The origins of the Canadian Birkebeiner Ski Festival: invented traditions, winter sportscapes, and heritage sport tourism in sustainability and the UNESCO Beaver Hills Biosphere

ABSTRACT

The Canadian Birkebeiner Ski Festival emerged as the world’s third Birkebeiner cross-country ski loppet in 1985, emulating the Norwegian Birkebeiner and the American Birkebeiner. This study examines the early years of the Canadian Birkebeiner as a heritage sport tourism event with routes near Edmonton, Alberta, that became an annual festival and attraction in western Canada. Invented tradition, sportscapes, and heritage sport tourism are a conceptual frame to analyse how the Festival represented the Birkebeiner legends, how skiers and skiing constituted landscapes, and how the event contributed to sustainability. The Canadian Birkebeiner resulted in a winter sport festival and sportscape that shaped cross-country skiing, trails, and public lands, and was indicative of fluid social relations and rural place making by means of skiing. Based on archival and oral history sources, the study argues the Canadian Birkebeiner was an invented tradition that originated with a ski loppet instrumental in the negotiation of terrain for cross-country skiing that contributed to winter sportscapes and heritage sport tourism in the Cooking Lake-Blackfoot Provincial Recreation Area, and, ultimately, within the UNESCO Beaver Hills Biosphere. It contributes to studies of winter events with local and broader implications for sustainable heritage tourism.

KEYWORDS:

• Canadian Birkebeiner Ski Festival
• heritage sport tourism
• sustainable tourism
• UNESCO biosphere reserves
• cross-country ski trails
• winter events

Acknowledgments:

Charlotte Mitchell is gratefully acknowledged for assistance. This work draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Brian Peters, interview by author, Edmonton, AB, January 14, 2011, REB ID Pro00019013, University of Alberta; references to Peters draw on interview unless otherwise indicated.

2 For press coverage see, Ship ahoy!, Edmonton Journal, 10 February 1985, p. A1; Yardley Jones, First Annual Canadian Birkebeiner [cartoon], Edmonton Journal, p. C1; Nick Lees, Nick flunks ski test, Edmonton Journal, 10 February 1985, p. C3; Cross County: Birkebeiner, Edmonton Journal, 10 February 1985, p. C6.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

PearlAnn Reichwein

PearlAnn Reichwein, PhD, is a Professor at the University of Alberta who studies the history of the Canadian West. Exploring the cultural production of tourism, landscapes, and memory, her publications include Uplift: Visual Culture at the Banff School of Fine Arts (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2020), co-authored with Karen Wall, and Climber's Paradise: Making Canada's Mountain Parks, 1906-1974 (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2014), which garnered the prestigious Canadian Historical Association Clio Prize and was a Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival finalist. Dr. Reichwein was an invited guest lecturer at University of Gustave Eiffel and led master classes in Canadian Studies with University of Innsbruck. Her current projects center on skiing landscapes and legacies in Canada, including interests in heritage, parks, and climate as well as women and sport.