I am a person who has very little knowledge about skiing, and it is more related to childhood memories. At that time, winters were much longer, when every year a thick layer of snow covered forests and fields. If skiing was like fun in the city, when the children tried to overcome a very small roller coaster or went on a small trip through a pine forest with a group of friends, then in the countryside it became a necessity for a while. I remember my grandmother climbing on skis to get to a small village shop - otherwise it was not possible at all, because the roads were completely dusted.

Now that winter blizzards and snowy fields have become quite rare, I sometimes listen with interest to my friends or acquaintances going abroad to ski in Italy, France or another European country. Some of them measure this long journey every year, and it seems that they can't just wait for the winter season to go to the mountains again. So I will one day learn more about this sport, as well as about the beautiful places that are visited by so many ski enthusiasts.

Of course, people have been skiing for a long time, because before that it was necessary to move around the dusted areas to get food. It is mentioned in some places that even 8000-year-old ski fragments have been found in Russia, of course, such, albeit younger, finds have also been found in Scandinavia - Norway and Finland. However, skis, which are well preserved and well worth a look, date back to much more recent times.

  I had once read that seven years ago, Norwegian archaeologists had found a 1,300-year-old ski, which is considered to be a very important find. But it was a big surprise to me that this year another ski was found a month ago, and now this pair of skis is considered to be one of the best preserved ancient skis in the world. Probably someday it would be worth looking at such ancient specimens, and as I read more and more about this sport, I even had a desire to go to Oslo, where there is even a whole museum dedicated to skis!

Of course, history is quite fascinating, but I will touch on it only briefly at the moment, because I want to know how people ski nowadays. It turns out that this winter sport is very diverse - there is cross-country skiing, ski jumping, downhill skiing, etc. The Internet provides information that skiing as a sport originated in Norway three decades ago, but has been included in the Winter Olympics since 1924, and the Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS) was founded during the Games. The country is Switzerland and involves about 60 countries. From this it can be concluded that skiing is really popular in the world!

However, not everyone wants to do it on a professional level, and for many it is just a hobby that helps to keep themselves in good shape, get to know new places and meet like-minded people. The most popular ski destinations in Europe are Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Finland, France, Italy - each of these countries has popular ski resorts, which we have heard from acquaintances, read on the Internet or seen in movies - Courchevel in France, Grindelwald in Switzerland or Zakopane in Poland. For each of them and many others, we will touch on this blog in the near future. But now I want to look at each ski discipline separately to know what lies beneath names like downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, slalom, and more.

# ski history # ski_types # ski_museum #winter olympics