Summary:

Jouko Vahtola, The rise of Finland’s ski jumping, 1908 – 1924 – from Helsinki to Lahti

Upon completion of the good ski jump in Alppila in 1906, Helsinki was Finland’s leading ski jumping center in terms of both competitive activity and the number and quality of ski jumpers until around 1924. When master jumper, engineer August Jansson moved from Helsinki to Fiskars, a good ski jump about the size of the one in Alppila was built there in 1920. Large winter and ski jumping competitions were then arranged in Fiskars. Nevertheless, a ski jump larger and better than the ones in Alppila and Fiskars was constructed on Lahti’s Salpausselkä in 1923. Large international skiing competitions similar to those held at Holmenkollen were then arranged at Salpausselkä. As a result Lahti and the Lahden Hiihtoseura ski club began to rise to the pinnacle of Finland’s ski jumping; Lahti’s Paavo Nuotio won the Finnish championship already in 1925.

Finland’s leading ski jumping club until the early 1920s was Helsingfors Skidklubb, which organized brisk competitive activity in Alppila and was represented by many top-level Finnish ski jumpers, beginning with Tuure Nieminen and August Jansson. The influence of Norwegian consul, engineer Robert Pehrson was continuously substantial as both a designer of ski jumps and a developer of the technical level of ski jumping. Alongside him Helsinki businessman Armas Palmros influenced the progress of Finland’s ski jumping as a skillful, active ski jumper and adviser of ski jumpers and judges. From 1921 on he represented ski jumping in SVUL’s skiing division. From 1906 to 1924 most of Finland’s top ski jumpers – with the exception of Tuure Nieminen and Vyborg’s ski jumpers – were from Finland’s Swedish-speaking middle class, from laborers to engineers.

Vyborg and its club, Viipurin Ponteva, followed in Helsinki’s wake and, led by their top ski jumpers Sulo Jääskeläinen and Urho Kunttu, were able to compete quite evenly with Helsinki’s ski jumpers. Ski jumping spread when Kotka and Fiskars got new, good ski jumps around 1920. Smaller ski jumps were built in Lappeenranta, Porvoo, Pietarsaari, and Turku in the early 1920s. But, they were all surpassed by the completion of a new, even larger ski jump in Lahti in 1923 that made nearly 40-meter jumps possible. This ski jump was also designed by engineer Pehrson.

From its birth to the 1920s, ski jumping in Finland was primarily dominated by Swedish-speaking clubs and ski jumpers. For decades there were no major schisms, on the contrary contestants participated in competitions across language barriers. There was minor contention in the 1910s mainly over which association – Finnish or Swedish – could co-ordinate, select, and send contestants abroad. SVUL’s skiing division won the dispute on the part of skiing and ski jumping. When Salpausselkä, with its new ski jump, began to be developed into ”Finland’s Holmenkollen”, it was clear that the management of ski jumping would go to the Finnish-speaking clubs, led by Lahden Hiihtoseura. Fiskars attempted to arrange large winter competitions, but did not succeed in the rivalry. This caused some boycotting of the 1924 competitions on both sides.

The level of Finland’s ski jumping rose to the international level, i.e. the Norwegian level, in the 1910s, particularly in terms of the style and technique of the top jumpers, and considering the size of the ski jumps, also in the length of their jumps. The Finns were already able to beat the Norwegians a few times and the Swedes more often. At the Chamonix Olympics in 1924, Finland’s ski jumpers were capable of good rankings and they competed evenly, especially with the central Europeans, on what to the Finns was a ”giant ski jump”.