The Past World

Pilgrims have walked the Way of St James to Santiago de Compostela since the early Middle Ages. There are stories of Icelanders who have walked this route from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Journeys from Iceland along this famous pilgrimage route stopped from the Middle Ages until 1995, when a large group of Catholic youths walked this route on a pilgrimage, and celebrated mass in the cathedral in Compostela in Icelandic, for the first time since the Middle Ages. Since then, more and more Icelanders are walking or cycling this way from France, mainly for health reasons. Nowadays few go as pilgrims to atone for their sins.

Recently, scholars discovered – to their great amusement – a 28 centimetre stone statue of a man inside the cathedral itself. The statue appears to be the self-portrait of a stonemason who was involved in carving all the fine art that adorns the cathedral. The statue was placed in such a way that it has escaped the public eye for nine hundred years without being particularly well hidden. The statue is placed on top of a column where it is not visible. Only other stonemasons were meant to notice it. Foreign scholars say that the statue was a thirteenth-century “Where’s Wally?” riddle.

The construction of the cathedral was completed in 1211. Jennifer Alexander, Doctor of History, came across the statue when she was reviewing the building history of the church stone by stone. Although scholars believe that the statue is the identity of the stonemason who carved it, the stonemason himself is unknown.

Self-portraits like these were an honour reserved only for the most famous and skilled artists involved in the construction of the church. Most other workers received no recognition. The fact that the statue should be so well hidden indicates that the person who carved it was one of those unknown artists who were not mentioned in the history books. But with this act, the person managed to make himself immortal. His image will remain in this famous cathedral forever, 4 meters above the church floor.