Monday, Nov. 01, 1954

Cross-Country Masochists

Wandering through the chill autumn woods outside Stockholm, a casual American tourist might have stumbled across the 20 goose-pimpled Swedes and Finns and mistaken them for a bunch of overage Boy Scouts minus their marbles. Shivering in skimpy costumes--cotton shorts and shirts and gym shoes--they looked like summer hikers, some two months late, waiting for a tardy scoutmaster to take them home.

But no scoutmaster arrived. Instead, brisk, businesslike officials gave each man a number and a map. One by one, as the numbers were called, each man trotted off by himself, whipped out a small compass, lined up his map and raced into the tangled underbrush. For the next three hours, they pounded across rough, trackless terrain, climbed steep hills, forded icy streams, slogged through black swamps. Every couple of miles they passed through carefully spotted check points to prove that they were sticking to a prearranged course. If they read the maps well enough, were good enough woodsmen, and if their legs and lungs held up, they eventually reached the mal (finish line) more than ten miles away.

Sturdy Swedes. Covering such a course in a slow walk would be a trial for the average athlete. Sturdy Scandinavians turn the wild cross-country scrambles into punishing foot races. Known officially as "orienteering," the sport dates back to 1918 when the first Swedish club was formed to hold formal competitions. Unofficially, historians trace the race's origins across 1,000 years to a time when Scandinavian sentries guarded long lonely frontiers. Then, long-winded runners were the only means of communication with threatened inland settlements.

However it began, the rugged sport seems to fascinate Swedes. Today, the country has nearly 1,500 orienteering clubs with 189,000 members. All schoolchildren over twelve spend two full days a month practicing the allied arts of map reading, woodsmanship and cross-country running until they become fully oriented. Evangelical Swedes have taught the sport to their Norwegian, Danish and Finnish neighbors, are working hard to spread it to Germany, Britain, Switzerland and Canada. They have little hope for the "car-crazy Americans."

No Favorites. Scandinavians take a special delight in the threefold challenge of orienteering: the struggle against natural obstacles, the physical competition against fellow racers, and the intellectual exercise of trying to choose the best route across strange terrain. But most of all, they relish the idea that in any race it is almost impossible to pick a favorite. The fastest runners can get bogged down in unexpectedly sloppy going; the cleverest map readers can lose precious minutes searching for diabolically hidden check points.

Winning the international race against Finland a fortnight ago, Swedish Forestry Supervisor Bertil Norman made few mistakes, ran himself ragged and covered the course in two hr. 16 min. 37 sec. Last week, running over a different course in the Swedish national championships, Norman lost 20 minutes searching for the third control point, and wound up 115th in a field of 157. The winner: 27-year-old Engineer Nils Lange, who finished 99th in last year's championships.

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