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On June 3rd 2015, I started in Sundsvall a pilgrimage known as S:t Olavsleden that crosses through the most agnostic countries on the world, Sweden and Norway. I got Research funding by Royal Insitute of Art in Stockholm to carry out the project; there was an open call to people participate in it. I proposed the Nordic pilgrim path as an explorational framework in which I focused on how the walking on a sacred route can influence in the individual process. A multinational group of artists, writers, philosophers and archaeologists was selected by me. We arrived to Trondheim on June 2nd after covering almost 600 kms. For completion of the investigation, I decided to walk on Camino de San Olav, a 3 years-old path in my homeland -Spain- from October 23rd to 25th.During the process a series of unexpected things happened. As an artist, I think these events are important because they raise questions about the utility of walking as an artistic practice and my role as activator of aesthetic relational encounters. What happens when the participants are taken out of their comfort zone and their relations generated by the walking engagement? How do they envisage an inner journey? Could they understand my proposal as a symbolic performance and what new perspectives are conveyed? How are the old sacred routes are adapted to the new times?Reviewing the past bring us to the present. In my project, I explored the significant cultural, social and environmental parallels between two paths run across the most uninhabited areas in Europe: the North of Scandinavian Peninsula and the North of Iberian Peninsula. Both of them share a comparable emphasis on ideas of traditional assets that are rooted in the relationship between human habitation and the natural environment. There are human endeavors to maintain their identity and do not fall into oblivion. For this reason, the authorities are making a special effort to make it popular again following the successful model of Camino de Santiago. This fact arises a new secular method of approaching pilgrimage: how the tourist industry adapts itself to the new times using ancestral routes for the consumer wants to live an inner and spiritual journey. The sacred manifestations are becoming a package tours. The offer is not only the spiritual dimension of the way, it is also the aesthetic experience of walking.I am not a believer. While interested in the liminal process of spiritual passages, I have discovered that non-religious persons may experience the mystical in nature owing to the experience of beyond of the sensible world, the Sublime of the landscape. This metaphysical stage can cause an inner transformation due of a new feeling post-encounter. It is important for the development of the creative process because cool things happens: new way to work, the coming of fresh ideas, renewed courage to continue working, more knowledge of oneself... In this aspect, walking practice operates as allegorist embodiment of personal turning point: the stage of in-between before and after. / <p>The tourist seeks a picture, a memory. The pilgrim seeks the redemption. The artist seeks answers.</p><p>Departing from the traditions of the artists of the second half of 20th century that used walking as one of the forms to intervene in nature, I proved the path as a place for discussion, celebration, communal eating, resting, shared knowledge, laughs and pains.... But a differential factor from the walking artists, my aim is not developing physical artworks. The process is the artwork. Art is a framework for engaging moments to effect real change. Art as start-up device to arouse the contemplation of a reality that remains unnoticed.</p><p>As a researcher, I found a modus operandis to finally conflate my Catholic background, the interest in ritual gestures, the walking practice, my personal experiences based on nature, the creation of relational meeting places and my personal family history. Art as a way to explore and to be witness of our time. There is a relationship between S:t Olavsleden and Camino de San Olav but that link is neither forged in the religious meaning nor in the mythic figure of a Christian saint. There is relationship because I have connected to them both. As an artist, I am a catalyst for reaching an symbolic exchange framework from where new experiences emerge to influence in the artistic practice of the people involved in the project. My interest focuses more on the process than the object of art. I do make art with people and for the people. I bring people out of their thicket of daily routines and I offer them an experimental ground as a springboard to develop new works created by each artist in response to their engagement of conflation the physical action with a renewed understanding of connection to their surrounding world.</p><p>This creation of a wandering community is my agreement of the art as way of life. Art production can not get away with disavowing the spiritual or the congregational dimensions of the term. In the metaphorical sense, Art is to walk new ways each time; on completion of this artwork, new questions spring up: Which paths will I walk? How will I experience them? What new project will I share who?</p> / S:t Olavsleden

This research aims to explore how representations of Saudi Arabia in German travel literature, pilgrimage accounts and online media have transformed the Saudi Arabian space and its place in the European imagination. German travelers, pilgrims, and expatriates enter the foreign Saudi Arabian space, and decipher it in their narratives. The diachronic analysis of several representative texts by German authors from the 18th and 19th centuries narrating their journey to what is today known as Saudi Arabia, shows that the images conveyed in their writings should be conceived in a multidimensional way beyond the lens of historical analysis, taking into account notions of gender, personal motivations, nationality and religion. Analysis of pilgrimage accounts by German converts from the 20th and 21st century reveals an unreflected representation of Western societies and German people in the Middle East. These narratives play a fundamental role in building a bridge connecting Muslim immigrants living in the diaspora with German converts. However, to quote Marcia Hermansen (1999) "even though Western Muslim narrators avoid the excesses of their Christian precursors, they are not completely free from a colonial gaze and "Orientalist" attitudes": in their narratives both the desert and the Bedouins become an imagined and fictionalized trope. In the last part of my dissertation I explore the blogosphere produced by German expatriates living in Saudi Arabia, arguing that expatriate blogs have become a space for cultural representation and othering, that share similarities with the genre of travel writing.

Lelov, an otherwise quiet village about fifty miles south of Cracow (Poland), is where Rebbe Dovid (David) Biederman founder of the Lelov ultra-orthodox (Chasidic) Jewish group, - is buried. His grave is now a focal point of the Chasidic pilgrimages. The pilgrims themselves are a Chasidic hodgepodge, dressed in fur-brimmed hats, dreadlocked, and they all come to Lelov for the same reasons: to pray, love, and eat with their brethren. The number of pilgrims has grown exponentially since the collapse of Communism in Poland in 1989; today about three hundred ultra-orthodox Jews make a trek. Mass pilgrimage to kevorim (Chasidic graves), is quite a new phenomenon in Eastern Europe but it has already became part of Chasidic identity. This thesis focuses on the Chasidic pilgrimage which has always been a major part of the Jewish tradition. However, for the past fifty years, only a devoted few have been able to undertake trips back to Poland. With the collapse of Communism, when the sites in Eastern and Central Europe became more open and much more accessible, the ultra-orthodox Jews were among the first to create a ‘return movement’. Those who had been the last to leave Poland in search of asylum are now becoming the initiators of the re-discovery of Jewish symbols in this part of the world.

This report presents the results of ethnographic fieldwork conducted at Timber Mountain Caldera (TMC) on the NTS. Volcanic in origin, the caldera is a geologic feature that was formed when a large volcano collapse thousands of years ago producing the large circular crater that exists today. Since that event, the caldera has experienced other volcanic eruptions making a complex topographic landscape. The ethnographic fieldwork (conducted in 2005) that forms the foundation of this report included official tribal representatives from the Owens Valley Paiute, Western Shoshone, and Southern Paiute ethnic groups. This report presents the findings of the tribal representatives’ visits to several sites in the TMC and the cultural value associated with it. These research findings are based upon interviews conducted with tribal representatives selected by the American Indian Writers Subgroup of the culturally affiliated Consolidated Group of Tribes and Organizations (CGTO).

This disertation thesis investigates a latin guide for pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela The Guide was written in the first half of 12th century and is a part of the fifth book Liber Sancti Iacobi, also noun as Codex Calixtinus. The Guide is considered as the first middle-age itinerary containig information about pilgrimage to Santigo de Compostela. The autorship of the guide is credited to French pilgrim Aymericus Picaud. The text is divided into eleven chapters and brings information about a four main piglrim roads from France to Santiago. It informs how long and how difficult they are and where are the main hospices for pilgrims located. It includes not only these practictical information but also informs about important places for pilgrims and most known churches, which visitor schould visit. The large part of the Guide describes in detail Santiago de Compostela and St. James cathedrale. The aim of this study is to make a translation of the guide with interpretative commentary, where will be explained in particul special parts of the text, especially topography, pilgrimage churches and historical context. In this thesis the lexicology will be discused and described. The introductury study consists of the three parts and it is a vital part of the translation. In the first part of the...

Role of culturally important places in reproduction of territorial identities: an example of pilgrimage sites The thesis deals with the discussion of existing effects and meanings selected pilgrimage sites in Czechia (Stara Boleslav, Svaty Kopecek u Olomouce and Filipov) in terms of shaping identity of the region, depending on the different historical development and social and cultural conditions in different areas representing two dichotomies (borderland vs. inland region, Bohemia and Moravia region). Further, a position pilgrimage sites in terms of the major pilgrimages and pilgrimage sites in the consciousness of believers and non-believers population. It was found that people can be identified with pilgrimage sites, but it's a long process which is related to the historical and socio-cultural development of the region. In the dichotomy borderland vs. inland was observed different meanings of pilgrimage sites which are reflected in identification with the territory, while in the dichotomy Bohemia vs. Moravia those meanings are not significantly different. Keywords: pilgrimage sites; regional identity; cultural heritage; Czechia

Le voyage chez Gadda représente toujours une fuite tendancielle de (son) monde, de (son) temps, de (son) espace et de ce que Gadda ressent comme son propre destin. En même temps, il est aussi un pèlerinage " religieux " vers des terres inconnues, il est la vérification gnoséologique et le témoignage qui en découle de la réalité du monde et de sa constitution historique et matérielle. Une réalité faite non de rêves, mais de pierres et d'hommes. Le voyage écrit de Gadda oscille donc, avec des composants variables et souvent conflictuelles, entre le voyage non éthique, fin en soi et " rêveur " des symbolistes, et le voyage éthique finalisé à la connaissance et à la construction du monde. Aux voyages pour la plus part " rêveurs " et lyriques correspond une signification de fuite tendancielle du monde, alors qu'aux voyages pour la plus part éthiques correspond la signification d'un pèlerinage finalisé à certifier et à témoigner de la réalité de l'œuvre humaine dans son devenir historique. Il n'y a pas de textes où est présente seulement l'une de ces deux composantes sous sa forme pure, mais textes où, avec une intensité variable, une composante, un registre ou une tendance, l'emporte sur l'autre. Il faudra dire en conclusion que le voyage lyrique sera fonda-mentalement dominant dans tout Gadda, tandis que le voyage éthique, subordonné à celui-ci, sera toujours le résultat d'un refoulement conscient et artistique de la première pulsion : une pulsion de rêve, lyrique et non éthique. / The travel in Gadda's work is always a tendencial escape from (his) world, from (his) time, from (his) space and from what he feels as (his) fate. But, at the same time, the travel is also a “religious” pilgrimage in foreign lands, it is the epistemological assessment and the subsequent testimony of the reality of the world and his historical and material form. A reality made of stones and men, not of dreams. The travel Gadda described fluctuates between the unetic travel that belongs to Symbolists, ending in itself and dreaming, and the etic travel which has the aim to know and built the world. To travel mostly dreamy and lyrical corresponds a sense of escape from the world, and to travel mainly ethical corresponds the meaning of a pilgrimage designed to certify and witness the reality of human work in its historical development. In this thesis I don't describe texts in which there is only one of these two components in the pure form; on the contrary there are texts in which prevails with greater or lesser intensity one of the two components. In conclusion the lyric travel tends to be dominant in Gadda and the etic travel is subject to the lyric and it will be always the result of a conscious and artistic repression of primal instinct: the dreamy, lyrical and unetic instinct.

Durante o período medieval, o homem português manifestava sua fé em diversas formas e expressões. A peregrinação a santuários constituía uma dessas formas. Em terras lusas encontramos no século XV cinco destes santuários: Bom Jesus, Nossa Senhora das Virtudes, Santos Mártires de Lisboa, Santos Mártires de Marrocos e Nuno Álvares Pereira. Polos e santos diferentes, mas em comum a escrita de Livros de Milagres registrando o perfil do peregrino, o motivo da realização da peregrinação, além de informações variadas, como, por exemplo, status social. Estes escritos revelam facetas múltiplas da população portuguesa, como problemas de saúde, angústias, medos, dificuldades, desejos. A análise desta documentação leva-nos a descobrir aspectos da espiritualidade do português do século XV, assim como também observarmos que não somente de fé vivia a rota para estes santuários, visto que objetivos de canonização, reafirmação de influência no espaço, inclusive com disputa de poder, também marcavam a peregrinação e os relatos de milagres. / During medieval times, the Portuguese man manifested his faith through many ways and several expressions. One of this way was the pilgrimages to sanctuaries. Inside Portuguese Kingdom were found in the XV century, five of these sanctuaries such as: Good Jesus, Our Lady of the Virtues, Holy Martys of Lisbon, Holy Martys of Marocco and Nuno Alves Pereira. Different poles and sants, but with a common subject called the writing of The Miracle\'s Books which register the pelegrin\'s profile, the reason of the pilgrimage, in addition to several informations, for instance, the social status. These writings also reveal many facets of Portuguese people such as health problems, fears, anguishes, difficulties and desires. These Thesis analyzes lead us to discover spiritual aspects of Portuguese people in the fifteenth century and calls our attention to the fact that not only by faith was made the route for these sanctuaries but also canonization objectives and reafirmation of influence in the territory, with power disputes indeed, also marked the pilgrimage and the story of the miracles.