The Mystery of Norway

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Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway competes during the men's giant slalom.

Vancouver, British Columbia -- By the end of these Olympic Games, the Norwegians will have pulled off what is, arguably, one of the finest performances in the modern history of sports.

The only problem is that nobody outside Norway seems to take them seriously.

Norway's Olympic team has won 17 medals in Vancouver so far, enough to place it third overall and only one gold medal behind the leaders. The country grabbed three medals Tuesday, including silver and bronze, respectively, for Kjeitil Jansrud and Aksel Svindal in the men's giant slalom. The haul is expected to continue throughout this final week.

Norway has won more Winter Games medals than any other nation. Last week it became the first country to win 100 Olympic gold medals, and Tuesday it hit the 300-medal milestone (the U.S. is second on the all-time list with dozens fewer.)

What makes its performance hard to fathom, however, is that Norway has only 4.7 million people to choose from. It's as if the American team finished third in Vancouver after limiting the athlete pool to people living in metropolitan Detroit.

To find a country smaller than Norway, you have to travel down the medals table to Latvia, which is tied for 18th with two medals.

After winning a bronze Tuesday, Mr. Svindal said expectations for victory in Norway can be a little out of control, especially in the Nordic sports. "People think you can just go to the Olympic Games and take the medals home with you," he said. "It's a little harder than that."

Nevertheless, most people are unaware of Norway's Winter Games dominance. Those who are can be quick to dismiss it with stereotypes. The Norwegians are born on skis, they'll say, because the whole country is one giant snowpack.

It doesn't help that Norwegians don't like to toot their own horns. Instead, the thousands who traveled across the world to Vancouver stand along ski trails banging cowbells so loudly that nobody can hear the announcer declaring yet another medal-finish for Norway.

At home, Norway's newspapers this month are touting the current Olympic medal rankings—and also past ones. "Let's see, this newspaper [the Aftenposten] says it's Norway 297 to 244 for the U.S.," Peggy Hager, a University of Wisconsin Norwegian lecturer, said this week in an interview from her office, where she was perusing Norwegian Web sites.

Noting that Norway gained its independence from Sweden only in 1905—and before that was dominated by Denmark—Ms. Hager says, "This is a new country with a lot of flag-waving nationalism."

That can put some special pressure on Norwegian athletes. At Whistler Tuesday, where Mr. Svindal was challenging for his third medal of the Games, some of his countrymen said the expectations back home had become unrealistic. "Now, the success is almost a given, so if we don't do well, then people get disappointed," said Anette Frolich, of Oslo, who was at Whistler cheering on Mr. Svindal.

Norwegians owe their success to many factors. There's a winter sports club in nearly every city and town and a government-funded program that identifies talented athletes in their early teens and nurtures them through development.

Its cities are relatively close to the wilderness, and there's a culture that encourages children to play outdoors even on the coldest days. Neighbor Sweden, by contrast, has its major population centers farther from the wilderness, and the Swedes are more inclined to play indoor sports in the winter, such as tennis or hockey, rather than bundle up and go skiing.

At the 2006 Olympics, Norway bombed by its usual standards—finishing sixth overall in medals and 13th in gold. Handwringing ensued from political leaders down to sports columnists.

Vancouver started off just as badly, with Norwegian gold-medal favorites slipping, misfiring and crashing their way out of contention. Four days into the Games, Norway hadn't won a single gold, and its total medal count ranked below South Korea's. "This is very sad," Rae Reidunn Starkeium, a fan who traveled from Norway, said as she watched Norway fail to win a medal in Tuesday's 12.5-kilometer biathlon.

"A fiasco was what the Norwegian press was calling it," says Halvor Lea, a spokesman for the Norwegian Olympic team.

The Norwegian obsession with the Winter Games is nearly unbridled. When biathlon aired in Norway during prime time one recent evening, 1.75 million households tuned in, according to Mr. Lea. "There's a lot of pressure on us," he says.

After those first four days, Norway roared back, winning medals of every color in the sports it cares about most—cross country, biathlon, ski jumping and alpine skiing.

Not that they've been bragging or anything. After crossing the finish line Tuesday, Mr. Jansrud didn't beat his chest or pump his fist or mug for the international TV feed—instead he took two deep bows to his applauding countrymen.

Write to Matthew Futterman at matthew.futterman@wsj.com and Kevin Helliker at kevin.helliker@wsj.com

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