Paper short abstract:

The report is intended to analyse the Hill of Crosses as an most important center for pilgrimage, folk piety, Catholic Church and tourism activities in modern Lithuania. The main focus is on the analysis of results that obtain hierarchy of such models of the pilgrimage to the Hill of Crosses.

Paper long abstract:

The Hill of Crosses (North-West Lithuania) appeared as a subject of folk piety and eventually became one of the most important centers for pilgrimage and Catholic Church activities in modern Lithuania. On the basis of the historical data and material collected during the ethnographic field studies, the report is intended the analysis models of the pilgrimage to the Hill of Crosses at the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century. The erection of crosses on the Hill was started in mid-nineteenth century. In the first decades of the 20th century, when over a thousand crosses appeared on the hill, the Hill was included in the area of Church activities. During the Soviet period the continuously removed crosses. In the period of the Soviet system collapse the mass erection of crosses had begun. Therefore, in the late 20th century the Church resumed its activities in the Hill of Crosses and started organising the church feast there. The report includes a discussion of the motives for the erection of crosses, but the focus is on analyzing the results obtained in the course of a study performed during by the author pilgrimage travel in 2013 to the Hill of Crosses. Ethnographic materials enable us to conclude that the Hill is of utmost importance for folk piety, church and tourism. Crosses used to integrate pilgrimages on the basis of religion and became the means of preserving his religious and national identity in particular in soviet and postsoviet time.