Lucifer Orbis

Some months ago, I bought a book called En Reise til Roma – I sporene til pilegrimen Nikolas Bergsson året 1152 (A Journey to Rome – In the footsteps of the pilgrim Nikolas Bergsson in the year 1152) by Hans Jacob Orning and Svein Harald Gullbekk. Both authors are history professors at the Oslo University and have made research in the fields of Norwegian and European history in the Middle Ages. Svein Harald did also run research projects in the area of numismatics. I think they must be a very interesting duo and their classes are surely packed with curiosities about history, big societal questions, nasty details about religious relics, period currency and also tips and tricks about bike maintenance. Yes, both gentlemen are passionate about cycling.

The book is about an Icelandic monk called Nikolas Bergsson and the pilgrimage he undertook from Iceland to Rome and then Jerusalem. He left a travel guide to help other pilgrims. The document is called Leiðarvísir og borgarskipan. As a trve icelandic man, Nikolas was sceptic of authorities, didn't dabble too much in political intrigue, still had the saga of Sigurd Fåvnesbane and Gudrun in his imaginary, had a special interest in saints and relics and whether or not he found what he was looking for in his pilgrimage is still a mystery. Of what is known, he managed to go safely back to Iceland. He became abbot of the benedictine monastery of Munkaþverá in Eyjafjörður.

So what did Hans Jacob and Svein Harald decide to do? Walk in the steps of Nikolas and see the world through his eyes to the best of their ability? Of course not! They would cycle! The book's title is A Journey to Rome because the authors opted to make the first half of Nikolas' pilgrimage from Iceland to Rome and experience the world from their bike seats. They had to make sporadic use of transportation and resort to current-day facilities but soon found themselves in Norway. Thus the book, in general terms, tells the story of what they are able to see and find in the places Nikolas visited at a time when most territories in Europe were part of the Western Roman Empire. What did Nikolas see? More than that, what was he aware of?

The book is packed with historical facts and curiosities from the get-go and it can quickly get a bit overwhelming. The authors followed the guide very closely, informing the reader about the instances they deviated from and why. It's an astronomical amount of research that my brain, used to read texts focused on one aspect of historical thinking, struggled a bit to keep up. I can't say I didn't get distracted at times, but there was always something grabbing my attention a few sentences sooner or later. I think I saw a bit of myself in Nikolas, going back to something I've mentioned two paragraphs ago as is expressed here:

Det var helgener, relikvier og kirker han [Nikolas] var opptatt av, ikke paver, ei heller kirken som helhet eller ideologi. (p. 61)

“Nikolas was interested in saints, relics and churches, not popes or the church as a whole or as ideology.” I can see this. Do I share a bit with Nikolas? Maybe so. After what I learned about him I could see myself walking by his side and drinking some beers with him, exactly how Hans Jacob and Svein Harald imagined if they were in the same pilgrimage. I'm just not so sure, though. There's a lot of speculation about Nikolas' thinking – if there was some interest in the church as an institution it may be lost to us. However, it strikes me as odd if there's a total disconnect between a future abbot and his current-day church affairs. The authors don't seem to be very interested in the church as an ideology either, especially when there's emperors and politics to think about. In any case, in good academic spirits, it's always good to maintain some neutrality when it comes to matters of religion and faith, even in a book which is supposed to be about the complexity of the time period it illustrates, the travel and Nikolas pilgrimage. In the end the authors painted a very profound picture of the mentality of people in the Middle Ages, their interconnected webs of actions and reactions, the spiritual and the mundane connected, the supernatural realm and its impact and significance in the physical world. At times, I struggled to see the difference between this mentality and the unique experience of meeting (some) religious people today.

I continued reading the book and our friend Nikolas made his way through Speyer, he saw the Speyer cathedral – a massive building with cruciform plan, a central nave and two side aisles, the transeptum, a big vault and a deambulatorium. It's a large, earthly, serene, and powerful construction built with red sandstone and the final resting place of emperors. By the time Nikolas visited the cathedral Conrad II, Henry III, Henry IV and Henry V were already buried there. The authors were completely drawn to it and me too. I want to visit that cathedral for other reasons, not of the same world as our author’s, but now that I have a little more information, I also wish to take a look at the graves and marvel at them, not only at the Divine. I want to see the cathedral from the outside and see it, not only as the house of God, but as house-like, an oversized house that doesn’t project itself to the skies like a meteor.

The reaction of our travel companions to the Strasbourg cathedral was visceral to say the least (p. 134). Its rayonnant gothic architecture didn’t allow for an opportunity to rest the eye. Used to Protestant churches with minimal religious imagery, I can only imagine the overwhelming impact gothic architecture has on people who aren’t religious or are used to simplicity and practicality. I myself love gothic churches for their artistical, architectural and engineering value; they’re like a museum or an open book which tells many stories if we’re able to comprehend or identify them. I just don’t see them as optimal places of prayer. I never entered a gothic church and got that pull to sit in introspection or say a word of prayer. The reaction of our authors shocked me at first but now in hindsight I can see where it came from. Who were those bells and whistles made for anyway? How did people react at the time the rayonnant part was finished? Was the objective to disturb or to invite? Or both?

The chapters about the church, relics, and saints are among my favourites. The exciting practice of stealing relics from a city to considerably increase the economic power of another city is described in such a way that almost I forgot that stealing is wrong. Our authors call it kulturkriminalitet which dispenses any translation. The idea of cultural crimes is a relatively modern one and at the time of Frederik Barbarossa it meant serious business (p. 84). When his troops took over Milan they got access to massive loot. Among the goodies were the relics of the Three Kings. This was a wonderful score handed to the Archbishop Rainal of Dassel that made Cologne into one of the most important centres of pilgrimage. What I find most captivating are the discussions between both authors at the end of the chapters, where the subject shifts from a very compressed mixture of names, places, dates and events (all relevant and well structured) to little bits of introspection, analysis and reflection. They themselves reflected upon the relics and what they felt upon seeing them.

Many such stories, like the one I described, populate the book like illuminated manuscripts. Reflections about religion, doctrine, mentality, faith, fear, danger, wars, beauty and contemplation are present more or less prominently across the book, through Nikolas’ experience of the world around him, and the author’s experience from their informed perspective – rational, relevant and informed. A lot about Nikolas is clouded in uncertainty but of the many times Hans Jacob and Svein Harald stop to take a breather, they think about the motives of a pilgrimage, its biggest triumph, if it’s the higher heavens and salvation or something more. They left donations only to the small churches that were in most disrepair and need. They eventually met the heroes of this story – Andrea and his family. Isn’t this also a part of a pilgrimage? The human connection, the experiences and the edification (danning) we derive from it.

There will be a lot of back-and-forth in History to comprehend the world Nikolas moves in, his 12th century of constant clashes between papal and imperial powers. By the end of the book we find a modern translation of the Leiðarvísir with all the most likely locations Nikolas visited. They must have decided not to add the part from Rome to Jerusalem but it can easily be found online. There’s also a timetable with the approximate number of days the pilgrimage took. Also a bibliography with commentary from where I underlined about nine books to read.

As a closing note, both Hans Jacob and Svein Harald are research colleagues and they had the idea of writing this book after working on a project called Standardization in the Middle Ages supported by The Research Council of Norway. The research resulted in a book which is now in open access in its whole or in parts. The book En Reise til Roma was also supported by The Research Council of Norway and the Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators Association. It was published by Dreyers Forlag in 2024. I hope the book gets an English translation soon. If it does, I’ll read it again, maybe in ebook format. I can’t say that I didn’t get stuck at times. Norwegian is still a new language to me. Even though I speak it every day, I don’t make much use of it outside of my job, and my reading habits in the language have been very lacking. English is our Latin. Jumping right into an History book wasn’t the best idea, or maybe it was. I have read light romance novels where I didn’t struggle so much. My head is extremely tired but I am very satisfied with overcoming this reading without interrupting the flow to check the dictionary. This book was also a pilgrimage to me. I can’t wait to read some articles about standardisation in the Middle Ages!