Skiing has been practised in various forms and shapes for a long time, undergoing âmany improvements and almost metamorphosesâ while spreading through the world.1 But it was in the postâWorld War II era that the fledgling sport with its emerging ski clubs and infrastructure developed into a multibillion-dollar industry. New models of purpose-built ski resorts attracted increasing numbers of visitors to mountainous regions all across the world, helping to transform skiing from a means of transport and later an elitist recreational pursuit into a common leisure practice which became a âkeystone of middle-class identityâ.2
The rapid diffusion of Alpine skiing at the time benefited from the development of mass leisure cultures across the skiable world and reflected general cultural and socio-economic trends set in motion with the emergence of consumer societies in the industrial economies in the nineteenth century and accelerating during the postâWorld War II boom period. These developments, marked by an enormous increase in income and leisure time in Western countries, coincided with the rise of mass media, and particularly television in the 1960s, as a central technology for nation-building, education, and entertainment. Much research has been done on the development of leisure activities during the postwar years but the commercial and cultural success of skiing at the time has largely remained under the radar of scholarship. This is despite the fact that the processes associated with the popularisation of skiing can offer useful insights into the global developments in consumption and leisure industries in the mid twentieth century. A focus on the popularisation of skiing at that moment in history allows a reflection over the dynamics of the formation of transnational cultures and the reinvention of local environmentsâwith some recognisable commonalities but also markedly different forms and expressions. To account for some of these historical and local dynamics of the postwar skiing cultures, this collection focuses on a selection of ski resort examples, revealing the importance of the transcultural exchange and flows in the increasingly mediated consumer markets.
A Short History of Skiing: The Case of Transformation and Translation
Skiing has always been transnational, both as a mundane, useful practice as well as sport. Long before the scholarly discussions about globalisation, the practice of skiing was found in different parts of the world constantly changing and reinventing its form. Artefacts found in Russia, Finland, Sweden, and Norway indicate that some forms of skiing were practised as early as 6000 BC.3 Ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese literary sources document the practice of skiing in many different regions of the world, from Mongolia to the Caucasus.4 At that time, people used skis mainly as a means of transportation in snow-covered terrain.
The nineteenth century brought great changes in the practice of skiing. By the 1840s, cross-country skiing and ski jumping developed into sports and leisure activities in Norway, used not only for transport by country folks but also increasingly undertaken by city dwellers.5 Starting from Norway, the practice of skiing as a form of recreation spreadâquasi in the baggage of Norwegian immigrantsâinto different parts of the world. Norwegian gold miners exported their skiing practices and habits to as far as California in the United States, or New South Wales in Australia, where the local population took them up. In his âHistorical Dictionary of Skiingâ, E. John B. Allen describes that within only a couple of years after the introduction of skiing to California, âgold rush miners and their ladies, having learned from Norwegian immigrants would be racing down the Sierra Mountainsâ.6 The similar happened in Canada, where Norwegian skier Herman Smith Johannsen (called âJackrabbitâ by the Cree Indians to whom he is said to have demonstrated the benefits of skiing) set up skiing trails paving the way for the development of Mont Tremblant ski resort.7
The most important change in the popularisation of skiing occurred, however, when Norwegian businesspersons, engineers, foresters, and students introduced their practices to the Alpine regions of Austria, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Italy, and France, where they amalgamated with the growing trends of mountaineering.8 Urban leisure seekers and mountaineers adjusted the Scandinavian practice of skiing to the different and steeper terrains of the Central European Alps and began to ski for pleasure.9 Mountaineers such as Toni Schruf and Max Kleinoscheg in Austria, Wilhelm Paulcke in Germany, Christof Iselin in Switzerland, Henri Clerc in France, and Adolfo Hess in Italy engendered support from sections of mountaineering, gymnastic, and cycling clubs for skiing as a sport. Thus, they gradually made the Alps accessible and desirable year round, transforming prevailing tourism practices.10 At the same time, new equipment, cultures, and fashions emerged around the sport, aligning the practice with spectatorsâ lust for mass spectacles as well as with the rationalist dictates of modern sports which have universal rules administered by sporting bureaucracies to allow for the comparison of quantifiable results.11 Alpine skiing, the name given to the new form of downhill skiing, soon became standardised, and ski instructors began to teach its skills and techniques. Individual pioneers of the sport like Theodor Neumayer, Etbin Schollmayer, Georg Bilgeri, and Mathias Zdarsky did much to create and advance ski knowledge by standardising it and codifying its style in early skiing manuals.
The decade around 1900 saw the organisation of skiing take its Alpine form virtually all over the world.12 Ski clubs mushroomed in different countries spawning into national organisations. The hype around the new sport created a strong demand for instructors, and a small but growing number of teachers extended their influence âwell beyond their own geographical circleâ,13 thus leaving behind the geographical constraints of the nation-state. They had an enormous influence on the diffusion of skiing. Some of them are said to have taught well over 20,000 students from different countries.14
The years before and directly after the First World War brought further transformations and changes. At first, the formation of international governing bodies, the most famous of which became known as the FĂ©dĂ©ration Internationale de Ski (FIS) in 1924 standardised and professionalised skiing. Ski schools, secondly played a major role in the global diffusion of Alpine skiing. Hannes Schneider founded the first commercial ski school in 1922 in the Austrian ski village of St Anton, which became known as âthe cradle of professional ski instructionâ.15 The village subsequently produced the first transmigrants16 of the sport, namely, ski instructors who travelled and lived between different ski resorts on both hemispheres spreading their knowledge all over the skiable world.17 Thirdly, the introduction of uphill transportation modernised and accelerated the practice of skiing, and a growing market emerged around the sport. For many decades after its development as a form of recreation, however, skiing continued to be an elitist practice. âAlpine Skiing took on something of a class aspectâ, right from the beginning as John B. Allen notes,18 constrained to the fortunate few who could afford the time and money to travel to the ski regions.
If the category of class remains at the centre of discussions about participation in sports, so does the issue of gender. The history of skiing, in many ways, reflects the well-documented tribulations associated with womenâs emancipation starting in the early twentieth century. âFrom early on, this pastime was shaped by menâ, argues Annette R. Hofmann and Vera Martinelli.19 Their own empirical work focuses on the ambivalent status of women skiers in the Black Forest, Germany, before the First World War, and documents the historical challenges women faced when getting involved in skiing. However, despite the existing structures of exclusion at the timeâbecause of men-only ski clubs, no official regulation and support of womenâs races, the men-promoted aesthetisation of womenâs skiing performance over athleticism and so onâskiing demonstrated also a fledging independence of women, as they became âpartners for males on ski tripsâ, contributing to âa huge mix-gendered social life on and off the slope arose around the white sportâ.20
Due to the sportâs economic success and commercialisation during the interwar years, it became open to more people; however, it was still confined to the wealthier classes and stood for a fashionable leisure activity of well-off city dwellers across the skiable world. The sportâs exclusivity and novelty attracted public and media interest making it âripe for commodificationâ.21 Consequently, skiing featured in lifestyle magazines all over the globe and was used to sell âeverything from Mercedes-Benz automobiles and Nivea skin-care products to Italian Fascism,â as Andrew Denning describes.22
In Western societies following postâWorld War II and the Depression, skiing reinvented itself as a leisure pursuit accessible to a wider range of consumers than before, including, increasingly, women. While the scene for the developmen...
