Pilgrim Stories: On and Off the Road to Santiago, Journeys Along an Ancient Way in Modern Spain

by Nancy Louise Frey

Each year thousands of men and women from more than sixty countries journey by foot and bicycle across northern Spain, following the medieval pilgrimage road known as the Camino de Santiago. Their destination is Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of the apostle James are said to be buried. These modern-day pilgrims and the role of the pilgrimage in their lives are the subject of Nancy Louise Frey's fascinating book.

Unlike the religiously-oriented pilgrims who visit Marian shrines such as Lourdes, the modern Road of St. James attracts an ecumenical mix of largely well-educated, urban middle-class participants. Eschewing comfortable methods of travel, they choose physically demanding journeys, some as long as four months, in order to experience nature, enjoy cultural and historical patrimony, renew faith, or cope with personal trauma.

Frey's anthropological study focuses on the remarkable reanimation of the Road that has gained momentum since the 1980s. Her intensive fieldwork (including making the pilgrimage several times herself) provides a colorful portrayal of the pilgrimage while revealing a spectrum of hopes, discontents, and desires among its participants, many of whom feel estranged from society. The Camino's physical and mental journey offers them closer community, greater personal knowledge, and links to the past and to nature.

But what happens when pilgrims return home? Exploring this crucial question Frey finds that pilgrims often reflect deeply on their lives and some make significant an artistic voice is discovered, a marriage is ended, meaningful work is found. Other pilgrims repeat the pilgrimage or join a pilgrims' association to keep their connection to the Camino alive. And some only remain pilgrims while on the road. In all, Pilgrim Stories is an exceptional prism through which to understand the desires and dissatisfactions of contemporary Western life at the end of the millennium.

"Feet are touched, discussed, massaged, [and] become signs of a journey well 'I did it all on foot!' . . . Pilgrims give feet a power and importance not recognized in daily life, as a causeway and direct channel to the road, the past, meaningful relations, nature, and the self."

Genres: Travel, Walking, Religion, Spain, Nonfiction

330 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is best described as an exhaustive academic treatment of the Camino experience. It was interesting for me to see where my own Camino fit into the overall spectrum of pilgrim stories. While the introductory and concluding chapters were a bit of a chore to get through (as one often finds in academic works), I quite enjoyed the bits in between, as they reminded me of things I had forgotten from my own journey and provided me with plenty of new perspectives to think about. I'd recommend this book mainly to people who have already done the pilgrimage, as I suspect much of the content would be mystifyingly opaque to the non-pilgrim, relying as it does on personal identification with specific memories. I likewise would not recommend that someone planning their own Camino read this ahead of time, because there is no sense going into something major like this with too many preconceived notions and expectations.

[Jim Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frey’s book provides the reader with a detailed account of the experience of hiking the Camino in northern Spain. It’s a semi-autobiographical but still fairly scholarly description of a “pilgrim’s progress” to Santiago. The book was based on her Ph.D dissertation in cultural anthropology at Berkeley. For those who know something of this field she tends to utilize Clifford Geertz’s method of “thick description.”

I think anyone contemplating a trek of this nature wiuld benefit from reading Frey’s book.

[Liralen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable and relatable semi-anthropological look at pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago—but perhaps best read by those who have walked the Camino? I saw myself, and people I know, over and over again in this book, but in ways that would not have been particularly noteworthy before I walked the Camino, and I think it's more interesting to see those connections after than to look for them during (she says, having read a giant stack of Camino books before embarking on the adventure...).

For all that she approaches the Camino from an academic standpoint here, Frey's analysis is not without some biases of her own. The book is also quite outdated—Frey talks as though the things she says are unequivocally true, and perhaps in the late 90s they were, but...things change. You no longer need maps to get to Finisterre, for example (although if you have no sense of direction, like *cough* certain people I *cough* know, you might get ten kilometers of lost anyway). Accommodations and prices and policies have changed so much that those described here are often hardly recognisable. It doesn't make the book less valuable as a resource, but it's a good reminder to the contemporary reader to double-check more recent facts.

It's pretty broad-ranging in terms of content, which is great in the sense of giving one things to think about, but there are plenty of places where I'd love to see longer, individual pieces...but then, I suppose this wasn't the work for them. Still, some great nuggets to chew on. The hundred-kilometer rule is relatively recent and arbitrary, for example; also, Frey spends a while talking about what makes a pilgrim a pilgrim—and the upshot is that everyone has a different answer. You're a pilgrim if you walk the whole way (and what is 'the whole way'? That hundred kilometers? From Roncesvalles? From St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port?), or if you take a bus some of the way but do it with religious motivation, or if you fly straight to Santiago from wherever you live to see the cathedral...

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat useful - primarily a scholarly work (and amateurish at that), but the first few chapters shed insight into the way of St. James.

[Eduardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the several books that I have read about the Camino, this is easily my favorite. This ranking is mainly a result of its format. Rather than being a guide or a first-person account, it is a survey of the history of the route, the saint, and of the pilgrims. Frey also gives perspectives on the current state of the Camino, its devotees, and its politics. For me, the most interesting portion of the book was the portion regarding the "homecomers", how they assimilated their pilgrimage and how they did (or did not) reintegrate into the lives they had before the Camino.

[Virginia Pulver · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who first visited Santiago and the cathedral back in the late 1970's during the Franco era of Spain's fascinating history, I enjoyed this classic. This is not a tale about one's experience on the Camino, but rather an exploration of what the pilgrimage means and how it has become such a phenomenon. Frankly, I lingered longest in the appendix which provided insights into how the Camino evolved and was re-invented during the 19702-1990s. I lived in Spain in those eras and was in Santiago during the Holy Year of 1989. I was fascinated to learn that up till then pilgrimages really were not clothed in all the discussions about what comprises a "real pilgrim"... In fact the idea of pilgrimage was re-invented in order, in part, to revitalize tourism in post-Franco Spain. It is a great read. I walked my first actual pilgrimage solo, walking 500 miles/40 days with my tiny pack on my back, making no reservations and carrying no phone of camera. I returned a few years later and served as a trained hospitalero at the rustic San Anton monastery outside Castrojeriz (no electricity, no wifi, only cold water...Those pilgrims who visited were a delight. I encourage others to walk the pilgrimage as a pilgrim and not as a tourist - it is the experience of a lifetime. - Ginn

[Pat Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book for anyone visiting the Camino pilgrimage in Galicia Spain or thinking about visiting this pilgrim's trail. I am going there in April and these stories about pilgrims on the trail are interesting albeit a bit dated - the book was written in the 1990s.