Letters in a hand

It was 1973, and Beitostølen was doing its worst. The wind pulled at anything not tied down, and the snow came so thick you could barely see your own ski pole in front of you. Somewhere below Bitihorn, the peak above the mountain village of Beitostølen, a crown prince of 36 was skiing beside Halvdan Larsen.

Halvdan was deafblind. Crown Prince Harald was his companion in Ridderrennet, the Knights' Race, and in that weather the two of them had run out of ways to talk. The Crown Prince could not shout loud enough. Halvdan could not see where they were going.

So the Crown Prince took his hand and wrote letters in his palm. One at a time. Halvdan answered quickly, and out of the letters came a conversation, about sport, about the outdoors, about being out in weather like that. Erling Stordahl, the founder of the movement and a man who had seen most things, later called it "the most remarkable example of human communication of all time".

All the way down from Valdresflya

He had been in it from the very first stride. When King Olav opened the first Ridderrennet in April 1964, he was not content to send the first two participants off from the top of Valdresflya, the high mountain pass above Beitostølen. He put on skis himself. So did the Crown Prince. Both of them skied the whole 25 kilometres down to the village.

It was not a photo opportunity. It was two men on skis in a race somebody else had dreamed up, and they set a standard that has held for more than sixty years.

Kill me, my lord king

The evening after that first race there was a banquet. Erling Stordahl's wife Anna had mobilised the housewives of Øystre Slidre, and in came some twenty different rømmegrøter, the sour cream porridge Norwegians keep for occasions. Good manners said you tasted all of them. The royal party had good manners.

Afterwards Crown Prince Harald is said to have quoted an old Norwegian line at Stordahl, dry as you like. "Kill me, my lord king, but not with porridge."

It is a small story. But it says something about why people at Beitostølen remember him warmly. He turned up properly, even when his stomach paid for it.

He said yes at once

In November 1970 the Crown Prince formally opened Beitostølen Healthsports Centre, the place where Stordahl's idea had taken root. When King Olav died in January 1991, Harald agreed at once to take over as Ridderrennet's royal patron after his father.

Together with Queen Sonja he attended several races in the years that followed, among them the 30th Ridderrennet in 1993.

Four generations in the same track

The royal family has skied this course. They have felt it in their legs.

Queen Sonja was a companion three times, the first in 1979 for Aud Berntsen, when she was still Crown Princess. When she asked to slow down for a moment to blow her nose, Aud, rather out of breath, put her right. "Blow your nose on your mitten. That is what I do." Aud won her class.

Princess Märtha Louise skied with Kjetil Korbu Nilsen and admitted afterwards that the conversation had dried up somewhere around halfway. King Haakon, then Crown Prince, was companion to the blind elite skier Helge Flo over twenty kilometres, and he was honest about it along the way. "I have no chance of keeping up." Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus have handed out medals in the finish area.

Four generations in the same track, and it started with King Olav and his son in 1964.

Today

King Harald V died on 28 August, aged 89. Today his funeral is in Oslo Cathedral, and a whole country stands still for one minute.

Our chair, Tove Linnea Brandvik, is in the cathedral on behalf of Foreningen Ridderrennet, our participants, our companions and every one of our volunteers.

"He could have watched from the stands. He chose to ski the course, and he made no fuss about it. That is the lesson we carry with us", says Martin Sletten, secretary general.

Today we do not remember the throne. We remember the hand.

Thank you for skiing the course with us, King Harald.