From the ‘New Country’ to the Holy Land: Two Norwegian-American Pilgrims’ Encounters in the Middle East

Abstract

ABSTRACT The nineteenth century saw a massive surge, in both the United States and Europe, of travel literature about journeys to the Holy Land. This corpus included travelogues of both pilgrims and explorers but the two travelogues that are the objects of study in this article are quite unique. They were written by Norwegian-American Lutheran travellers who chose to write and publish books about their travels in Norwegian in the US. Thus, the accounts of Nehemias Tjernagel (1868–1958) and Ola Johann Særvold (1867–1937) are hybrid cultural productions that emerged at the intersection of a migratory flow that linked Norway, the US and the eastern Mediterranean. As a result, the analysis of the accounts offers a new take on American Orientalism that considers the religious, social and political contexts from which the authors came. Although they both have similar cultural and religious backgrounds, their views on people in the Holy Land, and particularly their views regarding Muslims and Jews, are distinct from one another.