Before attending one of the busiest and craziest years of Holmenkollens history the class travelled to the Arctic Museums on the shores of Oslo. I’m glad Len made the suggestion to check out these museums as I learnt a lot about the amazing challenges Norwegian explorers had attempting to reach both poles.
Daylight was against us as we drove 30 minutes to Holmenkollen, we knew we were close when passing the iconic ski jump that was recently built in 2010. We gathered all our gear for the weekend and made our way down in a thigh deep snow forest attempting to look for flat ground. Couple of us went around to the fellow Norwegian campers asking for a spare shovel as we found an excellent spot close to the main event of Saturday, the men’s 50 km cross country. After tirelessly digging, packing down snow and eventually setting up our tents we all sat around our dug out campfire pit all happy to be there! Curious to explore the area we learnt Norwegians were absolutely crazy about this ski festival, many had been camped here days before creating amazing tributes to past and present skiers whilst others literally made a home away from home. After almost pulling a groin dancing with Norwegians in both icy and thigh deep snow I walked back to our campfire and chilled out with the remaining internationals still up; not knowing what to expect tomorrow.
Waking up Saturday morning to the DJ booth blasting music at 8 am you knew today was going to be a different kind of day. Marijn, Brad, Tom and I all were just as shocked us each other getting out of the tent, there was already 5 times more people walking around than last night. We all had breakfast together witnessing more and more people flooding into the area bringing along Norwegian flags, laughter and a lot of alcohol. The woman’s ski jump was the first event of the afternoon so we walked couple kilometres down the road to the main event. We first walked up to the top of the viewing platform by the ski jump, it was absolutely insane to imagine people ski down this gradient and then literally fly through the air. To actually witness this was a spectacle, I asked a Polish supporter next to me how it was scored. He explained that the score system was judged by 5 judges and scoring from 0 to 20 points. It was quite unusual as there was more Polish supporters than Norwegians in the event itself, that is until we returned back to our campsite.
After walking back up the hill to our campsite the magnitude of people was almost overwhelming. I can only explain it to be complete madness; a mixture of drunken chaos and cheerful patriotism. We instantly discovered our campsite was in the perfect location for the Cross Country Ski event as it looked over the course and the campsites bellow. This was a double edged sword as we couldn’t recognise our campsite as it was now overrun by Norwegians, using our campfire area and all remaining space filled with people cooking food. We were all in shock as in every direction there was someone or something amazing happening. Whilst attempting to re-peg our tent because someone clearly fell on it and I witnessed someone taking a piss on it so I gave up on salvaging it, instead I got some beers and got amongst everyone cheering and having a genuine good time. As the skiers flew past all flags swung harder and Norwegian cheering maxed out to another sound level. Seeing Norwegians in there traditional clothing laughing and cheering whilst not bothered by the thigh deep snow or the minus weather conditions, I was humbled to be at a special event like this.
Couple of us returned back to the main event to watch the men’s ski jump where now the Polish supporters were still the majority. The Norwegians still won this event jumping at 110 metres however this didn’t stop the Polish supporters having a great time singing and dancing. Afterwards we walked around the stalls to find chocolates, cheeses and much more being handed out for free! It was this free food that was my dinner for the night. Coming back to the back campsite much of the crowds had left which made for a rubbish filled forest. We took full advantage of the free wood and free beers forgotten behind. This was the only element of Holmenkollen that I didn’t particularly like was that there was so much rubbish around, however we did our part of ‘Leave no Trace’ and cleaning our area.
Waking up the next morning was the first time I’ve bivy outside in Norway, this was because our tent was mostly collapsed. I was warm but quite uncomfortable as Tom and I were next to each other in the inclined fire pit. That morning we discovered that Lila’s ski’s were somehow snapped, multiple ski poles were missing and a couple tent poles also snapped from yesterdays antics. This was honestly a good result as I thought more was going to be broken and or missing. We all packed up fairly quickly and effectively as we had still had a 5 hour journey back home to Kristiansand.
Holmenkollen was an event I’d heard about from a lot of Norwegians, it didn’t disappoint what so ever. This was truly one of the most cultural Norwegian experiences you could have and yes we made some mistakes in where we camped but I wouldn’t have taken anything back for the experiences we all had.