There are torches burning all along the breadth and length of Norway this month, commemorating great moments in the history of skiing, which is to say the history of Norway. There is one at the famed Holmenkollen Ski Jump near the center of Oslo, the only place on earth a skier can be awarded the Holmenkollen Medal, a.k.a. the Immortal Garland. There is one in the village of Morgedal at the original home of Sondre Nordheim, known as the father of skiing for the heel bindings and shaped skis he invented nearly a century ago. There is one in Telemark, the county that gave the turn its name. There is one marking the route the Birkebeiner (birch-binding) soldiers followed when they ski-rescued the Crown Prince from kidnappers seven centuries ago.
And of course there is one at the bottom of the giant slalom course in Norefjell, where Stein Eriksen showed the world Norwegians can ski the steep stuff, too.As the Olympic Winter Games return to Norway this month for the first time since the Oslo Games of 1952, Norwegians will pay particular homage to that flame in Norefjell. It was there in '52 that a handsome son of Norway skiing on skis his father built (a pair of Eriksens) welcomed the world to Norway by winning the first gold medal of those Winter Games.
A capacity crowd had barely settled into their seats in Oslo's Bislett Stadium to watch the 1952 Opening Ceremonies when word came over the loud speakers that the giant slalom competition was already completed in Norefjell. And the winner was . . . a Norwegian. He was from Oslo. He was 24 years old. And his name was Stein Eriksen.
Thus was the finest festival in Norwegian skiing history jumpstarted into action. On Eriksen's cue the country's finest sprang to life. By the time they were finished they would set Olympic records for most overall medals and most gold medals (seven) won by a single nation. Norway hasn't soon forgotten the fortnight that saw Eriksen win the giant slalom (and finish a close second in the slalom), that saw Simon Slattvik win the nordic combined, Hallgeir Brenden win the 18-kilometer nordic race, Arnfinn Bergmann win the 90-meter ski jump, and the great Hjalmar Andersen win no less than three speed-skating gold medals.
Eriksen's win took on added meaning because it was the first time a Norwegian, or any Scandinavian for that matter, had won a medal in alpine skiing. The Norwegians were noted jumpers and nordic skiers, to be sure, but the middle Europeans, curators of the Alps, had always owned the downhill races.
But no one had counted on this son of Marius Eriksen, a Norwegian ski champion and gymnast who himself had won an Olympic medal for Norway in the Stockholm Summer Games of 1912. Marius had instructed his two sons, Marius Jr. and Stein, well in the ways of athletics. They did gymnastics in the summers and skied all winter long.
With this blend of tumbling and skiing, nothing much slowed down the Eriksen boys, and that included the German army. When the Nazis invaded Norway during the second World War, Marius Jr. slipped over the border and made his way to Britain, where he signed on with the Royal Air Force and shot down 14 German planes before he was captured and interred in a German prison camp.
Meanwhile, back on the homefront, Stein, then a young teenager, was skiing with more passion than ever. The occupying Germans forbade any skiing competitions among the locals unless Germans were also involved. Stein and his friends did precisely what they were told not to do, regularly avoiding the German troops on their way to bootleg competitions they'd hold deep in the woods.
It wasn't a pampered or sophisticated training camp, but it worked wonders nonetheless. Unshaped by any other mold, Stein became his own brand of skier, as unique as they come.
By the time the 1952 Olympics came along, the world saw just how unique as Eriksen won the giant slalom with his new and controversial reverse shoulder turns. Instead of turning his shoulders in the directions of his skis while rounding a racing gate, Stein would turn his shoulders in the opposite direction, enabling him to cut much closer to the gate and carve a much straighter line than the conventional turns of the day. The reverse shoulder - which would merely revolutionize downhill skiing - seemed to defy gravity and required catlike reflexes, but then that was no problem for Eriksen the gymnast.
So astounding were Stein's breatkthroughs that at the conclusion of the '52 Games he was summoned to King Haakon's palace in Oslo, where he became the first alpine skier to be awarded the Holmenkollen Medal.
Like Norway's Sonja Henie some 16 years before him, Eriksen took his Olympic fame to America, where it paid off handsomely. He became skiing's first international superstar, finally settling in Utah as the director of skiing at first the Park City Ski Area and currently at the Deer Valley Resort. It is at the lodge at Deer Valley that bears his name that his Holmenkollen medal, along with his gold and silver medals from the '52 Games, are on display.
Stein Eriksen is usually on display at Deer Valley too, skiing daily, as he has for most of his 66 years. But this weekend he will not be doing any reverse shoulder turns at the Utah resort he put on the map. In two days, when the Olympic flag is carried into Lillehammer's Lysgardsbakkene Arena Saturday afternoon, Stein Eriksen will help carry it in. Simon Slattvik will be there too, of course, and Hjalmar Andersen and Hallgeir Brenden and Arnfinn Bergman. All the gold medal winners of '52, still going strong, still carrying the flag . . . and the flame.