Days 1 & 2: Beginning the Gudbrandsdalsleden Eastern Route

​The Eastern Route of the Gudbrandsdalsleden is considered the more ‘historical’ route. It lines up with a major route taken by kings of the past from Oslo to Trondheim. These first two days on the route didn’t seem particularly historical other than the occasional plaque. 

In any case, me being me, I decided to walk the 4km back from my hostel to the milestone with my full backpack to start again (I shouldn’t say full though because as it turns out, I had left some things at the hostel). I did meet some other pilgrims, but they were starting on the Western way. I wondered if I would see them again later on the path after the two routes merge in Lillehammer. 

Having finally set out at 10AM, I had a good pace going, and the pack didn’t feel awful yet. I stopped in a bakery for a loaf of bread which provided almost all my sustenance for the day. It wasn’t long before I got back to the Østre Aker kirke and recovered my items. From there it was about 22km to my destination for the day, and after doing my prayers and repacking my pack, it was already 11:30. Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone back to the milestone after all? The rest of the day brought me through suburbs and forests and fields and not a small amount of uphill through a wet rainy forest, but the path is well marked and I just kept going. I stopped by the Furuset church where I was greeted warmly and invited to visit and pray in the church. From here I was starting to feel the weight. The paths adjacent to the growing fields were overgrown and very wet on account of the rain so those last two or three miles seemed to drag on (after having also briefly seen the Skedsmo church), but I finally arrived at my accommodation at Ullereng farm at about 7:30, after which I took the time to say my prayers. 

The next day was better in almost every metric. I started earlier, there was no rain, and there were no steep uphills. By all accounts, the day was a bit boring perhaps, but a boring day usually means an easy day, and it was. Though I started out only an hour earlier than the previous day, with the same mileage, I wound up making it to my accommodation at Innomhaug two hours earlier. I had been worried that being so sore after the first day would have made the journey that much more difficult, but it didn’t seem to. I got to see the Frogner kirke and Ullesaker kirke, though both were closed on account of it being Saturday. I saw two people in bunads at the Ullesaker church, so it’s possible there was a wedding or other ceremony about to happen. 

Occasionally I hear planes landing at the airport nearby, and the E6 highway is never too far away so there is the constant buzzing of various vehicles, but in the fields, one hears the birds and sees the butterflies resting on the wildflowers, and it is magnificent. 

Day 0: Leading up to the beginning

​While in Oslo, I stayed at the Østre Aker pilgrimage hostel, adjacent to its historic church. Technically, this was about 4km along the eastern route trail, but I had planned to stay there two nights so I could have a day in Oslo and then start ‘officially’ from the milestone at the pilgrim center on Friday July 3. 

During my day in Oslo I first went to Mass at the Catholic Cathedral of St. Olav. For a Thursday morning, it was a pretty decently attended daily Mass. stained glass windows of the various Norwegian saints flanked the congregants on either side: St. Olav, of course, but also St. Hallvard, St. Sunniva, St. Eystein, and some others. There was also a wrist/hand shaped reliquary, which I could only assume housed relics of St. Olav. Mass was lovely, though without a missal to follow along, I simply listened and made the responses very quietly in English or Latin. 

From there, I went to the Norsk Folkemuseum, which I had been eagerly anticipating. I knew that they did demonstrations of the very same dances I had become familiar with with my Scandi dance friends in SLC and in the HFAA. Sadly, their Hardanger fiddle player wasn’t there, but they still did a demo of the Rørospols and the Telespringar, the latter of which is one of my favorites. 

After the demo, I spoke to the dancers, and though the fiddle player wasn’t not there, one of the fiddles was on display, and they allowed me to play it! I got to fulfill my dream of playing the Norwegian fiddle in Norway! I played a telespringar tune that I love and then a Valdresspringar tune. I didn’t do the greatest job, but the dancers approved. We spoke for a while, and it was fun to nerd out over this very niche (at least to me) Norwegian folk culture. 

On the way back I stopped by the pilgrim center to get my pilgrim passport among other things and to check out the milestone and test out the route I was to be taking tomorrow morning. It was good that I did so because I actually wound up accidentally going the western route and because my phone died and I had left my power cable back at the hostel, I wound up getting wildly lost and not making it back until quite a bit later. This made me a bit worried for my start, but I made my preparations just the same, looking forward to an epic journey starting tomorrow, no matter what the difficulties. 

Preparing for St. Olav's Way: Rekindling the Fire

​Here I sit in the Salt Lake City airport, waiting patiently for a flight that will take me to London and then onto Oslo to begin the Pilegrimsleden, or St. Olav’s Ways. It is hard to describe exactly why I feel the need to go on this pilgrimage. I am only a quarter of Norwegian descent, and I have no particular devotion to St. Olav (at least not yet), but for over a decade I have wanted to go walk the Gudbrandsdalsleden, partially after having read Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (a Norwegian and Catholic covert), in which the title character makes this very same pilgrimage as a penance, walking barefoot and carrying her child over the threshold of Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, the burial place of St. Olav, perpetual king of Norway. The greater part of the inspiration came from having done the Path to Rome ‘pilgrimage’ in homage to Hilario Belloc, whose book The Path to Rome many have sought to imitate. 

My friend Edward and I did that pilgrimage in 2014, and, while I have done some smaller pilgrimages in the meantime, I have not done a grand scale pilgrimage such as that since that year. Long has the St. Olav Way laid at the back of my mind, slowly reminding me from time to time the pull to put on a pack and walk for a month. This time, I begin alone, and Edward will join me some weeks later toward the end, logging the final days to Trondheim. 

As for why? I do not know, other than that I simply want to, and that to leave a dream unfulfilled would tug on that part of my brain for ever after. What happens to a dream deferred? as Langston Hughes once wrote. 

The beauty of pilgrimages, as I perceive them anyway, is that though I do them alone or with one other person, I carry my people with me through prayer. They pray for me and I pray for them. I carry a few tokens of such connections, small photos of my family and children, a plushie of Appa from Avatar made for me by an old student, a challenge coin custom made by an old colleague of mine, a chaplet made for me by a friend I made in seminary, a spinnable ratchet noisemaker given to me my someone I met on a previous pilgrimage, several prayer books, among other less interesting things. 

If you have a specific prayer request you would like me to pray for, send it to my old Path to Rome prayer ‘hotline’ email: pathtoromeprayers@gmail.com. I will pray for these intentions each day and offer the pilgrimage in part for these intentions. 

Our Lady, help of pilgrims, pray for us.

St. Olav, pray for us.