Ski team sweaters become an issue

Norwegian symbol seen as possible neo-Nazi logo.

OSLO, NORWAY — Norway’s ruthlessly successful Alpine ski team is preparing for next month’s Winter Olympics with a punishing training regime of slaloms, weights and ice baths. So you would think that choosing what knitted woolly sweater to wear would be the easy part.

Designed at a time when public interest in Viking culture is experiencing a renaissance, the theme for Norway’s Alpine ski team uniforms this season is “the Attacking Viking,” an homage to the team’s nickname. But the sweater features a symbol known as the Tyr rune, which neo-Nazis want to claim as their own.

There is little evidence that the rune originally had any symbolic significance beyond its sound value, but the letter shares the name of a Norse deity popularly understood as the god of war, Tyr. Nowadays, most runologists consider it a letter no more mysterious than the letter T.

Even so, the presence of the Tyr rune on the team’s sweater design was enough to raise alarms. Norway’s security police have warned of the rise of a small but politically extreme and potentially violent group called the Nordic Resistance Movement, which uses the Tyr rune in its branding.

In the past year, the group’s members have held rallies outside synagogues and in town squares in Norway and Sweden. One of the group’s slogans, “Enough is enough,” even showed up on a drum in last summer’s white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In many countries a national ski team’s woolen sweater design would not be a major issue, but Norwegians take their knitting seriously. With each games, both the team sweater and its knitting pattern are available for sale to the public. Now, the controversy has caused divisions over whether the ski team’s sweater can be worn with pride.

Margaretha Finseth, whose job as the design and brand manager at the House of Yarn, a wholesaler, is to select and sell well-known patterns for Norwegians to knit, decided against this particular sweater.

Finseth said she did not want to give knitting ideas to white supremacists.

Her decision not to sell the team’s pattern drew angry criticism.

Neopagans, Viking re-enactors and fans of the national ski team expressed dismay at what they considered “giving up” the collective ownership of ancestral symbols to a tiny, unrepresentative minority.

Some knitters vowed to track down the sweater design and knit it anyway.

The manufacturer, Dale of Norway, expressed frustration and disappointment over the whole situation. Hilde Midthjell, the company’s chief executive, vowed to face down any attempts by white supremacists to co-opt symbols that belonged to a shared Norwegian heritage. She decided not to remove the sweaters from the production line.

The design is still the downhill ski team’s official sweater this season. And while Midthjell said sales that continued to be strong, on a recent visit to two sweater stores, the “Attacking Viking” was not available. A salesman said that was due to lack of demand.