Cross-country Skiing as a Nordic Media Spectacle

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Summary: Postwar cross-country skiing was dramatically affected by the success of competitors from outside the Nordics, challenging notions of Nordic superiority within the sport. Since 1990, the pure and natural image of cross-country skiing has also been challenged by commercialisation and doping scandals. Although narratives of Nordicness and neighbourly competition between the Nordic countries persist, there have been key developments. Male-centred perceptions of Nordic identity within skiing have changed, particularly given the Nordic countries' success in women’s cross-country skiing over the last 20 years.

The power of the media and recording ski competitions for mass consumption have increasingly affected perceptions of cross-country skiing and Nordicness. Photo: Colourbox.

Skiing has become more and more of a media event throughout the twentieth century, as cross-country skiing as an everyday practice has been diminishing due to urbanisation, and as broadcasting has become more and more important. Although it remains a popular past time, the sport has moved further and further into the realm of media since broadcasts of elite competitions have become increasingly prevalent. Media landscapes have changed enormously since the 1950s, but coverage on radio, television and newspapers is similar in that they have reflected - and even helped to construct - Nordic identity in different ways.

Analysing media coverage gives us a window into how narratives of “Nordicness” are portrayed and challenged. For example, these have included notions of intra-Nordic rivalry between Sweden, Norway and Finland, and shifting perceptions of Norden’s relation to the rest of the world.

Norden’s success rate challenged by Soviet and Alpine skiers, 1950 to 1990

The postwar era of cross-country skiing started much as the interwar era had begun with the Nordic countries dominating the Winter Olympics and the World Ski Championships. Nordic victories were lauded by the Nordic press, who contrasted the sports culture in Norden with that of continental Europe. The press tended to juxtapose the democratic and supposedly nature-oriented Nordic culture with that of the decadent continent, the latter often being encoded with femininity in various ways.

Figure 1: Gold medals are given a value of 4, silver medals 2 and bronze medals 1. *denotes ongoing decade. Copyright: The author.

The Winter Olympics in 1952 were the first games women were allowed to compete in Olympic cross-country events. This photo is from Holmenkollen in Oslo, Norway during the Olympics. Photo: Arne Kjus, Oslobilder (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

The imagined geography of skiing would change, however, in the 1950s, due to two shifts in the cross-country community. First, from 1952, women were allowed to compete in Olympic cross-country events. Then, in 1954, the Soviets entered both the Olympics and the World Championships, and their success throughout the postwar era meant that the days of exclusive Nordic hegemony were gone. Notably, Soviet athletes fared especially well in the women’s races, which cemented new ways of viewing Nordic skiing as a wholly male sport; while the occasional female Nordic victories were celebrated, they were largely treated as anomalies.

Given the cold-war animosity expressed by many in Norden towards the Soviet Union, it is surprising that postwar Soviet athletes could at times be linked to Nordic skiing culture. This becomes especially clear towards the end of the 1960s when the map of cross-country skiing was yet again redrawn, this time by athletes from Europe’s Alpine region, such as the Italian Franco Nones who won the 30k race in the 1968 Olympics. Nordic newspapers treated Nones as an outsider to a much larger extent than his Soviet counterparts. For instance, his being portrayed as the “first non-Nordic Champion” despite previous Soviet victories indicates that the Soviet Union could be perceived as part a “Northern” universe together with Norden. In general, both continental and Soviet ascendancy caused Norden’s share of cross-country medals to dwindle during the 1970s and 80s, causing the press, in turn, to indulge in nostalgic visions of a Nordic past that was forever lost.

1980-2003: The end of the Nordic bloc's successful results

In the grand narratives of Norwegian skiing, the 1980s constitutes a particularly severe period of crisis, despite the country faring only marginally worse than its Nordic neighbours in major events. This anomaly stems firstly from Norwegian successes mainly occurring in women's races, something which was often overshadowed by discussion about the defeats of their male counterparts. Secondly, the winners were predominately Swedes which - according to the logic of Nordic rivalry - made the Norwegian losses particularly hurtful. Lastly, the stark symbolism of absolutely zero Norwegian gold medals in the 1988 Olympics prompted many Norwegians to demand action.

With the 1994 Olympics to be held on home ground in Lillehammer, Norway’s Olympic committee in 1989 launched an expansive program aimed at restoring Norway’s place as a winter sports superpower. As it turned out, these efforts were to bear fruit earlier than expected as Norway went on to win a record number of 20 medals at the 1992 Winter Olympics, nine of which were in cross-country skiing. Similar success at the home games in Lillehammer meant the period embodied a particularly high point in the history of Norwegian self-perception. This was also spurred on by what was going on outside the field of sports and the general optimism in Norway about the country's economy and culture.

Figure 2. Gold medals are given a value of 4, silver medals 2 and bronze medals 1. *denotes ongoing decade. Copyright: The author.

Unfortunately for Swedes and Finns, the Norwegian cross-country revival did not translate into a Nordic revival. For Sweden especially, the 1990s were akin to a dark age, and defeats to both Norway and the Alpine-upstart nations reinforced the perception of Sweden falling behind its western neighbours and a loosely defined “Europe” after the fall of the Berlin wall. For Finland, disaster struck when, during the 2001 World Ski Championships hosted on home soil in Lahti, anti-doping staff and Finnish police forces revealed that almost all the top Finnish ski stars had been using illegal, performance-enhancing drugs. While Finnish audiences expressed unprecedented grief and shame over the revelations, the shockwaves also spread to Norway and Sweden. Doping was not an unknown phenomenon in the world of cross-country skiing, but a neighbour being caught red-handed clashed heavily with the perceived links between cross-country skiing and an innocent and sound Nordic sports culture. For years to come, Finland completely lost its status as a major cross-country skiing nation - especially for the men. Instead, for the following 20 years, male intra-Nordic rivalry primarily played out between the Swedes and Norwegians.

2004-2024: Nordic hegemony without equilibrium

The Finnish Lahti debacle was soon followed - and arguably overshadowed by - new doping scandals during the 2002 Olympics when Spaniard Johann Mühlegg and Russians Larissa Lazutina and Olga Danilova were caught with performance-enhancing substances in their blood samples after having won Olympic medals. These scandals enabled Swedes and Norwegians to position doping firmly as something “non-Nordic”, but still produced uproar and grief among the sport’s Nordic fans. Both in and outside Norden, many believed that the sport urgently needed to change, lest it would perish.

The mass-start specialist, Norwegian Petter Northug receiving a silver medal on the first day of 2011 World Ski Championships in Oslo, Norway. Photo: Wikipedia, CC BY 2.0.

In an attempt to reach new TV viewers, the International Ski Federation introduced mass-start. While most races throughout the 20^th century had been decided through individual timing, with each athlete starting 30 seconds after each other with their own clock running, mass-start instead saw all competitors starting at the same time, with the first one to cross the finish line winning the race. This practice makes it easier for television viewers to follow and understand the competition. The downside of mass-start, however, is that it makes it harder for racers to break away from so-called pelotons, meaning that the races often stay close and uneventful up until the final stretch, when explosivity rather than stamina tend to decide the outcome. As such, mass-start runs counter to notions of perseverance and individual agency in the skier – attributes that are allegedly emblematic of a Nordic (male) skiier, and it was indeed in Norden that mass-start found its strongest detractors. The International Ski Federation, however, remained adamant that mass-starts were the future of cross-country skiing, and openly cited its interest in attracting viewers from continental Europe as the reason.

Ironically, however, mass-starts did not “de-nordicise” the outcome of the races. Instead, mass-start races in the 2010s would be dominated by Nordic skiers as Norway continued its hegemony and Sweden started to win medals again during the 2000s and 2010s. Especially from 2009 and onwards, the rivalry between various Swedes and Norwegian mass-start specialist Petter Northug became a recurring feature at championships, and while it was the Norwegians who mostly emerged victorious, it sparked an enormous interest in both countries.

Nordicisation of women’s cross-country skiing

While Nordic and Norwegian dominance in men’s cross-country skiing during the 2010s was not a novelty, the results in the women’s races were truly unprecedented. The Soviet Union and its successor states had remained the superpowers of women’s cross-country skiing up until the doping scandals of 2002. After that year, however, Norway in general and skiers Marit Björgen and Therese Johaug in particular began to dominate the podiums like no other female athletes - Nordic or otherwise - had done before. Then, in 2010, Sweden, previously an underling in women's cross-country skiing, got its first gold medal in 40 years. Charlotte Kalla’s victory would pave the way for a new, even more successful generation of female cross-country skiers. Duels between Swedish and Norwegian women skiers feature heavily in media narratives today, and Nordic rivalry can no longer be said to be a feature exclusive to the men. The femininization of Nordic skiing, or rather the Nordicisation of women’s cross-country skiing, is thus challenging and appropriating age-old visions of the connection between skiing, competition, gender and Nordic identity.

Cross-country skiing lends meaning to Nordic identity

Forcefully embodying notions of nature, history, geography and physicality through media narratives due to its historic roots, cross-country skiing today lends meaning to Nordic identity, perhaps even to a larger extent than some of the sport’s proponents might wish. For those who would like the sport to emerge as a more global phenomenon, it must be frustrating to see the trend of increasing Nordic wins in the 21^st century. Whether this re-emergence is due to doping revelations, Norwegian training programmes or simply a lack of interest elsewhere remains debatable, but it cannot likely be explained without taking the constitutive potential of Nordic rivalry into account. Put bluntly, it seems that the yearning to become the most 'Nordic' by defeating your neighbour in cross-country skiing provides Nordic countries with a particular kind of impetus that other nations may lack.

Media history sheds light on contemporary ideas.

This article is published as a response to readers' interest in Nordic identity and popular culture.