This assignment is about Holmekollen ski festival. Unfortunatelly because of my ankle injury I skip this trip. But I will tell you what is my personal opinion and insights about this ski festival.
First of all, I want to introduce what is that:
The Holmekollen ski festival  is a traditional annual Nordic skiing event in Holmekollen, Oslo, Norway The full official name of the event is Holmekollen FIS World Cup Nordic. There is competitions such as:
30km Women Cross-Country skiing,
10km Women Cross-Country skiing,
5km Women Cross-Country skiing,
50km Men Cross-Country skiing,
15km Men Cross-Country skiing,
Ski jumping Men
Ski jumping Women
Nordic combained (it’s a winter sport in which athletes compete in cross-country siing and ski jumping. There is no women’s competition sanctioned by the International Ski federation.)
and more…

History

It takes place in March and has been arranged every year since 1892, except for 1898 and during WWII (1941–1945). The event is arranged by Skiforeningen and takes place at Holmekollen national arena and ski jumping hills Holmenkollenbakken and Midstubakken. In 2009 Holmenkollen was under renovation and replacing races were held in Trondheim for cross country skiing and biatlon, and in Vikersund for ski jumping and nordic combine.

In 2011, Holmenkollen hosted the Fis World Ski Championships and there was no separate Holmenkollen Ski Festival. Previously Holmekollen had hosted World Championships in 1930, 1966, 1982 , and it also hosted the Nordic skiing events of 1952 Winter Olympics that were also that year’s World Championships. Holmenkollen has also hosted biathlon World Championship events in 1986, 1990, 1999, 2000, and 2002, and will host it again in 2016.

My insights and my opinion about ski festival and popularity of skiing :

In my opinion skiing in Norway is so popular because, as you know Norway have quite beatiful and difficult to travel terrain so long time ago it was one of the best travel gear, they used this for traveling for hunting, later it became as a sport it was a lot of world championships and other big ski related competition and eventually in 1952 Norway had a winter olympic games.

Also it’s very nice to see that this sport event attract thousands of people in Holmekollen and Millions people watching games in TV or internet streams. I think it is one more thing what Norwegians can be proud of their country and it’s part of Norway identity.

Comparing to my Country

Norwegians are crazy about skiing like Lithuanians are crazy about basketball. These sports are in our blood. In Norway they say that kids born with skis, in Lithuania we say that kids born with basketball ball in their hands.

In Lithuania we don’t have famous ski jumpers or Cross-country skiing athletes,maybe because that our highest mountain is only more than 300m and we have only three skiing areas or maybe because of other consequences but we have one very perspective biathlon athlete Vytautas Strolia and I truly believe that one day he will bring trophies from international competitions.