Vikings on The Camino

Issue #9

Kasper and Janne, photographed together on a later trip along the Camino to Fátima, May 11, 2026.

There’s something about being on the Camino de Santiago, the medieval pilgrimage route that stretches nearly 500 miles across northern Spain. It makes you feel that you are touching the center of the universe. That every cosmic force has conspired to put you there and nowhere else.

This feeling held true even on a rainy day — a horribly, torrentially, sideways-rain, rainy day — day five of my run across Europe, May 12, 2025, just outside the town of Pontevedra in Spain.

I was running with Jax through the endless downpour, feet squelching in my shoes, the crunch of gravel underfoot, when I heard a man’s voice from behind me. 

“Hey mister, I like your dog!”

I stopped and turned around to see a youngish couple wrestling with garbage bags fashioned as ponchos and rucksacks underneath, huffing and puffing to catch up to me. 

The first thing I noticed were his eyes, icy blue and kind. Then, his beaming smile.

“This is so cool. We haven’t seen anyone running the Camino, and with a dog! Can I take a photo?” he asked.

He looked like a Viking, weathered, robust, blonde beard. The woman was tall and strong, and also smiling. I half expected them to pull out animal horns and blow into the heavens!

“Of course,” I said, and even Jax obliged.

Jax and me outside Pontevedra, Spain, May 13, 2025, the day this story took place. Photo by Kasper.

There’s really only one option on the Camino and that is to keep walking. It’s why everyone is there, for the space and time to breathe, reflect and heal. So, the three of us walked and talked and connected. Such a pure moment of collective joy.

That’s when I learned their story.

Kasper — “Not with a C,” he said, “too round. The K is all jagged and rough, like me.” — and Janne (pronounced Yani), were from Denmark. Theirs was a spiritual journey.

They had met two years prior in Narcotics Anonymous, after struggling with addiction and childhoods full of pain and darkness. Janne had lived on the street with her dog. Kasper had done stints in jail. Being junkies had become their full-time jobs. 

But, there was an undercurrent throughout this grim tale, and it was a love story.

They independently found their way to government-run rehab programs in Denmark and then to NA; they met at a dance hosted by the organization.

“I saw him and thought he was cute,” said Janne, smiling.

“She’s quite a bit taller than me,” admitted Kasper. “But I saw her long legs and wanted to get to know her immediately.”

“Love for me today is magical. I had no idea that I could have feelings for another person like I do for Kasper,” said Janne, who said that until she met him, her number one drug was violent men.

Kasper joked that if they survived the pilgrimage, he would ask Janne to marry him, because he knew they would certainly survive anything after the oftentimes-challenging Camino experience.

I asked them how movement, the act of being in perpetual motion over their nine-day walkabout, might have changed their perspectives, if at all.

Both said that it was hard not to be awed by the countryside and its overwhelming beauty. Indeed, it’s impossible not to be absorbed by this transformational trail and for its mysticism not to grab you. The couple said that being on the road allowed them to find new iterations of themselves, ones that were filled with love, not hatred.

“I’ve had a black hole in me for my whole life,” Janne said. “Before, I filled it up with drugs. Today, I fill it up with helping others and being the best version of myself. This is life giving something beautiful in return.”

Then, Kasper said something that rang true.

“It's wet. It's cold. I’m soaked. I stepped in a puddle of mud up to my knees. I’m drenched in mud. But then I accepted that this is the way today is going to be. I cannot change it. This is meant to be like this and this is a part of my journey. And when I let go of that control and just start to believe that life can be good, that people are good, I get the same in return,” he said, fat raindrops hitting his smiling face.

On the Camino you are never alone, but you are always alone with your thoughts, day after day, to the rhythm of your stride. It’s this mix of physical challenge and quiet reflection that makes a pilgrimage on this transformational trail so magical.

I told Kasper that I could relate to his control issues. It’s in my DNA, too. But the ultimate control I have is to make a choice — choosing to be there and ready to embrace whatever comes my way. Without that presence of mind, I’d be drowning in misery, thinking it’s horrible, it’s cold, it's wet. But once I acknowledge that I made the decision to be in that place, I know it’s exactly where I want to be.

“Yes,” agreed Janne. “Instead of panicking and being angry in a situation, I try to breathe in my decision and just keep breathing. Because as long as I'm breathing, I'm alive.”

We marched on, in silence for a while. Through the rain, we still heard birdsong and inhaled the fragrance of damp wood and eucalyptus. No cellphones trilling, few cars, even fewer reminders of the modern world. The grey, sodden skies, a roof over everyone’s heads.

Movement is where the magic happens. 

Hope to see you on the road.

Cheers,

David.

P.S. The Vikings are planning a wedding in the woods next year and I’m invited!

Kasper and Janne, interviewed on the Camino de Santiago, May 13, 2025.