There was a war, and a baby who was to be king had to be saved. There were mountains, treacherous ones, and about 60 miles to go to evade the well-funded enemy. Torstein Skevla and Skjervald Skrukka, cross-country skiers who surely would have been Olympic caliber, took matters into their own hands. They skied and skied.
They didn’t know they were completing the first Birkebeiner race. All they knew was that they were saving the life of a prince.
That was 788 years ago. “Of course, for Europeans that’s not so long ago,” Rolf Kjarnsli said.
Kjarnsli wasn’t there in 1206, although he speaks about it as if he was. Kjarnsli, 70, is the nexus between Birkebeiner races past and present. He’s the chronicler of the ancient race-has literally written the book on it. He’s been a participant in 39 of the re-enacted 58-kilometer races held every March from Rena to Lillehammer.
He’s even twice raced in the American Birkebeiner, which is set for Saturday in Hayward, Wis., 10,000 miles and seven centuries away from the first race.
Earlier this week, Kjarnsli, totally bald, fit as a classic Hardanger fiddle, was sitting in a cafe near the Birkebeiner finish line. It’s the same finish line that has been used for Olympic cross-country ski races. It is at the top of a hill overlooking Lillehammer. It is a historic hill.
“It is not mythology, it is fact,” Kjarnsli said. “There’s no doubt about it. And, yes, generally their feet were cold.”
He was speaking of Skevla and Skrukka. They were “Birkebeiners,” which was an underdog faction during a Norwegian civil war. They got their names because they were too poor to cover their legs with anything but birch wrappings. They used twigs or ropes as bindings for their skis. Their race was not against the clock, or not as a group of 9,000 skiers, as will race the Norwegian Birkie on March 20.
There was then an 18-month-old boy named Hakon. His father, heir to the Norwegian throne, had died two years earlier, soon after meeting a woman named Inga, from Varteig, which is south of Lillehammer. Their meeting quickly created little Haakon, or Haakon Haakonsson. (If this sounds as intriguing as the Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding dance, just view raciness as part of winter sports tradition.)
The Baglers, or supporters of the church leaders at the time, wanted to control the nation. But the Birkebeiners would have nothing of it. They carried little Haakon on their backs from Lillehammer to Osterdalen. It was Christmas Day. There was a storm. They had to stay in a shed in the mountains. They fed the baby snow. They succeeded, and Haakon went on to become one of Norway’s great kings. His mother “Inga From Varteig,” became a powerful leader, too, Kjarnsli said.
That event eventually led to Lillehammer being the only town in the world with a skier on its coat of arms. It also eventually led to the ski clubs of Lillehammer and nearby Rena pondering a symbolic “pilgrimage” and re-enactment of the great escape.
In 1932, when skiing was still a major form of transportation and communication in Norway, a man named Haakon Lie came up with the modern Birkebeiner idea, said Kjarnsli. It was to have skiers cross the Birkebeiner trail to honor the history of it all. The actual path was too long, so they fudged and set up the course from Rena to Lillehammer. Food stations were set up and racers were allowed to carry a backpack, even encouraged.
“It was as if everyone were carrying that little child on their back,” said Kjarnsli, a retired Lillehammer high school teacher, who studied at Oxford University. “The pack was a symbol.”
In 1932, 157 men began the first Birkebeinerrennet, or race; 155 finished. This year, 9,000 skiers from across the world are expected, including about 1,000 women. The number of racers has risen every year since ’32, and has become more of a citizens’ race than an elite race because most of the world’s top cross-country racers are busy on the World Cup circuit.
But it has veterans, such as Kjarnsli, who have participated so many times. He’ll reach 40 races next month. One man has raced it 50 times. You race in the Birkie, you get a pin. Forty pins is a lot.
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“I always feel pretty good at the finish,” said Kjarnsli, 70, of racing Birkies. “I feel good knowing it’s finished.”
He does find it odd, though, that there are copy-cat races, such as the American Birkie. He thinks nations should develop their own indigenous races. For instance, there’s a Japanese Birkie and a Canadian Birkie. As he spoke, he lifted his gray down jacket-he’s a Winter Olympic volunteer during the Games-and revealed a 1981 “Australian Birkebeiner” T-shirt.
“I told them they should call their race something else,” Kjarnsli said. And they did. Now, Australia’s August long-distance race is called the Kangaroo Hoppet.
No race, be it in Wisconsin, Japan or down under, could match the most famous Birkebeinerrennet. It was 1936. Kjarnsli, who was 8 years old at the time, heard all about it.
Reidar Inglingstad was leading as he came over the hills into Lillehammer. He was 5 yards ahead of Oscar Gjoeslien, and pumping his arms as his wood skis glided towards paydirt. There was a welcome sign about 100 yards before the finish. Inglingstad stopped, thinking the sign marked the end.
Gjoeslien kept going and won.
“It was the most dramatic episode in the history of the race,” Kjarnsli said. Or, at least, the most dramatic since those two other guys grabbed a prince, skied him to freedom and started this Birkie thing worldwide.