China News Service
Pei Guorong & Li Xiaowei
February 15, 2022
The Interior of China Chongli Ice and Snow Culture Museum
A collection of torches from previous Winter Olympic Games are on display in Chongli Ice and Snow Culture Museum, Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province. Among them, Oslo 1952 THE TORCH stands out for its special significance. Having been used in the 1952 Oslo Winter Olympic Games in Norway to allow skiers to see their way in the dark, it had witnessed the first ever lighting of the Olympic cauldron in the history of the Winter Olympics.
It is also the first torch ever in the history of the Winter Olympics as the torch relay officially became a part of winter Olympics in Oslo. The torch consisted of a cylindrical handle topped with a flat oval bowl engraved with the Olympic rings and the year 1952 as well as the words “Morgedal-Oslo” linked by an arrow. It had been passed through the hands of 94 skiers who had relayed the torch.
A Collection of Torches on Display in China Chongli Ice and Snow Culture Museum
Unlike the torches used in the Summer Olympics, it was not lit at Olympia, Greece. Instead, it was at the house of Sondre Norheim, a Norwegian skiing legend of the 19th century, that Olav Bjaaland, one of the members of the 1911 South Pole expedition, kindled a “symbolic Nordic” flame at Morgedal (county of Telemark). At that time, people still believed that the Winter Olympics was not related to the ancient Olympic Games.
Since 1964 Innsbruck Winter Olympic Games, the lighting of the Olympic flame has become the same as that in the Summer Olympics. Since then, the flame in the Winter Olympics has been ignited at Olympia, Greece, reflecting the continuity between the ancient Olympic Games and modern ones.
Rewritten by Qiang Xiao and Tao Youlan, Fudan University
