Rødkleiva

Historie

Rødkleiva is a hill located in Nordmarka in Oslo, Norway. It was taken into use as a slalom hill in 1947 and was used for the combined event of the Holmenkollen Ski Festival eleven times between 1947 and 1963. It hosted the slalom events for the 1952 Winter Olympics, which saw a crowd of at least 25,000 spectators. The Olympic course was 422.5m long and had a drop of 169m. The course gradually fell into disrepair and was closed in 1988.The hill has several times been launched as a potential location for a ski jumping hill. The first idea came in 1912; later options to replace Holmenkollbakken resurfaced during the 1930s and the 1970s, but were quickly rejected. With the closing of Midtstubakken, Oslo's normal hill, in the late 1980s, Rødkleiva was again launched as a jumping hill. Vikersundbakken—Northern Europe's only ski flying hill—was in the late 1990s proposed replaced by a new hill in Rødkleiva. The plans received support from the Norwegian Ski Federation, but the municipality and state were not interested in issuing grants and the proposal was finally laid to rest in 2006.HistorySlalom hillThe first proposal for using Rødkleiva for skiing was made by Fritz Huitfeldt in 1912. At the time Holmenkollbakken allowed jumps to 30m and Huitfeldt's proposal to build an 80m hill was not taken seriously. In the 1930s, the idea of building a ski jump at Rødkleiva was renewed. However, Rødkleiva was rejected by the board of the Association for the Promotion of Skiing and in 1938 Holmenkollbakken was instead upgraded with scaffolding.