Does a Telemark Culture Actually Exist?

Does this lowly band of free-heelers constitute a subculture?

Photo credit Noah Wetzel, courtesy Big Agnes

Ask anyone about telemark skiing and you are almost guaranteed to get some sort of response. Rare are the folks who don't have some opinion on The Turn. And the few adherents left - the telemark skiers themselves - might have some of the most naked opinions of anyone. While many a nostalgic holds on to the halcyon days with white knuckles, newschoolers push on in the other direction. This bunch is just as divided on whether their own undertaking - telemark skiing - has its own culture.

And they may be on to something. Regardless of the set of shared characters and experiences free-heel skiing may have, telemark remains a disparate bunch, and one separated by vast swaths of frontier between skiers; far, few between, and often solitarily creating their own version of what it means to be a telemark skier.

So does a telemark culture actually exist?

Without a doubt there exists a capital-T Telemark culture in Norway. The Nordic tradition there doesn't just encapsulate skiing without heels affixed - it is a regional heritage that spans untold generations - where for much of that time skiing was not the leisure-consumption machine that it is today; it was simply a part of life, transporting people from place to place during harsh, dark winters, before becoming a pastime; offering a respite from a life of work.

And the Telemark region holds many things dear that are outside the realm of skiing.

Many mediaeval buildings still stand in the region, including the The Eidsborg Stave Church, which is thought to have been built between 1250 and 1270.

We free-heel skiers know that the serene rolling hills of the region are where Sondre Norheim perfected the telemark ski technique in the mid-1800s, ushering in the era of skiing for leisure. But the region has a decidedly industrial recent history - the Rjukan–Notodden Industrial Heritage Site, a valley comprised of hydroelectric dams and factories, is a World Heritage site – joining the ranks of Machu Picchu and the Taj Mahal, and "was [originally] established by the Norsk-Hydro Company to manufacture artificial fertilizer from nitrogen in the air. It was built to meet the Western world’s growing demand for agricultural production in the early 20th century."

Lest we forget to mention one historical exploit from the region with cultural, sociopolitical, and (loose) skiing ramifications. In 1942, Allied commandos successfully sabotaged the Nazi-occupied heavy water system at the Vemork power station at the Rjukan waterfall in Telemark. A first attempt by British special forces to gain entry to the region was stymied when their gliders either crashed or were shot down, forcing the survivors to wait out the winter scavenging.

A group of Norwegian's were sent in later to salvage the mission, landing 50km from the mission site. Once regrouped with the British commandos, the outfit descended on Vemork, placing charges, and destroying enough of the heavy water machinery to render the Nazi path to nuclear arms impossible.

Splitting up after the sabotage, one group of commandos successfully hid out in the countryside, while another "skied all the way across Norway to the safety of Sweden."

This is but a smattering of the things that come together to make a culture in the Telemark region of Norway.

But what about lower-case-t telemark? Is there a distinct culture based around telemark skiing? The topic gets debated amongst free-heel skiers, while any notion of a telemark culture (just like the act of free-heel skiing in general) typically gets dismissed wholesale by the masses - perhaps helping create the unease in many free-heelers to describe what they are part of as a distinct ‘culture.’ But the outside-looking-in nature of free-heel may tell us something more about telemark having an autonomous identity or not.

Parceling out telemark as a separate culture from skiing in general can seem like a reach - they certainly share more than they don't. But the wider snow sports world has indeed ostracized telemark and pushed it even farther into the fringe than it already inhabited. Part of the dismissal of the telemark culture is undoubtedly tied to the image of the stereotypical free-heel skier – something modern telemark skiers themselves sometimes recoil at. The bota-bag wearing, high-pole-planting Nordic hippy resides in an unjustly low place in the minds of the many who don’t understand the deep history of XCD nor know the current landscape of telemark. And the image is unfortunately mocked to this day. But it does act as an identity for the heady free-heeler.

But mocked also are the supposed off-snow antics of the typecast free-heel skier: Birkenstocks (though maybe no longer after their IPO…), Widespread Panic, and copious amounts of mind-numbing marijuana still haunt – or accompany, depending on your stance – the telemarker’s image. Some in telemark still embrace this, while others find it to be an anchor keeping telemark’s image rooted in a now uncool, under-marketable paradigm.

So maybe a little self-loathing is shared amongst some in telemark – but maybe that’s part of the culture, too. The scene contains many other common assets – specific figures, literature, and viewpoints – that point toward free-heel skiing having some degree of a separate, identifying heritage.

There’s Rick Borkovec, and Alan Bard. There’s Paul Parker and Mitch Weber. There’s Brad English’s 1984 book Total Telemarking. There’s Craig Dostie’s 2010s blog EarnYourTurns. And there is the shared beginning that many of us remember so fondly – linking your first free-heel turns. This list represents just a taste of the telemark skiing canon.

So perhaps there is indeed something of a subculture tying this whole thing together. No matter how threadbare, a strand from the first Nordic free-heel turners continues to this day. And a few things have been picked up along the way in the American take on telemark – a fierce independence borne on countercultural leanings, a 1970s repudiation of alpine’s rigid gear and ethos, a strict adherence to jam bands.

And there’s even the occasional repudiations of those things. Telemark is neither large nor particularly relevant, but it is a living, breathing entity – it is vibrant, and it changes with time; it waxes and wanes, even going underground occasionally. But it lives on. Framed by those who came before, who showed the way, and who left their knowledge and spirit with us to carry on and use as we desire.

That's starting to sound a little bit like a culture.