Letters from a Far Country 8 | Sondre Norheim

The following comes from Bacon Stripper, Geek and all around dirtybaggy dude John Korfmacher, AKA Sphincterboy. These essays appear in the Mouse River Journal in Towner North Dakota.

Letters from a Far Country 8 – Sondre Norheim
John L. Korfmacher
Mouse River Journal

Flakes are flying at last here in Colorado after a long, dry, warm autumn. And at last, hooray hooray, it’s time to think about skiing. The next three Letters will explore the sport’s modern incarnation. I’ve used Weinstock’s Skis and Skiing from the Stone Age to the Birth of the Sport for information on the old days, Fry’s The Story of Modern Skiing for more recent stuff, and a few odds and ends from back issues of Mountain Gazette magazine. Believe it or not, the sport has an important local connection—read on.

*****

Denbigh, North Dakota isn’t much too look at. There are dirt streets, a few homes, a grand but decaying school. If you look hard enough, you might find some crumbling remains of the town’s major industrial facility, a long-defunct brick factory. Add in a few vacant shacks by US Highway 2, and that’s pretty much it for the former Great Northern whistle stop. You’d never guess that someone famous once called the place home.

But a few miles south of town, on a bench not far from the Mouse River, is the grave of a Norwegian immigrant, one Sondre Norheim. His name lacks the rock-star appeal of Paris Hilton or Toby Keith, but every skier knows of him—or should, anyway. For they all owe him a debt: Sondre Norheim is more widely known as the Father of Modern Skiing.

(A large and rather tasteless memorial has been erected to Norheim’s memory forty miles away in Minot, less as a memorial than as a somewhat desperate-feeling attempt at drawing in a few more tourist dollars…but I digress.)

Sondre Norheim did not invent skiing. When he was born in 1825, skiing had already been around, in one form or another, for more than 8000 years. Ancient Nordic cave paintings depict skiers; each individual culture had its own version of over-snow travel, and in the old days there were many variants. Snowshoes preceded skis, and at some point it was discovered that a flat, smooth snowshoe could glide along hard snow with less effort.

Among the first to strap wood to feet and glide along were the Sámi people of the arctic regions of Europe who used many versions of skis. Later, more southerly peoples adopted skis, particularly in the central portions of Scandinavia where hill slopes were not too steep. Technique there required the use of skis of unequal lengths: a long ski for one foot, and a short, fur-covered ski for the other. The skier propelled himself (or herself) by pushing with the short ski and gliding on the other, in the ungainly manner of a skateboarder. (Whether the dialect of these ancient skiers included terms for “dude” and “gnar” is, blessedly, lost to history.)

This type of skiing, ungraceful though it was, was useful: transportation, hunting, and so on. Besides Norskies, the ancestors of the Swedes and Finns were known to be particularly adept. (The canny Swedes have a long history of making rather ugly things serve practical purposes…as any Saab or Volvo owner can attest.)

Skis of equal length developed in the hillier southern and coastal regions of Scandinavia and by Sondre Norheim’s childhood, they had evolved to long, heavy boards, eight feet and more in length. A long pole was used for propulsion, and for braking and directional control on downhills. A single strap in the middle of the ski passed over one’s boot and was cinched down, none too securely, for a binding. Norheim undoubtedly began his explorations on this sort of ski, and had many long winters to think of how they might be improved.

Long, heavy skis require great effort to turn; they want to go straight in the direction they’re pointed, usually downhill at accumulating speed. Norheim’s first innovation—and it was a big one—was to manufacture a pair of skis narrower under the foot than at the ends. This allowed the ski, when weighted to the side, to bend into a gentle arc, carving into the snow surface and turning the skier with much less effort. With the exception of cross-country “track” skis, every modern ski follows a version of Norheim’s original template. In recent years the broad-tip, narrow-waist idea has been carried to an extreme in what are known as “shaped” skis which turn on a dime, float in powder, and carve the hardest packed snow.

Norheim also figured out that the more securely one’s foot was held to the ski, the greater the turning force one could exert. His second, and nearly as important, innovation was the heel strap. (The Sámi were also known to have experimented with a heel strap, but for some reason it never caught on elsewhere. Maybe the Swedish Mafia made ‘em a deal they couldn’t refuse.) He attached a strap—of braided willow at first, later leather, and steel cable today—to the toe binding, which passed around the back of the heel, thus forcing the foot securely under the toe strap. And surely he thought, “Uffda, we’re in for some fun now!”

Turning, and thus safely descending a steep slope, was once a chore, requiring great strength and the ability to drag a heavy pole in the snow. Now, using Norheim’s new skis and innovative heel-strap binding, one could turn by crouching—genuflecting, if you will—with the uphill ski a bit behind the lower one. The downhill foot stayed flat on the ski; the uphill heel rose up, the toe securely pressing the ski. After the turn, the skier stood upright, moved the back foot forward, crouched again, and reversed direction. The effect was graceful…and such are the seeds of revolution. The technique, which eventually took on the name of Norheim’s home region of Telemark, took the skiing public by storm. Skiing passed from being a means of hunters’ transport to being a kick in the pants, and never looked back.

Telemark-style skiing grew wildly popular. Humans being humans, it was not long before debate developed over who was the most accomplished skier. Although military ski competitions date back to the 1700’s, and ski jumping had been around as a competitive sport for some time, few downhill contests had been staged. Norheim, along with Swedish and Finnish enthusiasts, organized a series of competitions. At first they were just for fun and bragging rights, but later they involved some modest prizes. Norheim won many himself, with daring and flamboyant descents of steep courses. Many times, spectators braced themselves for a crash, only to see Sondre roaring past, his excellent skis enabling him to make a last-second turn to avert disaster.

Truth be told, Norheim wasn’t the first to make “modern” skis. Such skis had been available for some time, and it’s likely he borrowed the idea from somewhere else. Norheim’s greatest contribution, perhaps, was achieving such great success at competition with the skis, and manufacturing them to high standards of craftsmanship. In a few short years, everyone wanted a pair of Telemark skis.

At this point, Sondre might have found himself (as do many successful professional skiers) besieged by adoring members of the opposite sex. However, the ladies would have quickly deserted him when they found out he was a) married and b) broke. Norheim was a tenant farmer and constantly teetering on the edge of insolvency, and his competition winnings provided no remedy. Which brings us back to Denbigh. In 1884, at the ripe old age of 59, he and his wife Rannei and four of their six children boarded ship for America. They settled in McHenry County, North Dakota, where Sondre spent his remaining 13 years farming, skiing the prairies, teaching skiing to locals both old and young, and undoubtedly thinking wistfully of the steep, forested hillsides of Telemark.

His skis, and skiing as a joyous sport, have long outlived him. Telemark skis have been used in arctic expeditions, mountaineering, and on millions of frosty, sunlit afternoons in the mountains, by people hooting with laughter or quietly carving turns down powdery slopes. The skis eventually begat modern downhill technique and helped found an enormous recreational industry. After his death, he was memorialized by a speaker at a ceremony in Morgedal:

“He was a skier alone, a complete, ideal, well-integrated man…No one has followed in the tracks of Sondre.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Skiing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.