Norway’s Generation Z Is Losing the National Love of Skiing

(Bloomberg) -- It’s all downhill from here.

A shocking report was unveiled Tuesday by the Norwegian statistics office just as the nation prepares for the long Easter Holiday: Norwegians are skiing less and less.

Waxing poetically about drinking hot chocolate in the sun while the snow glistens, the agency provided grim data from the very cradle of skiing. The share of Norwegians who took at least one short cross-country ski trip slid to 34 percent in 2017 from 42 percent in 2011.

So who’s to blame? The youth, of course. Of those aged 16-24 years, the share taking short cross-country trips slid to 32 percent from 44 percent.

The agency did note that there was a lot of snow in 2011, so that could have bumped up participation that year.

So what do Norwegians do instead? The answer seems to be, not much.

“The decline in skiing doesn’t seem to coincide with any increase in other activities,” said Kristina Strand Storen, a researcher at the agency.

That doesn’t bode well for the country’s future dominance of the medal tables at the Winter Olympics.

--With assistance from Kati Pohjanpalo.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sveinung Sleire in Oslo at ssleire1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jonas Bergman at jbergman@bloomberg.net, Mikael Holter

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