I have come back to my blog after an extended time away. It has not been for a lack of writing as I have begun on my fourth book The Red Empress. The Red Empress is set around the events that led up to the dethroning and eventual restoration of the Empress Zoe and the exploits of the Haraldr Sigurdsson, who would later be known as Haraldr Hardrada – “the Hard Ruler” and king of Norway. Haraldr is accompanied by a fictional character from Rus, Asbjørn Ulfsson. It certainly leads one down some fascinating historical avenues, not least of which is the role Haraldr Sigurdsson played as a Varangian Guardsman and part of the armed escort to the pilgrimage of the Imperial family to Jerusalem as stonemasons were sent there to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
In the early eleventh century, the son of the “mad caliph” al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh had the church completely destroyed, but his successor, Al-Zahir li-i’zaz Din Allāh, was the son of a Byzantine woman and had no such compunctions against the Christians and graciously allowed them to begin rebuilding the church in 1027. During this time, around 1034, a great procession made its way to Jerusalem not only of the builders and stonemasons who would commit to the work, but some of the imperial family, to whom the Varangians were tasked with guarding on the possibly treacherous journey from Jaffa to Jerusalem.
It has been an interesting journey for myself to commit to the research surrounding such an event. A pilgrimage, even from Constantinople was no small task. To disembark in Jaffa was perhaps not to the liking of those who were used to finery and luxuries within the Imperial City. Jaffa was the only way at the time to get to Jerusalem by sea. However there was no harbor and one had to be rowed to shore, navigating the choppy open water and hazardous rocks. Here the travelers and their baggage would be loaded ashore and transported up narrow stone steps, through the crowded narrow streets. To decide upon the itinerary has been interesting, because I have found that pilgrimages, even if they were for the purpose of the forgiveness of sins, had within them something of a touristy affair. And while seeing such sights as the the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, believed to be the site of Jesus’ tomb; the Church of the Nativity, the supposed site of the birth of Jesus; Mount Zion and the Sea of Galilee might have been held with great reverence by the Christian pilgrims, how might these same sights been viewed by men such as Haraldr or Asbjørn to whom the Biblical stories were foreign. As a non-religious person myself, I get to view these things with much the same lens as they might have and see them for the strange and foreign wonders that they were without the subjectivity of religion attached to them. Or perhaps Haraldr Sigurdsson had recently taken up Christianity, the religion, after all, of his new employers and also got to see these things with same mystic awe. We may never know.
One thing for sure, the pilgrims were certainly a gold mine for those who preyed upon them, whether they were bandits, or those, who in the spirit of all who have ever made a quick buck upon holidaymakers everywhere, sold them everything from fragments of “the true cross” to – in earlier centuries – small flasks known as monz ampulae containing either holy water or soil from the ground where Jesus walked. Later, small badges, often in the shape of a palm leaf, were popular mementos to bring back from the Holy Land. There have been many such mementos found all over Europe, Some things just never change.
