Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Art in a Cold Climate

The Essay: Art in a Cold Climate: Episode 5: Art in a Cold Climate: Thomas Hylland Eriksen on the Holmenkollen Ski-Jumping Hill

Art in a Cold Climate: Thomas Hylland Eriksen on the Holmenkollen Ski-Jumping Hill

Episode 5

Episode 5: Art in a Cold Climate: Thomas Hylland Eriksen on the Holmenkollen Ski-Jumping Hill

Art in a Cold Climate

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Art in a Cold Climate, Art in a Cold Climate: Thomas Hylland Eriksen on the Holmenkollen Ski-Jumping HillClose menu

Thomas Hylland Eriksen on Oslo's now-demolished Holmenkollen ski-jumping hill and Norway.

Anthropologist and novelist Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen argues that Oslo's now-demolished Holmenkollen ski-jumping hill was the most important art work in Norway.

Many people would not consider a ski-jump to be a work of art. But for anthropologist and novelist Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Oslo's Holmenkollen ski-jumping hill was the most important art work in Norway.

"The Holmenkollen Hill, white, elegant and majestic, hovered above the city like a large bird about to take flight," says Eriksen. "It was a work of art enjoyed by tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people every day". Eriksen employs the past tense because the structure - built for the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo - was pulled down and replaced with a more "flashy, hi-tech and efficient" ski jump in 2008. 

The architects of the original - Olav Tveten and Frode Rinnan - had created much more than a sporting facility, he says. It was a frugal, elegant structure, which spoke to the Norwegian love of the mountains and the outdoors. "Looking towards Holmenkollen made people more Norwegian." It lives on, he says, as a memory of how architecture can transform a practical structure into a sublime work of art. 

This edition of The Essay is one of a series in which five writers each consider the significance of a work of art to their nation, as part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season.

Producer: Andy Denwood.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Five writers each consider the significance of a work of art to their nation

As part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season, five writers each consider the significance of a work of art to their nation

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Art in a Cold Climate

Episode 5: Art in a Cold Climate: Thomas Hylland Eriksen on the Holmenkollen Ski-Jumping Hill

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3