| dc.description.abstract | The goal of this thesis is to investigate and document the development of ski-shooting (sports which combine cross-country skiing and rifle shooting, i.e. sports related to Olympic winter biathlon) in Norway before 1930. The thesis question is: What can explain how and why ski-shooting became a sport in Norway? In order to answer this, two additional questions are raised: when and why did ski-shooting become an established sport in Norway? To what degree can ski-shooting be described as sportified (in Norway and internationally) before 1930? This paper explores the changing representations of biathlon in Norwegian newspapers, sports journals, and the annual reports of sports associations from the end of the 19th century to 1930, through the lenses of two rationalization processes: sportification and militarization. The first moving biathlon toward standardization and competition performance, and the other toward military utility. The paper will also touch on the transnational circulation of sports. To answer the thesis question the paper contains four analytic chapters. The first seeks to answer when the first ski-shooting competitions where constructed in Norway. The second analytic chapter concerns the transnational connection, between the development of ski-shooting in Norway and in Sweden from 1895 to 1910 and seeks to answer why ski-shooting became an established sport in Norway. The last two chapters look at the development of the rules of ski-shooting in Norway and in international competitions, to determine the degree of sportification. The findings suggest that ski-shooting in Norway was first constructed in the 1890s as a combination of militarized field shooting and sportified cross-country skiing. However, the sport only established itself in Norway in the 1910s, as a result of transnational connections to Sweden and France. While some rule changes and practices regarding ski-shooting in Norway are seen as signs of sportification before 1930, the competitions were primarily defined by their military utility. | en_US |
