From almost anywhere in central Oslo, look north-west and you will find it: a thin grey line rising out of the forest on the ridge, like a ruler leaning against the sky. That is Holmenkollbakken, the city's ski jump, and it has stood on that hill in one form or another since 1892.
Most visitors come for the view from the top. The better reason to make the trip is the Holmenkollen Ski Museum at its foot, the oldest ski museum in the world, which tells a story far older than the jump above it.
Together they make one of the easiest half-days out of the city centre. You ride a metro line into the forest, climb a short hill and stand somewhere that has shaped how the whole world thinks about skiing.
A hill outside town, chosen for its snow
In the 1880s, Oslo's big ski competition was Husebyrennet, held on a slope at Ullern in the west of the city. It had a habit of running short of snow, and in 1890 the event had to be moved further up into the forest.
Two skiing pioneers, Fritz Huitfeldt and Hans Krag, proposed a new hill at Besserudmyra, a boggy patch below Holmenkollen. A hotel developer, I. C. L. Holm, had already opened a road and lodgings up there, betting that city people would pay to get into the hills.
Building the first jump took little more than felling a few trees and piling branches where the take-off should be. On 30 January 1892, somewhere between fifteen and twenty thousand people came to watch, and the best jumpers landed at around 20 metres.
Nineteen versions of the same jump
The jump you see today is not the jump of 1892. By the usual count it has been rebuilt nineteen times, each version taller and steeper than the last as jumpers flew further.
A stone take-off arrived in 1910. In 1914 a steel in-run tower went up, and the Norwegian press was furious, insisting that real ski jumping belonged in natural hills. When that tower collapsed under rot and heavy snow in 1927, a bigger one replaced it.
During the German occupation the hill stood unused, painted green and fitted with anti-aircraft guns. Then came the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, which turned Holmenkollen from a local landmark into a world stage, with permanent stands, a white in-run tower and a lift to the top.
The World Championships returned in 1966 and 1982, and each time the hill grew again. By the early 2000s, though, the old structure could no longer meet international rules, and the city chose to tear it down and start over.
The steel tongue of 2010
Demolition began in October 2008. The new design came from Julien De Smedt and Florian Kosche, selected from more than a hundred entries in an architectural competition.
Their jump is a single cantilevered sweep of steel, 64 metres tall, its top about 420 metres above sea level. It was the first in the world built with a permanent wind screen, a mesh skin that holds back roughly half the wind that used to make Holmenkollen so unpredictable.
The new hill opened in March 2010, ready for the 2011 World Championships. It was also expensive: the national arena and its infrastructure ended up costing many times the first estimate, and the overruns cost a city commissioner her job.
Whatever you think of the budget, the result has become one of Oslo's defining shapes. It reads as a line drawing from the fjord and as something almost monumental when you stand at the bottom of the outrun.
Inside the Holmenkollen Ski Museum
The museum opened in 1923 and calls itself the oldest ski museum anywhere. It began with the private collection of the architect Hjalmar Welhaven and was first housed at Frognerseteren, further up the hill.
When the jump was rebuilt for the 1952 Olympics, the collection moved into new rooms built underneath the raised landing slope. That is why the entrance sits beneath the jump today, and why your ticket also takes you up the tower.
The displays cover around 4,000 years of skiing. They begin with Stone Age rock carvings of figures on skis and move through Viking-era finds and old wooden skis from different valleys, each built for local snow.
The polar rooms are the highlight for many visitors. Here you find equipment from the expeditions of Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen, the men who turned skis into tools for crossing Greenland and reaching the South Pole.
It is a fine place to understand why skiing feels less like a sport than a habit of mind in Norway. The same instinct sends half the city into the forest on a Sunday, which we explore in our piece on starting a Norway hike from Oslo.
The view from the top of the jump
From the museum, a lift and a short set of stairs bring you to the start platform at the top of the tower. This is the jumpers' view, straight down a slope that looks far steeper in person than it does on television.
Turn around and the panorama opens across the whole city. On a clear day you can follow the Oslofjord out past the islands, pick out the city centre below and see the Marka forest rolling away to the north.
It is also the only way to understand the scale of the place. The outrun far below holds a small lake in summer, and in March the stands around it are packed during the Holmenkollen Ski Festival.
The zipline and the arena around it
For anyone who wants more than a view, there is a zipline from the top of the tower down the length of the hill. It runs in the warmer months, needs booking in advance and is not for those with a fear of heights.
The jump is only one part of Holmenkollen National Arena. Next to it is a cross-country and biathlon stadium with around ten kilometres of trails, and a smaller normal hill, Midtstubakken, sits a short walk away.
The Holmenkollen Ski Festival has been held almost every year since 1892, now as part of the World Cup. It falls in March, and if you are in Oslo that weekend, it is one of the city's great public occasions, with flags, campfires and crowds along the trails.
Nearby stands Holmenkollen Chapel, burned down in an arson attack in 1992 and later rebuilt. Close to it is the Royal Lodge, where the royal family stays during the festival and at Christmas.
Getting there by metro
The trip is part of the pleasure. Take metro line 1 towards Frognerseteren from the city centre and get off at Holmenkollen station, roughly a twenty-minute ride as the train climbs through villa streets and into the trees.
From the station it is about a ten-minute walk uphill to the museum entrance. Holmenkollen station was built with extra-long platforms to move huge festival crowds, a detail that says a lot about how central this line is to Oslo's winter life. More on how the city's network fits together is in our guide to Oslo's trams, metro and ferries.
Opening hours and ticket prices change with the season, so check the museum's own website before you go. Allow two to three hours for the museum and tower, and more if you plan to walk on.
Making a day of it
Holmenkollen sits on the edge of Nordmarka, so you can easily continue on foot. Frognerseteren, with its old timber restaurant and views, is a few stops or a steady uphill walk further along the line.
In winter, the same trains carry skiers up to the floodlit trails. In summer, you can walk down through the forest towards the city or switch to another line for a swim. Our article on Sognsvann, the lake at the end of metro line 5 covers a good alternative.
However you spend the rest of the day, end it by looking back from the city at that grey line on the ridge. Knowing what sits beneath it, the jump stops being a postcard and becomes part of how Oslo understands itself.
About Sofia Berg
Sofia Berg is a lifelong Oslo resident and travel writer with a passion for uncovering the city's hidden gems. She has been exploring and writing about Oslo for over ten years.