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374
IV. EDUCATION AND MENTAL CULTURE IN SWEDEN.
health-giving and exhilarating pastimes in ever widening circles of the population.
To Sweden belongs the honour of having originated the Northern Games. The
programme as originally projected was a comprehensive one, viz. to give an
adequate picture of the very numerous forms of sports and games now practised
in Scandinavia during winter, and to afford an exhibition of those qualities of
hardihood and determination which the practice of winter sports specially
cultivates. The season chosen for the proposed international athletic meetings was
winter, inasmuch as it is then that Scandinavian sports chiefly flourish.
The first occasion on which the idea of holding Northern Games could be
realized was in February 1901, with rendezvous at Stockholm. The result was
extremely gratifying to the promoters, for the meeting, extending over 9 days,
proved a great success and presented features of exceeding interest to all lovers
of athletics. The number of competitors from the three Scandinavian countries
and from Finland was very large, while Germany, Austria, Holland, and England
were also represented in the competitions in such sports as climatic conditions
in those countries admit of being practised by their inhabitants.
The public in general, not only in the capital but also in the provinces,
eagerly followed the progress of the competitions; the number of spectators was
large, and the keen interest they took in the proceedings brought them into
touch with the competitors, whereby a genuinely popular and national character
was given to the meeting as a whole. As stated above, the contests were
continued day after day for no less than nine days. No alteration had to be made
in the programme drawn up, its very numerous items being successfully carried
out, irrespective of the weather prevailing or of any other circumstance.
Scandinavian sports and pastimes were on this occassion placed in evidence
in a way never before thought of, much less realized. The following is a list of
the contests and exhibitions embraced in the programme of the meeting.
a) Skating. Figure-skating; Speed-skating, including two world-championships,
one carried off by a Swede, the other by a Finn. — b) Skid-running. Flat
races over distances of 30 kilometers, 60 kilometers, and even of 255
kilometers, the latter being a bidstick race; the bidstick was conveyed the whole
distance from Falun to Stockholm in three sections, sets of three messengers,
one for each section, competing for the prize; the winning three covered
the 255 kilometers in 19 hours 38 minutes. The competition in skid-jumping
produced some magnificent performances. — c) Races on horseback, now in
snow-storm, now in sunshine, now with the thermometer 10—20 degrees below
zero (Celsius), and with deep snow on the ground. These were among the
finest items on the programme of the meeting. The competitors were
exclusively Swedes, for the most part officers in the army. They displayed
admirable endurance, courage, and confidence. The contests included a flat race,
a steeplechase, and »following the hounds». — d) Skid-drioing with horses.
This was a novelty and it was executed both in the form of an 80 kilometer
race between a number of competitors, themselves on skids but each drawn by a
horse which he had to drive, and in that of a military exhibition, where a
company of infantry men on skids were drawn along by a company of cavalry men. —
e) Skid-driving with reindeer. — f) Trotting-matches on the ice. These
afforded a picture of genuine Scandinavian life and surroundings. — g)
Kick-sledge-driving with horses. This was another of the novelties of the
programme. — h) Kick-sledge contests. The Kick-sledge, consisting of a chair
on very long runners, is propelled by a person standing behind the chair and
kicking with a spike-shod boot on the frozen surface of snow on the roads.
It is very common in Norrland as a means of locomotion. — i) Ice-yachting
and Skate-sailing. Despite a thick coating of snow on the sheet of ice
set apart for these contests, they were pushed through, a special gang of
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