Hands clasped behind my back, I crouched and waited for the signal. My heart paradiddled and my palms frothed.
I was at the top of the infamous Tower of Babel, the oldest ski jump in the world and the major landmark of Oslo.
Then the green light went on, I felt a hand tap me on my back and I was off down the 90-metre ramp, picking up speed all the way, the snow flashing away under the tips of my ‘virtually’ parallel skis.
As I picked up speed and the snow flashed under my not-quite-parallel, brown brogues, my knees knocked under my not-so-aerodynamic cords and my heart pounded as various body parts palpitated in a rather embarrassing manner.
I looked up and saw the end of the jump, bent forward and hands by my side like a Buckingham Palace sentry with bad lumbago, I lifted off.
I soared into the nordic sky, the air-conditioned air whistling past me electronically.
My face impersonating Edvard Munch’s The Scream, I was travelling 57mph and aimed in the rough direction of the Oslofjord. I was airborne only for 12 seconds and came back down softly to earth to rapturous applause and universal Scandinavian adulation. Albeit piped and artificial.
I was glad and grateful that no bones had been broken. Which was hardly surprising since I hadn’t moved.
But I had achieved an ambition; I had jumped over Oslo. From the Holmenkollen, the most feared jump in the universe. Albeit the virtual version.
In the world’s oldest ski museum (1923), there is a simulator that offers a Sensuround beginners’ course in ski jumping. If the jump itself looks like a giant bedpan or massive Chinese soup spoon, the simulator looks like the front of a Tube train.
In it, you can also experience a virtual-reality, eye-level view of a top, downhill skier shooting down a World Cup black run, bumping over moguls and bombing around corners on one leg cheered on all the way by cow bells.
My face impersonating Edvard Munch’s The Scream, I was travelling 57mph and aimed in the rough direction of the Oslofjord
Just as skiing developed for practical reasons; being the only way to get anywhere in Norway during the winter, jumping became necessary to get over rough terrain. Ski jumping pre-dates Eddie Edwards by over a 1,000 years and first became popular in the boulder-strewn region of Telemark in north Norway. The Vikings were apparently keen ski jumpers.
The first recorded jump was by a certain adrenaline-charged Trysil Knut, who jumped over 12 of the King’s soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder. To make things just that little bit more interesting, all the soldiers were wearing traditional Viking headgears and the traditional, curled horns on their helmets meant that the jumper had to get it right. In the old days, you were more likely to be emasculated rather than eliminated.
Modern ski jumping (originally, height was just as important as distance) was invented in 1840 by Sondre Norheim, who is said to have jumped 90 feet. This remained the unofficial record until 1862, when the men of Telemark (not Kirk Douglas) organised the first ever competition. They only had a flimsy toe-strap for a binding but still managed 65 feet. The first cross-country took place in Tromso in 1843.
The first big ski-jump event, held in Oslo in 1879, attracted a crowd of 10,000.
The Holmenkollen was first built in 1892 and has been rebuilt 19 times.
The longest recorded jump is 126.5 metres, which is probably the amount of video tape which went into the simulating machine.
Four thousand years of ski jumping is documented in the museum. Exhibits include equipment used by polar explorers, Nansen and Amundsen. As well as antique sledges and the world’s oldest ski, which dates to AD600 and was discovered in 1906.
But the ski-jump simulator is the star attraction. It makes a star of everyone. And provides Oslo’s biggest high.