Building up speed as they ski down a real or constructed hill, ski jumpers then soar off the end, remain
airborne as long as possible, and land as firmly and
stylishly as they can. The attraction both to performers
and to spectators is this prospect of humans flying in
the air. The risks mean that a certain amount of psychological strength is necessary to perform a decent
ski jump. Hence, ski jumping, even in the countries of
origin, never has been a large participant sport. Still, as
a spectator sport ski jumping holds a firm grip on people and draws large crowds, especially in Finland, Austria, Norway, and Japan.
History
Ski jumping as an activity first appeared in the Nordic
region. Ski jumping as a sport seems to be a more specific Norwegian invention. The early sagas and legends
of the Norse Viking era suggest similar challenges.
Around the turn of the 18th century, military ski companies apparently started jumping.
The first formal jumping competitions were most often combined events, either downhill with a terminating
jump, or cross-country with one or more jumps. A race
in Trysil in 1862 was the first known pure jumping competition,a trend that continued.During this decade,also,
attempts to formalize the activity into a sport began
with races in the capital at Kristiania (present-day Oslo).
The townspeople were undoubtedly impressed with
what they saw—and wanted to control it: they made
themselves referees and evaluators of how the sport was
to develop into ski-idrµt, the concept of sport as a path to
both physical and moral development. Ski jumping
started to appear in other countries in the 1870s.
Ski jumping came to Sweden through Norwegian
soldiers posted in Stockholm as part of the union military system. Here the alleged first “international ski
jumping contest” took place in 1886. The spread continued to Finland, where skiers rather hesitantly took
up the “Norwegian habit” around the turn of the century, and the sport also spread into the Alps. Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia also embraced the
sport after 1900.As early as the middle of the 19th century, Norwegian immigrants took jumping to North
America. By the beginning of the 20th century ski
jumps had been performed in such remote areas as
Australia and South Africa as well.
In the final decades of the 19th century, Norwegians
came to view ski jumping as the unrivaled national
sport, part of Norway’s need to define itself and its culture apart from Sweden. Skiing in general and ski
jumping in particular stood out as characteristically
Norwegian.Accordingly, one of the first official appearances by Norway’s newly imported king and queen after they had arrived late in the autumn of 1905 was at
the Holmenkollen ski-jumping festival.
Ski jumping has become central to the sports life of
Finland and Austria. Other nations have also introduced changes; in North America, the height of the
jump is also measured.
Constructed arenas became more common around
the turn of the 19th century, and since the 1970s ski
jumping has also been practiced in the summertime
on artificial surfaces such as porcelain and plastic.
Rules and Play
Referees evaluate the style of the jumper in the air and
while landing and award points accordingly. Generally,
length of jump has counted more than style, although
in 1996 landing style still counts as much as before.
A ski-jumping hill consists of four parts: (1) the inrun, (2) the jump itself (3) the landing (unnarenn),
which is also the steepest part of the hill; and (4) the
end of the run, or the halt.
Technique and Equipment
Jumping skis developed around the 1880s when the
event was separated from racing, enabling the skiers to
change from jumping to cross-country skis or the other
way around. Jumping skis became heavier, thicker, and
longer, and specialized imported hickory replaced
homegrown wood. Bindings, boots, jumping-suits, and
wax underwent similar changes, particularly with increased emphasis on length and winning. The fiberglass revolution was accompanied by a centralizing of
the ski-manufacturing industry in the hands of a few
Central European firms.
Modern equipment makes for longer, more aerodynamic jumps and larger hills. Still, the ideal jump
should always seek to cover an optimal distance, but
also harmonize the take-off, the flight, and the landing.
The original Telemark “drawn-up” style, with knees
drawn up under the skier, was performed by legendary
jumper Sondre Nordheim (1825–1897)—in which the
jumper drew his skis up under himself (as in today’s
freestyle skiing). This was presumably an attempt to
increase the length of the jump (or to impress the spectators). First, in the “upright style,” the skiers stood up
straight during the jump, arms along the side. As the
hills grew larger, more aerodynamic styles forced their
way in. A further development, the “Kongsberg bend,”
was notable for a marked bend in the hip, arms out,
and controlled arm rotations.
After World War II the “Finn style”introduced a new
marked step and increased emphasis on aerodynamics. Into the 1960s the dominant way of jumping was
arms along the side, parallel skis, and an ever more
aerodynamic posture in the air. The next new invention
came with a shift of the sitting position in the in-run,
promoted by the East Germans in the early 1970s,
changing arms position from front to back. The last big
innovation was the “V-style,” introduced by the Swede
Jan Bokløv (1966–) in 1986. His revolutionary idea
was, instead of jumping with parallel skis, to jump with
the skis spread in a V-shape (seen from behind). This
style did not dominate the jumps immediately, but today it is the rule in competition. The immediate result
of V-style jumps was longer jumps and fewer style
points, since it broke the ideal of even parallel skis.
Style shifts have engendered controversy, chiefly between innovators and those favoring traditional methods. According to traditional Norwegian idretts (sport)
ideology, ski jumping should not be artificially constructed acrobatics but a test of the skier’s ability to
meet and conquer natural obstructions in the terrain.
This ideology has steadily eroded, but some elements
have survived, barely, in that ski jumping remains an
aesthetic sport: the skier who has the longest jumps
does not necessarily win the competition.
Modern Competitive Jumping
Ski jumping has grown significantly as a modern competitive sport, as nations introduced their own events.
Meanwhile, the Olympic Winter Games had grown
from their inception in 1924 to rival the prestige of
Holmenkollen, and in 1926 the FIS inaugurated a world
championship in Nordic skiing (jumping, cross-country, and combination).
In the early years Norway dominated the international scene, but Finland, Austria, Germany—especially the former East Germany—and Czechoslovakia
have outjumped the Norwegians for quite some time.
Today, world-class jumpers come from nations as varied as Japan, Italy, Sweden, France, Slovenia, Switzerland, Poland, and Russia, as well as from ski-jumping
strongholds in Canada and the United States.
—MATTI GOKSØYR
Bibliography: Allen, E. John B. (1993) From Skisport to
Skiing. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Bø,
Olav. (1993) Skiing throughout History. Oslo: Det Norske
Samlaget.