Here's the kicker

            As Norway prepared for the winter Olympics, I had the opportunity to visit a school in Tynset, in the heart of the country, an area that produces some of the nation’s best skiers because it receives so much snow.

            Snow fell almost continuously while I was there, and I was lucky enough also to visit Røros, an old copper mining town and now a UNESCO world heritage site famous for its hospitality to tourists.  Røros reminded me of Madrid, New Mexico; Durango, CO; and Bisbee, AZ.  Like former mining towns in the United States, the community is tiny, chock full of shops, artist studios and galleries, but also intensely aware of its mining past.  

The town delights in its tourist industry, yet seems to feel the pressure to keep the charm coming.  After all, this is a community where the riches ran out once before.  To this Santa Fe girl, the town seems to be doing a splendid job.  I was disappointed that I arrived after the shops had closed and that I had to leave before catching dinner in one of the lovely (and, like many others in Norway, expensive) restaurants.  It was delightful, though, to tour the town with one of Tynset’s teachers at the blue hour, the peculiarly beautiful dusk of Norwegian winter.  And while many scholars have written of the particular jeopardy of a community living in thrall to tourism, I do hope that the visitors keep coming.

            

What I loved most about Røros and Tynset, however, was the spark.  A teacher translated the term “spark” as “the kicker.”  Advertised as kick sleds in the US, sparks carry students, teachers, the elderly, parents, and their children.  They can be equipped with seats for babies, baskets for carrying goods from the grocery store, but many people just put a backpack on the front seat.

  

I’ve seen kick sleds before in Bodø and Bardufoss, but Tynset prides itself on possessing the largest kicker in the world – they recently built a new spark to beat a rival town in Finland for the honor.  I was so taken with the winter weather and the spark that I began plotting on getting one for myself.  My birthday was just a month off and it seemed a perfect Norwegian souvenir.  They were even on sale when I priced them in Oslo.  But….

Here’s the kicker: 

We had too little snow in Oslo to really justify the purchase (thus the sale), and once I added the price of shipping, I found it would be easier and more affordable to buy one in the United States where, actually, quite a few companies manufacture them too.  The irony that St. Louis had received more snow this winter than Oslo did was not lost on me either. 

So I’m waiting. I love the idea of sledding down to my local café for my morning coffee on my spark -- even if next year’s winter brings the snow back to Oslo.