Oslo

Solkollen

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Mesterbakken:

K-Point:	ca. 10 m
Hill record:	17.5 m (1891)

Further jumps:	no
Plastic matting:	no
Year of construction:	1872
Conversions:	1881, 1891
Operating until:	1898
Status:	destroyed
Ski club:	Nydalen Skiklub
Coordinates:	59.954936, 10.767371 ✔

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History:

The history of the competition at Solkollen hill already begins in the 1870s, when the ski club Sagene Skiklub started to organise ski jumping competitions in the Nydalen valley in Oslo. These became known as ‘Nydalsrennet’ and very quickly gained popularity and became the second most important ski jumping competitions in Norway. In 1876, King Oscar II of Norway himself took part, finishing an impressive second place; only the famous skier Ludvig Haugerud overtook him, for which he received 20 crowns in gold from the King. It is in the Nydalen valley that the history of ‘serious’ ski jumping in Oslo begins, but at that time the jumping technique differed significantly from what is known today. The ski jump at Solkollen was not steep and had a very short landing hill, so that athletes often landed already on flat ground. They then cushioned themselves with sticks in order to soften the impetus during the landing. This had the effect of ‘perforating’ the outrun and it had to be modernised. In 1881, the Hemmestveit brothers from Telemark came to compete at Solkollen and demonstrated a more modern technique than that used by local skiers. Their presence also influenced the popularity of ski jumping in Oslo, because they were outstanding athletes and even held the world record for long jump. According to ski historians, the style they created and presented at Solkollen was a bigger revolution than the transition from classic to V-style. In 1885 Otto Gjerdrum, acting as court huntsman of the king, organised the first Norwegian skiing championships at Solkollen and one year later his fascination for the sport motivated local skiers to found Nydalens Skiklub, which organised training on the ski jumping facility. The popularity of ski jumping at Nydalen only grew, in 1891 as many as 90 ski jumpers took part, watched by more than 2000 spectators. Then the ski jumping hill at Solkollen was renamed Mesterbakken in honour of Otto Gjerdrum, the ‘master hunter’. But the end of the lively facility in the valley came already after the competition in 1897, when the railway line from Gjøvik to Oslo started to be planned. A section of the line passed centrally through Mesterbakken and already one year later a ditch dug for the tracks divided the hill in two. Skiing moved to Myrerskogen on Kjelsås hill, where in 1899 the Nydalen Skiklub organised the next edition of its competitions, which had previously been held at Mesterbakken. In 2022, the northern section of the Mesterbakken landing hill, divided by the railway line, disappeared under an apartment block erected there, and today no trace of Oslo's first real ski jumping hill can be found.

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Solkollen

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