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Abstract
Knud Lundberg (1920–2002) was an eminent and revered Danish sportsman and sports writer. He authored a number of books including one novel, Det Olympiske Håb, published in Danish in 1955 and in English in 1958 as The Olympic Hope. This book is generally regarded as a work of sports-science fiction that focuses on doping and deviance at the 1996 Olympics. However, the book can also be read as a work of resistance to modern sport and, moreover, a work that demonstrates a sense of ‘Danishness’ that is here interpreted as ‘the law of Jante’, a modesty code that, it is suggested, has some implications for sport. Ultimately the book can be read as being a critical and transgressive work.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the help of the following in the writing of this essay: Marie Gregersen Odgaard, Niels Kayser Nielsen, Verner M⊘ller, Sine Agergaard, Rasmus Andersen, Keith Mayoh, Jean Williams and Jeffrey Hill.
Notes
1. These approaches are exemplified, respectively, by Andrew Sparkes, Telling tales in sport and physical activity: A qualitative journey (Champaign, IL, 2002) and Jeffrey Hill, Sport and the literary imagination (Bern, 2006).
2. This is not to say that novels referring to performance enhancement are recent publications. In 1909 H.G. Wells, for example, made passing reference to newly invented tablets (lozenges) that provided ‘recuperative value in cases of fatigue and strain’ for (among others) ‘cyclist champions upon the track’, in his novel Tono-Bungay (London, 1994, orig. pub. 1909), p. 135.
3. Robert C. Goldbort, ‘“How dare you sport thus with life?”: Frankensteinian fictions as case studies in scientific ethics’, The Journal of Medical Humanities, 16 (2) (1995), pp. 79–91.
4. Robert C. Goldbort, ‘“How dare you sport thus with life?”: Frankensteinian fictions as case studies in scientific ethics’, The Journal of Medical Humanities, pp. 88–9.
5. Knud Lundberg, Det olympiske håb (Copenhagen, 1955); Knud Lundberg, The olympic hope, trans. Eiler Hansen and William Luscombe (London and New Rochelle, NY, 1958). Reviews of Lundberg's work usually concentrate on his books on coaching and health or his sporting successes. For example, Jens-Carl Kristensen, ‘Idrættens frihedskæmper gav aldrig op’, in Else Trangbæk, Rasmus Bech and Rama Pryce, eds, Eliteidrættens kanon (Odense, 2007), pp. 47–59. I am grateful to Niels Kayser Nielsen for alerting me to this work.
6. Stephen O. Mitchell, ‘Alien vision: The techniques of science fiction’, Modern Fiction Studies, 4 (4) (1959), p. 346.
7. I use lower case for the olympic games because they ‘do not warrant the veneration of a capital letter’. In other words, ‘olympic’ is used as an adjective rather than a noun: see Douglas Booth, The field: Truth and fiction in sport history (London, 2005), p. 22.
8. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 9.
9. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 9.
10. For convenience I have arbitrarily defined a ‘world-class’ athlete as being in the top 100 runners in the world in the 800 and 1,500 metres events, based on their fastest time for the year. See R.L. Quercetani, ed., International athletics annual (London, 1956).
11. Hans Bonde, Gymnastics and politics: Niels Bukh and male aesthetics (Copenhagen, 2006).
12. Hans Bonde, Gymnastics and politics: Niels Bukh and male aesthetics (Copenhagen, 2006).
13. Anon., review of Lundberg, The olympic hope, Times Literary Supplement, 18 July 1958, p. 415.
14. Tom McNab, Peter Lovesey and Andrew Huxtable, compilers, An athletics compendium (London, 2001), p. 160.
15. Walter Umminger, Supermen, heroes and gods: The story of sport through the ages, trans. James Clark (London, 1963), p. 257 (originally published in German as Helden, götte, übermenschen (Düsseldorf, 1962).
16. Roger Robinson, Running in literature (Halcottsville, NY, 2003) p. 218.
17. Roger Robinson, Running in literature (Halcottsville, NY, 2003) p. 218.
18. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 51.
19. Linda F. Hogle, ‘Enhancement technologies and the body’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 34 (2005), pp. 695–716.
20. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 51.
21. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 63.
22. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 69.
23. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 70.
24. Gordon Pirie, Running wild (London, 1961), p. 95.
25. Lundberg, The olympic hope, pp. 30–1.
26. Arnd Krüger, ‘Strength through joy: The culture of consent under fascism, Nazism and francoism’, in Jim Riordan and Arnd Krüger, eds., The international politics of sport in the twentieth century (London, 1999), p. 75.
27. John Hoberman, Sport and political ideology (London, 1984), pp. 95–100.
28. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 31 (italics in original).
29. Quoted in Fred Wilt, How they train (Los Altos, CA, 1959), p. 5.
30. Arnd Krüger, ‘Breeding, rearing and preparing the Aryan body: Creating superman the nazi way’, in J.A. Mangan, ed., Shaping the superman: Fascist body as political icon (London, 1999), p. 61.
31. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 38 (italics in original).
32. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 34.
33. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 72.
34. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 42.
35. Vestkysten (‘The West Coast’) is a respected west Jutland newspaper. I am grateful to Niels Kayser Nielsen for this information.
36. I am grateful to Jean Williams for this point.
37. Anon., review of Lundberg, The olympic hope.
38. Robinson, Running in literature, p. 218.
39. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 33.
40. Knud Lundberg, Idræt: På godt og ondt (Copenhagen, 1951), p. 68. I am grateful to Marie Gregersen Odgaard and Sine Agergaard for translating parts of this book for me.
41. Knud Lundberg, Idræt: På godt og ondt (Copenhagen, 1951), p. 68. I am grateful to Marie Gregersen Odgaard and Sine Agergaard for translating parts of this book for me., p. 62.
42. George Orwell, ‘The sporting spirit’, Tribune, 14 Dec. 1945.
43. Knud Lundberg, ‘Sport og international forståelse,’ Verdens Gang, 7 (1953), pp. 182–5. I am grateful to Rasmus Andersen for alerting me to and translating parts of this work.
44. Günther Lüschen, ‘Doping in sport as deviant behavior and its social control’, in Jay Coakley and Eric Dunning, eds., Handbook of sports studies (London, 2000), p. 465.
45. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 94.
46. Pirie, Running wild, p. 64. Dick Booth, The impossible hero (London, 1999), p. 130.
47. Adolphe Abrahams, The human machine (Harmondsworth, 1956).
48. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 32.
49. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 168.
50. Tony Blackshaw and Tim Crabbe, New perspectives on sport and ‘deviance’: Consumption, performativity and social control (London, 2004).
51. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 15.
52. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 32.
53. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 74.
54. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 75.
55. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 80.
56. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 83.
57. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 84.
58. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 84.
59. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 85.
60. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 35.
61. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 29.
62. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 29.
63. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 33.
64. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 74.
65. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 28.
66. Kristine J. Anderson, ‘The reception of Danish science fiction in the United States’, The Bridge: Journal of the American Heritage Society, 29 (2) (2006), p. 281.
67. The case of the South African runner Oscar Pistorius may be relevant here. Pistorius, a sprinter who holds Paralympic records, had his legs amputated below the knee when he was eleven months old, having been born without fibulas. He was fitted with artificial limbs to aid his mobility. The International Association of Athletic Federations ruled that his high-tech artificial limbs gave him a ‘considerable advantage’ over other ‘able-bodied’ runners because of the redesign of his athletic body ‘according to particular needs and desires’ rather than the ‘therapeutic medical intervention’ of his childhood (see Hogle, ‘Enhancement technologies and the body’). However, the Court of Arbitration for Sport cleared him to run in the Olympics. See Michael Phillips, ‘Olympic dream given the green light for the blade runner’, Guardian, 27 May 2008 (Sport), p. 13.
68. Charles Jennings, ‘No place for a flashy sports car’, New Statesman, 17 May 1999, available online at http:www.newstatesman.com/print/199905170024, accessed 31 May 2007.
69. Michelle R. Nelson and Sharon Shavitt, ‘Horizontal and vertical individualism and achievement values: A multimethod examination of Denmark and the United States’, Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 33 (5) (2002), p. 441.
70. D.J. Taylor, On the Corinthian spirit (London, 2006).
71. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 92.
72. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 15.
73. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 94.
74. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 127.
75. Nelson and Shavitt, ‘Horizontal and vertical individualism’, p. 440.
76. Quoted in Edward Grayson, Corinthians and cricketers (London, 1955), p. 29.
77. Quoted in Taylor, On the Corinthian spirit, p. 57.
78. Quoted in Nelson and Shavitt, ‘Horizontal and vertical individualism’, p. 454.
79. Likewise, Gunner Nielsen failed to win an Olympic medal and ‘only’ equalled two world records, failing to ‘break’ them. These were not, of course, deliberate acts of modesty but nevertheless supported a feeling that Danish athletes under-achieve – in which there is nothing wrong.
80. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 95.
81. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 167.
82. Bero Rigauer, Sport and work, trans. Allen Guttmann (New York, 1981); Jean-Marie Brohm, Sport: A prison of measured time, trans. Ian Fraser (London, 1976).
83. Tim Cresswell, In place/out of place (Minneapolis, MN, 1996).
84. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 23.
85. Quoted in Gorman Beauchamp, ‘Technology in the dystopian novel’, Modern Fiction Studies, 32 (1) (1986), p. 56.
86. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 23.
87. Lundberg, The olympic hope, pp. 24–5.
88. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 170.
89. Alan Sillitoe, The loneliness of the long distance runner (London, 1994, orig. pub. 1959).
90. Steven Connor, ‘“My fortieth year had come and gone and I still throwing the javelin”: Beckett's athletics’, Static, 1 (2005), available online at http://static.londonconsortium.com/issue01/, accessed 16 May 2007.
91. Steven Connor, ‘“My fortieth year had come and gone and I still throwing the javelin”: Beckett's athletics’, Static, 1 (2005), available online at http://static.londonconsortium.com/issue01/, accessed 16 May 2007.(italics added).
92. Mark Neocleous, ‘Long live death! Fascism, resurrection, immortality’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 10 (1) (2005), p. 41.
93. Mark Neocleous, ‘Long live death! Fascism, resurrection, immortality’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 10 (1) (2005), p. 41.
94. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, quoted in Neocleous, ‘Long live death!’, p. 42.
95. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, quoted in Neocleous, ‘Long live death!’, p. 34.
96. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 168.
97. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 72.
98. See Pierre de Coubertin, Olympism: Selected writings, Norbert Müller, ed., (Lausanne, 2000), p. 587. On the probable origins of the Olympic creed, see David C. Young, ‘On the source of the Olympic credo’, Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies, 3 (1994), pp. 17–25.
99. Brohm, Sport: A prison of measured time; Rigauer, Sport and work.
100. Allen Guttmann, ‘Faustian athletes? Sports as a theme in modern German literature’, Modern Fiction Studies, 33 (1) (1987), pp. 24, 22.
101. De Coubertin, Olympism, p. 200.
102. Lundberg, The olympic hope, p. 92.
103. Nelson and Shavitt, ‘Horizontal and vertical individualism’, p. 440.