everything” (Interview Trondheim 18.06.19, no. 1). For the framing of the contemporary pilgrimage routes to Nidaros, the heritage of St Olav encompasses place-lore associated with King Olav Haraldsson, his afterlife as St Olav and pilgrims who travelled to Nidaros to venerate him. The Valldal Route (Valldalsleden) and the St Olav Route (St Olavsleden) are based on the journeys of Olav Haraldsson as described in the saga literature. The majority of routes are based on historical paths where pilgrims (might have) journeyed, that is, places to “follow in the footsteps” of historical pilgrims to St Olav’s shrine in Nidaros Cathedral (the routes through Gudbrandsdalen, Østerdalen, Tunsberg, Borg, Nordleden from Grong via Stiklestad, Romboleden from Köping in Sweden via Tydalen in Norway, and the Coastal Pilgrimage Route). Several interviewees underline that there were of course unmarked, undesignated pilgrimage routes in the Middle Ages; pilgrims walked from their homes and followed the accessible common roads (Interview Trondheim 18.06.19, no. 2; Interview Oslo 24.08.20).

Stories of the travels of King Olav Haraldsson and journeys of pilgrims to the shrine of St Olav are merged in the formation of contemporary pilgrimage landscapes through both narratives and physical features. Searches for St Olav and historical pilgrims in written sources, place names and literarily in the ground through archaeological finds were part of the development of the first St Olav Ways in the 1990s. One of the project members in the municipality of Dovre, employed at Dovre pilgrimage centre at the time of the interview, explains how they approached the task given by the project managed by the Directorate of Cultural Heritage and the Directorate of Nature Management:

For the pilgrimage accommodators in the local area of Dovre, the aim was to merge geographical and narrative landscapes associated with St Olav and pilgrims to his shrine to frame the landscapes as part of the pilgrimage route to Nidaros. The excavations at Vesle-Hjerkinn refer to traces of a place of accommodation for pilgrims to Nidaros, which is also mentioned in saga literature (Lunde et al. 1997:38–39). During the pilgrimage project in the 1990s, a part of a pilgrim staff was found in the area (Interview Oslo 24.08.20) – adding a material source to pilgrims in the area to the place-lore of what is today part of the Gudbrandsdal Route (of the St Olav Ways). In the following I address the Valldal Route (Valldalsleden) as an example how local vernacular traditions of St Olav and geographical features are brought to life in the context of the St Olav Ways.

A volunteer in one of the pilgrimage confraternities associated with the St Olav Ways explains how the storyworlds of Olav Haraldsson and the historical veneration of St Olav intersect and are differentiated:

An employee at Nidaros Pilgrimage Centre explains this differentiation of the routes in similar terms to the quotation above, of the double movement (in time and geographically) of “walking in the footsteps” of both Olav Haraldsson and pilgrims seeking him in his saintly afterlife as St Olav:

The route from Valldal is also part of the heritage of St Olav because of a feature in the landscape associated with the folklore about him: Sylteormen, a mountain formation in the shape of a serpent that St Olav is to have fought and thrown into the mountainside (see Aukrust 2011). On the website of the St Olav Ways, this is presented under the title “Sea monsters and steep gorges”:

The “steep gorges” refer to the challenging trail, which the accommodators recommend only for experienced mountain hikers. Another example of how geographical and narrative landscapes of St Olav intersect is through the many St Olav wells found across the country, associated with stops along his travels (see Ohrvik 2020; Hodne 2021; Den digitale Olavskilden).

The ways in which the heritage of St Olav is in constant formation as part of the place-lore of several places across Norway is currently developing within the framework of the National Anniversary 2030 (Nasjonaljubileet 2030), commemorating 1,000 years since Olav Haraldsson’s death at Stiklestad (see nasjonaljubileet2030.no). Pilgrimage is one of several topics and practices through which places are connected to the past as well as the prospects of a desired future (cf. Tilley 2006:22). Interestingly, 1030 is highlighted as the significant year, more than 1031 – the year of St Olav’s canonization and translation to the location of the present-day Nidaros Cathedral. One of the places included in the “anniversary relay” between 2021 and 2030 is Valldal, discussed earlier in this article, with the topic “Folk tradition” (“Folketradisjon”):

These questions are relevant for what it entails to organize the National Anniversary in 2030 as well as for this and coming analyses of spatio-temporal landscapes. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the revival and development of place-lore of patron saints in the context of contemporary pilgrimage routes merge with other places, events and agents on different scales. I address this in the following exemplified through one of the interviewees who demonstrate dialogical relations between storied pilgrimage landscapes as well as intersections between the identities of pilgrim and accommodator.

To have place-lore connected to St Olav does not mean that he is admired. A member of a pilgrimage confraternity explained that St Olav is not popular in her home village of Skjåk in Gudbrandsdalen. According to saga literature, Olav Haraldsson burned the village because they did not want to convert to Christianity:

Her interest in pilgrimage derives, among other things, from the stories about saints told by her parents, part of the place-lore of where she grew up and other figures and narratives “mixed into one story”. More than the place-lore of St Olav associated with her home place, Selja exerts a strong fascination on her. The significance of Selja as a special place (see also Mikaelsson 2005; Selberg 2005) preceded her pilgrimage along the Camino and other pilgrimage routes, including in Italy and along several of the St Olav Ways (Interview Oslo 21.06.19). This interviewee furthermore exemplifies how the categories of pilgrimage accommodator and pilgrim intersect, through her both being a practising pilgrim and administering journeys for others through pilgrimage confraternities as well as on her own initiative. Moreover, although there have been contestations between pilgrimage initiatives focused on St Sunniva and St Olav there are also collaborations and interest from accommodators and pilgrims encompassing both saints and routes – as well as a great many other pilgrimage landscapes (Field notes Oslo 2019, 2020, Trondheim 2019, 2021). At the end of this article I return to Selja and Kinn to exemplify how this takes place on a local scale in connection with the Sunniva Route.

The landscape storying the Sunniva Route is primarily St Sunniva’s shrine at Selja, as well as the legendary connection to Kinn and the historical footsteps (or in this case surges) of (seafaring) pilgrims in the Nordfjord area (see Mikaelsson 2005; Selberg 2005; Mikaelsson & Selberg 2020). As mentioned earlier, there are few traces in written sources or archaeological finds left by historical pilgrims in the area between these islands (Bjelland 2000). Rather than being viewed as a disadvantage, the project group of the Sunniva Route saw it as providing flexibility to outline the geographical pilgrimage route as they wished: “we envisaged walking. Since there are no tracks [left by historical seafaring pilgrims], they are erased, we had leeway to lay it where it was convenient” (Interview Bergen 20.05.19). The place-lore of the two islands is thus connected both as geographical and narrative pilgrimage landscapes. The project group did not only want to connect the islands geographically but also through annual events taking place there: The Kinna Play (Kinnaspelet), performed at Kinn on the third weekend of June, and Seljumannamesse, the holy day for St Sunniva and the Seljumen, celebrated with religious services at/around the 8th of July by the (Lutheran) Church of Norway and by the Catholic and Orthodox congregations on the West Coast. The local geography played a part in that the pilgrimage initiators had to choose between one of these events being part of the organized tour: it is not a long enough stretch to walk and sail between the islands to begin with the play in June and end the pilgrimage a week later by attending Seljumannamesse at the beginning of July. They chose Kinnaspelet as the starting point (Interview Bergen 20.05.19). This play is set in the context of the Protestant Reformation, with the Sunniva legend being performed as a “play within the play” (Isene 2014). In this way, the pilgrims are introduced to a staged performance of the Sunniva legend before their journey leading to the site of her martyrdom.

The organized pilgrimages end with a service in the Sunniva cave at Selja, where part of the story about St Sunniva and the Seljumen is told by the priest attending (Field notes June 2019, see also Lunde forthcoming). In one version of the Sunniva legend, some of the followers of Sunniva end up at Kinn when the three boats with the group for Ireland became separated in a storm. A local tradition adds another female protagonist to the story, Borgny, the sister of Sunniva. There are both narrative and material similarities between the pilgrimage landscapes of Kinn and Selja, including caves and a medieval church. A fellow pilgrim along the Sunniva Route in 2019 told a local legend about how the church at Kinn was built: It was Borgny who wanted to build a church with the aid of a Hulder man (“tusse”). In return, he wanted to marry her. The Hulder man had not revealed his name to her, but Borgny had found out what it was. Just as he was about to set the last stone on the building, she shouted his name (Vindfløy) and he fell from the roof, relieving her of her promise of marriage (Field notes June 2019). This story is a version of what is more commonly known in Scandinavia as Finn legends (Aukrust 2011). Often it is St Olav who is the protagonist, building a church with the aid of a troll (named Finn). This migratory legend (legend 7065 in Christiansen 1958, referenced in Aukrust 2011:165) was primarily connected to the construction of Nidaros Cathedral and then later to several other churches. In this context, it can be read as a dialogical relation between the place-lore of Kinn and Selja through these saintly sisters. It is a vernacular story with similar elements to the hagiographical Sunniva legend: a Christian woman facing an unwanted heathen suitor, her escape from the marriage, and the legendary origins of a church that can still be visited. To tell stories of Sunniva and Borgny while visiting Selja or Kinn, or along the route between the island, restories (Bowman 2012) these places. The “then” in the narratives becomes part of the “here” of visiting in the present (Massey 2005). The pilgrimage can also entail light-hearted ways of relating to the legends: On board the boat from mainland Selje to Selja in 2019, before arriving at the destination for the pilgrimage, the accompanying priest handed out liquorice candy shaped like boats (lakrisbåter) to the pilgrims – describing them as “boats without sails and oars” in reference to the Sunniva legend (Field notes 2019).

There are no textual references to St Sunniva, pilgrimage or the history of the monastery at the part of Selja where the ruins are located. This is a conscious choice on the part of the accommodators, wanting to give visitors the opportunity to “listen to the silence” (“Lytt til stilla”) of the historical place (see Lunde forthcoming). One the way from where the boat with pilgrims docked in 2019, we walked past “the Olav stone” “(Olavssteinen) in the landscape, unveiled by the director of the Norwegian Directorate of Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren) in 2018. An information sign in front of the stone explains that it commemorates the four kings named Olav associated with the island (Olav Tryggvasson – sanctifying St Sunniva in 996, Olav Haraldsson – landing there in 1015, Olav Kyrre – who established Selja as a diocese around 1068 and Olav V, king of Norway 1957–1991, who visited Selja in 1968 for the 900th anniversary of the Diocese of Bjørgvin, information sign at Selja, Field notes 2020). The story from Snorri about Olav Haraldsson landing on the island in 1015 is retold. Indeed, the sign in front of the Olav stone is the only place where a textual narrative with reference to St Olav or St Sunniva is found on the island. After the reference to Snorri, the text continues: “Olav was later the Norwegian patron saint as Olav the Holy, and together with St Sunniva of Selja these are the two most important saints, both royal, a man and a woman, and representatives of a central part of the country, Trøndelag and the West Coast” (information sign, Selja, 2018). The Olav stone thus merges royal namesakes in a spatio-temporal expression of place-lore at Selja and connects the four Olavs to Selja and Selja to historical and national significance. There is another visual reference to St Olav at Selja: a logo of the St Olav Ways at the quay close to the ruin complex. It has additional information to the logos referred to at the beginning of this article: stating that this is a key place (nøkkelsted) along the Coastal Pilgrimage Route (Field observations 2019). From 2018, the Sunniva Route has been connected through the St Olav Ways through the status of the islands of Kinn and Selja as key places, and through the regional pilgrimage centre that opened in Selje in 2020. The inclusion of this regional pilgrimage route in the network of St Olav Ways is the reason that the logos of both routes are found at Kinn. In a comparable way to the historical significance, Selja (and Kinn) are today both pilgrimage destinations and stops along the way for pilgrims travelling along the coast towards Nidaros Cathedral and St Olav.

This article has explored the development of pilgrimage place-lore in Norway through examples of how geographical and narrative landscapes of St Sunniva and St Olav are brought to the fore and added to in the context of the development of routes to their historical shrines. For this purpose, stories reviving St Sunniva and St Olav in textual, oral and visual expressions at and in reference to these pilgrimage landscapes in the past and contemporary restoryings have been discussed. These processes have been contextualized in light of international pilgrimage inspirations, emphasizing the dialogical relations between pilgrimage landscapes in Norway and internationally, demonstrating processual aspects of place-lore. The combination of local religious history and Caminoization opens for creativity and flexibility among various agents involved in the contemporary pilgrimage phenomenon. As the examples show, St Sunniva and St Olav are depicted as a saintly pair in visual and textual historical sources as well as being referred to as competitive, adjacent – and complementary patron saints in reference to and in the geographical landscapes they are associated with.