ABSTRACT
The sermon of Pope Urban in Clermont in 1095 was spread to the outermost edge of the world and to the ocean and the other side of the sea. This also included Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia and the Nordic region. Danish, Icelandic and other annals report how the Scandinavians “went to Jerusalem,” how there “was a great movement towards Jerusalem.” In these sources, the word “movement” – motio – is used; it resembles the contemporary French writers’ description of the crusade as an earthquake that shook the whole Christian world.1 Urban’s message must have been distributed by clerics and preachers who were dispatched, but who they were, we do not know. The Scandinavian sources are too few to have handed down any names but they report, in unmistakeable terms, on the massive backing for the crusade, in Denmark too. Dane fore mange thill Ierusalem att stride gen hedinge (many Danes went to Jerusalem to fight against heathens), the annals of Lund narrate for 1096. With regards to the Iberian Peninsula we know a little bit more but not much. The Archbishop of Toledo took part in the synod in Clermont; he heard Urban’s sermon and could have passed it on to bishops and priests in all of Spain when he got back. Gripped by the general mood, he himself took the cross but was relieved by Pope Urban because he was needed more at home than in the Holy Land.2 Not until 1105 was Archbishop Bernaldo able to travel on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.3 The Bishop of Coimbra was presumably also present at Clermont, but this is not entirely certain.4
