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 G L O B A L C U LT U R E A N D S P O R T
LEISURE CULTURES
AND THE MAKING OF
MODERN SKI RESORTS

Edited by Philipp Strobl

and Aneta Podkalicka
Global Culture and Sport Series

Series Editors
Stephen Wagg
Carnegie School Of Sport
Leeds Beckett University
Leeds, UK

David Andrews
School of Public Health
University of Maryland
College Park, MD, USA
Series Editors: Stephen Wagg, Leeds Beckett University, UK, and David
Andrews, University of Maryland, USA.
The Global Culture and Sport series aims to contribute to and advance
the debate about sport and globalization through engaging with various
aspects of sport culture as a vehicle for critically excavating the tensions
between the global and the local, transformation and tradition and
sameness and difference. With studies ranging from snowboarding
bodies, the globalization of rugby and the Olympics, to sport and
migration, issues of racism and gender, and sport in the Arab world, this
series showcases the range of exciting, pioneering research being developed
in the field of sport sociology.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15008
 Philipp Strobl • Aneta Podkalicka
Editors

Leisure Cultures and

the Making of
Modern Ski Resorts
Editors
Philipp Strobl Aneta Podkalicka
Institute of Contemporary History School of Media, Film and Journalism
University of Innsbruck Monash University
Innsbruck, Austria Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Global Culture and Sport Series

ISBN 978-3-319-92024-5    ISBN 978-3-319-92025-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92025-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950834

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
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Cover credit: © mooziic / Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Nicolette Snowden for her help with preparing the
collection. Her passion for the topic and attention to detail in copyedit-
ing were amazing. We would also like to thank Brett Hutchins for sug-
gesting the “Global Culture and Sports” series, and series editors Stephen
Wagg and David Andrews for accepting the project.
Monash University’s School of Media, Film and Journalism, as well as
Swinburne University’s Centre for Urban Transitions offered support for
the book’s production, for which we are very grateful.
The book would not have been possible without the participation of
individual contributors—so many thanks for their collaboration. We also
acknowledge the assistance from Sharla Plant and Poppy Hull at Palgrave
in publishing the book.
Philipp would like to express his utmost gratitude to Leon Smith
(Sydney) and Warren Peck (Melbourne) for their invaluable and friendly
advice on the history of post-war skiing in Australia. He would also like
to thank the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Austrian Zukunftsfonds,
which generously supported his research.
Aneta would like to thank Anna, Zygmunt, Daniel, and Kinga for the
skiing experiences that were as much about athletic prowess and occasional
competition as they were about mateship and family. Many thanks to clos-
est Melbourne friends: Deb, Meg, Leah, and Glenda for ongoing support;
and Maria and Christian for sharing their eloquence on writing and sport!
v
 Contents

1 Skiing Transnational: Cultures, Practices, and Ideas on

the Move   1
Aneta Podkalicka and Philipp Strobl

2 Going Downhill? The Industrialisation of Skiing from the

1930s to the 1970s  25
Andrew Denning

3 Slippery Slopes: Skiing, Fashion, and Intrigue in 1960s

Film  43
Marilyn Cohen and Nancy Deihl

4 Mount Uludağ: The Making of Turkey’s St. Moritz  71

Onur Inal

5 Skiing Through Time: Articulating a Landscape Heritage

of Swedish Cross-­Country Skiing  93
Daniel Svensson

6 Arlberg: The Creation of a Resort and the Transfer of

Knowledge 117
Christof Thöny
vii
viii Contents

7 American Bucks and Austrian Buccaneers: Sun Valley—The

Making of America’s First Winter Resort 143
Günter Bischof

8 “We Want to Be More Like the West”: Skiing for All in the
1950s–1970s Poland 161
Stanisław Jędrzejewski

9 From Niche Sport to Mass Tourism: Transnational Lives

in Australia’s Thredbo Resort 185
Philipp Strobl

Bibliography 215

Index235
 Notes on Contributors

Günter Bischof a native of Austria, has taught at the University of New Orleans
since 1989. He studied at the University of Innsbruck, Vienna, and holds a PhD
in American History from Harvard University. He is the Marshall Plan Professor
of History and the Director of “Center Austria: The Marshall Plan Center for
European Studies” at the University of New Orleans; he was appointed a
University Research Professor in June 2011. He served as a visiting professor at
the Universities of Munich, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Vienna, the Economics
Universities of Vienna and Prague, Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the
RGGU in Moscow, as well the “Post-Katrina” Visiting Professor at LSU in the
fall of 2005. He is the author of Austria in the First Cold War, 1945/55: The
Leverage of the Weak (1999), and Relationships/Beziehungsgeschichten: Austria and
the United States in the Twentieth Century (2014), and with Hans Petschar, The
Marshal Plan Since 1947: Saving Europe, Rebuilding Austria (2017), as well as
co-editor of the yearbook Contemporary Austrian Studies (26 volumes), and edi-
tor of the book series TRANSATLANTICA (11 volumes), as well as the co-edi-
tor of another 20 books on topics of international contemporary history
(including the Second World War and the Cold War in Central Europe). Bischof
serves as a “Presidential Counselor” at the National World War II Museum in
New Orleans and on the board of the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American
Studies.
Marilyn Cohen has a PhD and MA in Art History from the Institute of Fine
Arts, New York University, as well as an MA in Decorative Arts, Design and
Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center in New York City. Cohen
ix
x Notes on Contributors

teaches in the Cooper Hewitt/Parsons School of Design MA program and in the

Parsons School of Design MA program in Fashion Studies. She lectures and
publishes in the field of popular and material culture with essays in such publi-
cations as Film, Fashion, and the 1960s (2017), The Routledge Companion to
Design Studies (2016), Performance, Fashion and the Modern Interior from the
Victorians to Today (2011). Cohen has given papers on Wall Street, I Love Lucy,
MASH, The Best Years of Our Lives, Toy Story, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, trench
coats, and movie posters.
Nancy Deihl (BA, Rutgers University; MA, New York University) is director of
the graduate program in Costume Studies at New York University. Deihl is co-­
author of The History of Modern Fashion (2015: Laurence King) and editor of The
Hidden History of American Fashion: Rediscovering 20th-century Women Designers
(2018: Bloomsbury). Deihl writes and lectures on fashion history topics, special-
ising in American fashion. Recent articles have appeared in Vestoj and The
Conversation, and her chapter on the modernity of fashion in the 1920s was
included in Charles Sheeler: Fashion, Photography, and Sculptural Form (Jensen,
K., ed., Doylestown, PA: James A. Michener Art Museum, 2017).
Andrew Denning is Assistant Professor of Modern European History at the
University of Kansas. He has published widely on the history of Alpine skiing, with
articles appearing in The Atlantic, Central European History, and Environmental
History. His book Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History
(2015) received the Ullr Award for Outstanding Contribution to the History of
Skiing from the International Skiing History Association. He is currently prepar-
ing a book manuscript on the role of road infrastructure and motorisation projects
in imperial Africa.
Onur Inal is the managing director of the TürkeiEuropaZentrum of the
University of Hamburg (Germany). He received his PhD degree from the
History Department of the University of Arizona (USA). His research focuses
on the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic. Inal has published
articles on urban history, environmental history, and history of consumption
and is currently working on a co-edited volume on the environmental history of
the Ottoman Empire.
Stanisław Jędrzejewski (PhD) is Professor in the Social Science Department at
Kozminski University in Warsaw. He is the author of numerous articles and reports
on radio and new media. Jędrzejewski has been a member of the board of the
public broadcaster Polish Radio (1994–98) a controller of Public Radio 1 (2003–
2005), member of the National Broadcasting Council (2005), and chairman of
 Notes on Contributors
   xi

supervisory board of public radio in Poland (2011–2014), member and vice chair-
man of the Radio Committee of European Broadcasting Union (1995–2007). He
worked at the Communication and Society Research Centre at University of
Minho, Braga, Portugal, 2009–2011.
Aneta Podkalicka is a cultural and media researcher and lecturer in the School
of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University, Melbourne. She has researched
in the areas of social inclusion, consumption, economic and environmental sus-
tainability and also sport. Podkalicka is an editor of a themed issue of Media
International Australia titled “Media Sport: Practice Culture and Innovation”
(with Brett Hutchins and James Meese). Her publications have appeared in major
cultural and media studies academic journals. She is the co-author of Using media
for social innovation with Ellie Rennie, and Grand Designs: Consumer markets and
home-making with Esther Milne and Jenny Kennedy.
Philipp Strobl is a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Contemporary
History at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) and an adjunct research fellow
at the Centre for Urban Transitions at Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne (Australia). He published widely on different aspects of economic
and social history. Strobl’s research focuses on the history of economic and social
exchange, globalisation, transnationalism, consumerism, urban economic devel-
opment, and the history of migration.
Daniel Svensson has a PhD in History and is currently a researcher and lec-
turer at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. His research is mainly
within the fields of sport history and environmental history. Svensson’s disserta-
tion (awarded with the ISHA Ullr Award 2017) focused on the scientisation of
training methods in cross-country skiing, and meetings between scientific and
experiential knowledge in sport during the twentieth century. Svensson has also
published books and articles about sportification processes, the history of
Swedish women’s football, and shifting ideas about landscape, sports heritage
and mobility during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Christof Thöny was born in 1981 in Bludenz and studied catholic theology and
history at the University of Innsbruck. He teaches catholic religion and history at
the Bundesgynmasium Bludenz and works as a project manager and p ­ ublisher. He
held the position of a regional manager for the Regionalplanungsgemeinschaft
Klostertal for five years. In this position he was engaged in several EC funded
projects as a responsible manager. For more than ten years, he has curated histori-
cal exhibitions and organized cultural projects. He is author and editor of more
than 30 publications and articles, mainly focused on regional history.
 1
Skiing Transnational: Cultures, Practices,
and Ideas on the Move
Aneta Podkalicka and Philipp Strobl

Skiing has been practised in various forms and shapes for a long time,
undergoing “many improvements and almost metamorphoses” while
spreading through the world.1 But it was in the post–World War II
era that the fledgling sport with its emerging ski clubs and infrastruc-
ture developed into a multibillion-dollar industry. New models of
purpose-­built ski resorts attracted increasing numbers of visitors to
mountainous regions all across the world, helping to transform skiing
from a means of transport and later an elitist recreational pursuit into
a common leisure practice which became a “keystone of middle-class
identity”.2

A. Podkalicka (*)
School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University,
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
e-mail: aneta.podkalicka@monash.edu
P. Strobl
Institute of Contemporary History, University of Innsbruck,
Innsbruck, Austria
e-mail: Philipp.strobl@uibk.ac.at

© The Author(s) 2019 1

P. Strobl, A. Podkalicka (eds.), Leisure Cultures and the Making of Modern Ski Resorts,
Global Culture and Sport Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92025-2_1
2 A. Podkalicka and P. Strobl

The rapid diffusion of Alpine skiing at the time benefited from the
development of mass leisure cultures across the skiable world and reflected
general cultural and socio-economic trends set in motion with the emer-
gence of consumer societies in the industrial economies in the nineteenth
century and accelerating during the post–World War II boom period.
These developments, marked by an enormous increase in income and
leisure time in Western countries, coincided with the rise of mass media,
and particularly television in the 1960s, as a central technology for
nation-building, education, and entertainment. Much research has been
done on the development of leisure activities during the postwar years
but the commercial and cultural success of skiing at the time has largely
remained under the radar of scholarship. This is despite the fact that the
processes associated with the popularisation of skiing can offer useful
insights into the global developments in consumption and leisure indus-
tries in the mid twentieth century. A focus on the popularisation of skiing
at that moment in history allows a reflection over the dynamics of the
formation of transnational cultures and the reinvention of local environ-
ments—with some recognisable commonalities but also markedly differ-
ent forms and expressions. To account for some of these historical and
local dynamics of the postwar skiing cultures, this collection focuses on a
selection of ski resort examples, revealing the importance of the transcul-
tural exchange and flows in the increasingly mediated consumer
markets.

 Short History of Skiing: The Case

A
of Transformation and Translation
Skiing has always been transnational, both as a mundane, useful practice
as well as sport. Long before the scholarly discussions about globalisation,
the practice of skiing was found in different parts of the world constantly
changing and reinventing its form. Artefacts found in Russia, Finland,
Sweden, and Norway indicate that some forms of skiing were practised as
early as 6000 BC.3 Ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese literary sources
document the practice of skiing in many different regions of the world,
 Skiing Transnational: Cultures, Practices, and Ideas on the Move 3

from Mongolia to the Caucasus.4 At that time, people used skis mainly as
a means of transportation in snow-covered terrain.
The nineteenth century brought great changes in the practice of skiing.
By the 1840s, cross-country skiing and ski jumping developed into sports
and leisure activities in Norway, used not only for transport by country
folks but also increasingly undertaken by city dwellers.5 Starting from
Norway, the practice of skiing as a form of recreation spread—quasi in the
baggage of Norwegian immigrants—into different parts of the world.
Norwegian gold miners exported their skiing practices and habits to as far
as California in the United States, or New South Wales in Australia, where
the local population took them up. In his “Historical Dictionary of Skiing”,
E. John B. Allen describes that within only a couple of years after the intro-
duction of skiing to California, “gold rush miners and their ladies, having
learned from Norwegian immigrants would be racing down the Sierra
Mountains”.6 The similar happened in Canada, where Norwegian skier
Herman Smith Johannsen (called “Jackrabbit” by the Cree Indians to
whom he is said to have demonstrated the benefits of skiing) set up skiing
trails paving the way for the development of Mont Tremblant ski resort.7
The most important change in the popularisation of skiing occurred,
however, when Norwegian businesspersons, engineers, foresters, and stu-
dents introduced their practices to the Alpine regions of Austria,
Switzerland, Southern Germany, Italy, and France, where they amalgam-
ated with the growing trends of mountaineering.8 Urban leisure seekers
and mountaineers adjusted the Scandinavian practice of skiing to the
different and steeper terrains of the Central European Alps and began to
ski for pleasure.9 Mountaineers such as Toni Schruf and Max Kleinoscheg
in Austria, Wilhelm Paulcke in Germany, Christof Iselin in Switzerland,
Henri Clerc in France, and Adolfo Hess in Italy engendered support from
sections of mountaineering, gymnastic, and cycling clubs for skiing as a
sport. Thus, they gradually made the Alps accessible and desirable year
round, transforming prevailing tourism practices.10 At the same time,
new equipment, cultures, and fashions emerged around the sport, align-
ing the practice with spectators’ lust for mass spectacles as well as with the
rationalist dictates of modern sports which have universal rules adminis-
tered by sporting bureaucracies to allow for the comparison of quantifi-
able results.11 Alpine skiing, the name given to the new form of downhill
4 A. Podkalicka and P. Strobl

skiing, soon became standardised, and ski instructors began to teach its
skills and techniques. Individual pioneers of the sport like Theodor
Neumayer, Etbin Schollmayer, Georg Bilgeri, and Mathias Zdarsky did
much to create and advance ski knowledge by standardising it and codi-
fying its style in early skiing manuals.
The decade around 1900 saw the organisation of skiing take its Alpine
form virtually all over the world.12 Ski clubs mushroomed in different
countries spawning into national organisations. The hype around the
new sport created a strong demand for instructors, and a small but grow-
ing number of teachers extended their influence “well beyond their own
geographical circle”,13 thus leaving behind the geographical constraints of
the nation-state. They had an enormous influence on the diffusion of ski-
ing. Some of them are said to have taught well over 20,000 students from
different countries.14
The years before and directly after the First World War brought further
transformations and changes. At first, the formation of international gov-
erning bodies, the most famous of which became known as the Fédération
Internationale de Ski (FIS) in 1924 standardised and professionalised ski-
ing. Ski schools, secondly played a major role in the global diffusion of
Alpine skiing. Hannes Schneider founded the first commercial ski school
in 1922 in the Austrian ski village of St Anton, which became known as
“the cradle of professional ski instruction”.15 The village subsequently
produced the first transmigrants16 of the sport, namely, ski instructors
who travelled and lived between different ski resorts on both hemispheres
spreading their knowledge all over the skiable world.17 Thirdly, the intro-
duction of uphill transportation modernised and accelerated the practice
of skiing, and a growing market emerged around the sport. For many
decades after its development as a form of recreation, however, skiing
continued to be an elitist practice. “Alpine Skiing took on something of
a class aspect”, right from the beginning as John B. Allen notes,18
­constrained to the fortunate few who could afford the time and money to
travel to the ski regions.
If the category of class remains at the centre of discussions about par-
ticipation in sports, so does the issue of gender. The history of skiing, in
many ways, reflects the well-documented tribulations associated with
women’s emancipation starting in the early twentieth century. “From
 Skiing Transnational: Cultures, Practices, and Ideas on the Move 5

early on, this pastime was shaped by men”, argues Annette R. Hofmann
and Vera Martinelli.19 Their own empirical work focuses on the ambiva-
lent status of women skiers in the Black Forest, Germany, before the First
World War, and documents the historical challenges women faced when
getting involved in skiing. However, despite the existing structures of
exclusion at the time—because of men-only ski clubs, no official regula-
tion and support of women’s races, the men-promoted aesthetisation of
women’s skiing performance over athleticism and so on—skiing demon-
strated also a fledging independence of women, as they became “partners
for males on ski trips”, contributing to “a huge mix-gendered social life
on and off the slope arose around the white sport”.20
Due to the sport’s economic success and commercialisation during the
interwar years, it became open to more people; however, it was still confined
to the wealthier classes and stood for a fashionable leisure activity of well-off
city dwellers across the skiable world. The sport’s exclusivity and novelty
attracted public and media interest making it “ripe for commodification”.21
Consequently, skiing featured in lifestyle magazines all over the globe and
was used to sell “everything from Mercedes-Benz automobiles and Nivea
skin-care products to Italian Fascism,” as Andrew Denning describes.22
In Western societies following post–World War II and the Depression,
skiing reinvented itself as a leisure pursuit accessible to a wider range of
consumers than before, including, increasingly, women. While the scene
for the development of skiing as a sport was set in the nineteenth century,
the mid twentieth century’s cultural and economic conditions enabled its
radical expansion, acceleration, modernisation, and democratisation.23
Increased investment in infrastructure made skiing easier and more afford-
able and thus opened the sport to the growing masses of middle-­class
­leisure seekers. This period saw also the progression of the women’s eman-
cipation movements, with the St Moritz Olympics in Switzerland allowing
women to compete for the first time, thus broadening the social base of the
sport. At the peak of mass culture in the 1960s and 1970s, women became
a target demographic for consumer goods and services in tourism and fash-
ion industries, heavily advertised by mass media. The woman skier was one
of the recognisable figures of these representational and material efforts.
The general democratisation of skiing opened up a new chapter in the
evolution of skiing, which is described in the contributions of this book.
6 A. Podkalicka and P. Strobl

 kiing’s Entangled Histories: A Transnational

S
Account
It is skiing’s characteristic that the sport cannot be practised everywhere
and all the time—although contemporary innovations in snow-making
and synthetic surfaces are arguably pushing these traditional definitions.
Generally, however, Alpine skiing is confined to mountainous and snowy
terrains and thus requires a high degree of mobility and, in many cases,
the capacity to transgress national boundaries. As part of mass consumer
culture, skiing was implicated in the emergence of an interconnected
transnational society shaped by material, informational, and cultural net-
works that transcend national boundaries.24 It was based in ski resorts—
culturally hybrid spaces that can be regarded as transnational spaces “in
between”. These spaces diffused, translated, and transferred the ideas and
values associated with global ski cultures and practices thus creating new
cultural innovations, which found their way into other ski nations.25 Ski
resorts thus served as hubs for the global spread of knowledge. As sport
sociologist Holly Thorpe argues, “global imaginaries” began to displace a
“national imagery” at that time.26 It is perhaps not surprising that the
emerging mass ski cultures that solidified at the time were less connected
to nation-states than the cultures of traditional sports, which developed
during the earlier periods of dominant “national imaginaries” and within
national frameworks during the late nineteenth century.27 As Roland
Huntford summarises in his book Two Planks and A Passion: The Dramatic
History of Skiing: “The ski circus was freemasonry; nationality meant lit-
tle, personality was all”.28
Before the introduction of uphill transportation, skiers physically
climbed up the mountains, which meant they could basically ski at any
accessible snow-covered spot steep enough to allow downhill skiing.
From the 1920s on, the introduction of uphill transportation increas-
ingly pushed skiing into areas in which ski lifts operated. The associated
rise of ski resorts as highly commercialised, culturally hybrid, transna-
tional spaces29 constituted a defining moment in the history of mass ski-
ing, while at the same time, brought together a diverse range of skiing
practitioners, engaging in the nightlife, and in other forms of proliferat-
ing entertainment.30
 Skiing Transnational: Cultures, Practices, and Ideas on the Move 7

As mentioned earlier, this development began during the interwar

years, but it really accelerated after the Second World War when an
investment and building boom in the snow business set in. The knowl-
edge carried by mobile transmigrants translated into the newly estab-
lished or extended resorts co-shaped by local expertise and capital,
creating hybrid forms of transnational cultures comprising of some rec-
ognisable global elements. Although postwar skiers came from diverse
cultural backgrounds and spoke many different languages, they created
a shared identity expressed in common cultural practices such as recog-
nisable ski jargons, cultural sentiments, and similar styles of clothing,
as well as bodily deportment. As Alpine skiing spread across the world,
into remote, often uninhabited, or sparsely populated regions that
could not supply sufficient work force to manage ski resorts, there was
a growing need for specialised equipment and knowledge, meaning
that often workers had to be recruited from abroad. Transmigrants, as
sought-after experts, were needed to add their expertise. Several chap-
ters of this book show how ski resorts and hotel entrepreneurs in the
United States, Australia, and Turkey sometimes relied on the “imported”
knowledge of “ski instructors from Switzerland or Austria, as ‘new vari-
ants’ emerged in different contexts”.31 As Onur Inal shows in his con-
tribution about skiing in Turkey, the first Turkish ski instructor was a
remigrant from Switzerland, who built Turkey’s first ski school accord-
ing to Swiss guidelines. To some degree, offering the services of
European ski instructors became a quality feature for many non-Euro-
pean resorts. Many Australian ski resorts, for example, specifically
advertised the fact that they offered the services of “European” or
“Austrian ski instructors”.32
Ski resorts became transnational melting pots attracting large num-
bers of migrants and transmigrants. These mobile workers in the ski
industry, from ski instructors to the people who maintain the resort’s
infrastructure, sought a distinctive life in the snow where they expected
“work and leisure” to converge as “allies”.33 They spread ideas, practices,
and cultures through their transnational lifestyle acting as agents in the
evolution of skiing.
8 A. Podkalicka and P. Strobl

The international mobility associated with skiing was mirrored in and

transmitted by the images of the sport that circulated en mass thanks to
ever more powerful mass media. The representational function of media—
books, press, film, and television—was a critical factor in the popularisa-
tion of skiing at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century in
Europe, starting with “the breathless mass-media coverage of skiing
exploits such as those by Fridtjof Nansen”,34 through to the specialised
novel publications such as journals and periodicals devoted to winter
sports and skiing (e.g. Der Schnee), advertising, films, and later television.
The skiing histories are replete with references to the popularisation of ski-
ing through cultural production, making Nauright and Parrish’s observe:

Skiing was very much a product of mass culture (…) [It] benefitted from
the existence of a popular culture that eagerly consumed novelty. Individuals
experienced this innovation both firsthand, by skiing themselves, and indi-
rectly, through the many popular representations of skiing in newspapers,
periodicals, novels, films, and art.35

But the rise of media and advertising industries in the postwar period
and the attractiveness of skiing for broadcasting36 enhanced the visibility
of the sport and anchored it convincingly in popular culture. Its appeal
for live media coverage brought the sport into the orbit of popular televi-
sion and radio that broadcasted ski races and competitions, adding to the
earlier mediation of skiing through books, popular and specialist maga-
zines, and press. And television did what it does best: it domesticated
skiing beyond its competitive or professional versions as a type of story-
telling and popular education. It offered compelling images and stories of
the whole complex of skiing as a recreational practice: its fashions (clothes
on and off the slope), infrastructures (ski resorts), and cultures for con-
sumption for the growing masses of TV spectators around the world,37
thus reinforcing the sport’s transnational character as entertainment.
Skiing featured in many contemporary big screen productions, loaded
with class distinction and aspirational values, which cultural scholars
Nancy Deihl and Marilyn Cohen describe in this collection as the
moment when “skiing and the films of the 1960s reciprocally and fash-
ionably intoxicated each other”.38
 Skiing Transnational: Cultures, Practices, and Ideas on the Move 9

A Lacuna in Research
Although skiing is a global phenomenon, it has not “gained the recogni-
tion accorded to other sports”,39 while Alpine skiing, despite its transna-
tional character, has long been researched through “national” lenses.
There are only a few studies on the global diffusion and translation of
ski cultures and practices, and only a handful of researchers have dedi-
cated their work to the analysis of skiing as a transnational phenome-
non.40 Ski resorts, as hybrid spaces that boost transnational cultures and
practices, have attracted even less scholarly interest. “Despite the
impressive economic, cultural, and environmental impact, that skiing
and ski resorts have had on Alpine settings throughout the world, ski
resorts and winter recreation have attracted remarkably little literature”,
as Dylan Esson claims in his 2011 dissertation that compares four dif-
ferent winter resorts in Europe and the United States.41 Not much has
changed since that publication.
Skiing and ski cultures produced many transmigrants, men and
women who regularly travelled between different countries helping cre-
ate new transnational practices and cultural elements out of their “in
between” location. Thus, many people who were engaged in building up
the postwar snowfields all over the world can be seen as “cultural transla-
tors” par excellence.42 A study of their lives can reveal an agent-centred
perspective on transnational and global processes, showing how transna-
tional influences affected local contexts as well as how important transla-
tion processes were for the localisation and adaption of knowledge and
practices.43 Exploring discontinuities and disruptions in these encoun-
ters can allow us to cast a glance on the “costs of transnationalism and
global exchange”.44
Although ski resorts inspired many fierce skiers and hobby historians
to gather data and publish on regional aspects of ski history across the
skiable world,45 studies that systematically compare local developments
and examine them against a global background are very scarce. Scholarly
analyses of transnational cultures in the snow business still remain side
issues covered by a few “lone wolves” in academia, constituting a lacuna
10 A. Podkalicka and P. Strobl

in research that needs further investigation.46 In cultural and media stud-

ies too, winter sports are largely underrepresented. This collection that
brings together diverse case studies of ski cultures to examine transna-
tional orders and the mediation of global sport and leisure aims to ani-
mate the discussions about their cultural, social, and economic
importance.

 heorising the Cultures of Skiing

T
as Translation
This edited volume, transnational and interdisciplinary in its approach,
analyses the exchange of culture, practices, and knowledge,47 across dif-
ferent countries and explores the processes of cultural transmission and
transformation that took place in ski resorts across the skiable world dur-
ing the important phase of a “physical and discursive modernization” of
the sport between the late 1930s and the 1970s.48
In analytical terms, the nation-state on its own is an inadequate cate-
gory and scale through which to explore the entangled histories of the
practices and cultures of postwar skiing. Instead studying the topic
requires cultural perspectives and approaches that can explicate how ideas
and knowledge spread, how they interact with others, to produce what
some commentators describe as the “cosmopolitan culture of Alpine ski-
ing”.49 Skiing as a leisure practice takes place on a local level but is organ-
ised out of many different cultural ingredients—and materialised, in
iconic ways, in and through internationally networked ski resorts that
operate as nodes of the intense consumption and production of tourism,
sport, and leisure within the global cultural economy.50 Individuals and
groups of consumers in those transnational places tended to reject and at
the same time accept and reappropriate global lifestyles in local contexts,
which amounts to a process of both globalisation and glocalisation in
practice.51 It is important to recognise that the developments in ski resorts
that this collection documents were both discursively and materially con-
stituted by local and transnational factors. An entangled history of the
emergence, spread, and exchange of cultures and practices of skiing in the
 Skiing Transnational: Cultures, Practices, and Ideas on the Move 11

postwar era must therefore adopt a transnational perspective premised on

a “global” understanding of the “local”.52
One concept that is useful for thinking through the evolution of
Alpine skiing is that of “cultural translation”.53 While the ideas around
the diffusion or transfer of skiing as a novel and attractive sport go some
way towards explaining the dynamics of the process in the post–World
War II period,54 theorising it as a “dialogical” encounter fleshes out its
specific dimensions, and “homegrown” iterations.55 Russian semiotician,
Yuri Lotman observes that culture develops in “dialogic situations” as a
result of new ideas being transmitted, received, and shared again—the
process that he describes as relational, dynamic, “cyclical”, and fluctuat-
ing.56 The first stage is a flow of foreign ideas and texts into a “home”
context, followed by “the stage of saturation [when] the language is mas-
tered, the texts are adapted”, leading to original “text-production” and
reverse transmission outwards. This is an intense exchange process
“extend[ing] its influence over a much larger area” within the all-­
encompassing system of culture.57 Lotman makes it clear that “favourable
historical, social and psychological conditions” have to be met for the
translation to take place, as well as it must be “felt to be necessary and
desirable”.58 These ideas relate to how sociologists conceptualise the
­popularisation of particular social practices. Elizabeth Shove and Mika
Pantzar use the example of Nordic walking as a case in point. They argue
that “rather than representing” the uptake of Nordic walking as “a process
of diffusion”, it is more appropriate to consider it as “a consequence of its
successive reinvention”.59 Importantly, as they argue, the precondition for
the uptake of a practice is that “many of the necessary elements are already
in place”, and lead to the development of “a new system”.60
The theory of “cultural translation” foregrounds the importance of
meaning-making through the mobility and exchange of ideas, values, and
practices as a result of encounters between different cultural systems. The
translation pattern can be recognised in the way the Norwegian skiing
“imports” took hold in the Central European areas to spread back to
Norway, and then more widely around the world, prompting “transla-
tions, imitations and adaptations to multiply”.61 Nauright and Parrish do
not single out cultural translation as a concept to explain the formation
12 A. Podkalicka and P. Strobl

of international skiing cultures, but their historical description—albeit

referring to the period before the focus of this collection—does point to
the dialogic pattern. About the early-nineteenth-century moment of con-
tact between Norwegian students and German hosts, they write, “While
many locals viewed skis as laughably foreign and strange, others—many
of them curious fellow students—took to the sport quickly”.62 They con-
tinue, “As skiers [in the Alpine regions] took to the Alps for tours, they
struggled with the matter of how to match Scandinavian equipment and
methods to Alpine terrain”, which led to a series of adaptations, and
eventually formalisation and export of Alpine skiing internationally, with
much involvement of mass media.63
In this collection, eight different contributions, written by experts
from different backgrounds and academic disciplines uncover a variety of
critical domains such as the dynamics of cultural translation, knowledge
exchange, migration and transmigration, and media and consumer
­culture, as well as modernisation and tourism. The contributions ques-
tion if and how developers all over the world drew on “imported” ideas
and patterns to create resorts in distinctive “home” cultures—to use
Lotman’s terminology.64 As migrants and transmigrants were often driv-
ing forces behind the global diffusion of skiing and the spread and trans-
lation of its cultures and practices, some contributions of this book also
touch upon the lives of some of the “cultural translators”65 whose deci-
sions and actions determined whether and how culture, knowledge, and
practices were produced, received, negotiated, and translated in local
contexts.66 Due to the sport’s “bi- or multidirectional character”, knowl-
edge, practices, and elements of culture underwent different “processes of
acculturation”67 and it is, not least, the sum of those processes that shows
a wide range of local influences, and thus constitutes the diversity of
transnational cultures.
Johannes Paulmann suggests “research about intercultural transfer
depends on comparisons”,68 and this book consequently follows a com-
parative approach that captures dynamic developments in different parts
of the world and places them in a global context.
Since “the power of sports media—especially for an emerging sport—
can have the effect of profoundly influencing its developmental direc-
tion”,69 this book highlights the role of media culture in the creation of
 Skiing Transnational: Cultures, Practices, and Ideas on the Move 13

emerging transnational mass cultures around skiing. Media are a key

interface through which the social meanings are constructed, represented,
and circulated. This includes the mediation of skiing as a sport and cul-
tural phenomenon, embedding it in everyday worlds and popular culture
through storytelling, popular commentary, and visual means. The peak of
the emergence of modern ski resorts after World War II was also the
period when mass media installed itself as a central social institution
across Western economies. Not only did mass media accompany these
developments but also to a large extent fuelled the growth and intensity
of consumer aspirations and practices making skiing, along with related
cultural experiences such as travel, into a recreational sport, fashion, and
lifestyle. Two introductory chapters, by Andrew Denning, and Marilyn
Cohen and Nancy Deihl, highlight the global promotion of ski cultures
as a complex of “sport, media, and economic development” (Denning),
with popular depictions of skiing in mainstream magazines and films as
an aspirational practice (Cohen and Deihl).
Denning’s chapter highlights the intertwining of supply and demand
that catapulted skiing to the industrialised scale it assumed in the post–
World War II period. Much material (infrastructure, equipment, tech-
nologies), social (increased leisure time), and symbolic (media
representations) elements combined to make skiing a successful lifestyle.
Denning’s account brings forth the centrality of the media apparatus and
publicity as key to skiing’s rapid ascendancy. From the peripheral inclu-
sion of skiing in German “mountain films” in the 1930s, through to
radio coverage before and after World War II, televised “mega spectacles”
of Winter Olympics skiing competitions starting with Grenoble in 1968.
Along with rampant and multiform advertising, skiing became embed-
ded in the public imagination and global popular culture and became a
fashionable practice and high-value social commodity. The focus on the
media foregrounds the impacts of celebrity culture, with many skiing
stars lending their faces and sporting achievements as a currency in the
international popularisation of the sport.
Marilyn Cohen and Nancy Deihl use prominent examples from popu-
lar culture—notably Cosmopolitan and Playboy magazines and Bond
films—to demonstrate just how much the media industries were impli-
cated in and shaped the ideas and values of skiing as sport leisure culture
14 A. Podkalicka and P. Strobl

undergoing democratisation. In their analysis, media representations of

skiing can be seen not only as promotional artefacts for skiing as thrilling,
“cool and aspirational” experiences, associated with the growing appeal of
international travel but also as cultural products underpinned by the dis-
courses of sexual desirability and gender relations, as well as tapping into
the air of Cold War intrigues playing out at the time. Cohen and Deihl’s
reading of media representations suggests some interesting polysemic
meanings, for example, around the depictions of women and skiing, on
the one hand as fashionably ski-apparel-clad accompaniments on the
slopes (“snow bunnies”) and objects of male heterosexual desires, and on
the other, as “athletic and independent” skiers and the coveted mass cul-
ture consumer, especially from the 1960s onwards.
The two opening chapters explain also, in complementary ways, the
value of film star role models and celebrity cultures criss-crossing the
domains of sport and popular media and permeating the image of democ-
ratised skiing. These contributions set the scene for the following six case
studies that analyse and compare the origins of ski resorts across the ski-
able world.
Onur Inal explores the evolution of skiing in Turkey, a country not
readily identified as a skiing nation. Inal describes how skiing, in the
context of modernisation in Republican Turkey, emerged as a new and
very popular form of recreation, which in the long run, helped modernise
the country by opening it to new technologies and providing greater
exposure to Western ideas. Inal exemplifies how Mount Uludag evolved
as Turkey’s premier ski resort, spearheading the growth of skiing and win-
ter sports in the country from mid twentieth century. As Inal shows, the
emergence of skiing as a leisure practice in Uludag was connected to
developments in Switzerland. Again there were many transmigrants; in
this case however, they were “Western trained” Turkish ski instructors
and experts, who helped build the infrastructure for Turkish ski resorts.
Daniel Svensson traces the long-standing connections between skiing,
landscape, and nature. Focusing on cross-country skiing in Sweden,
Svensson demonstrates just how much the relationship to nature, embed-
ded also in the Nordic legal system as Allemansrätten (“the right of public
access” to nature), had defined the formation and marketing of skiing
resorts, and their varied alignment with the “natural” versus “rational”
 Skiing Transnational: Cultures, Practices, and Ideas on the Move 15

training styles. In his chapter, Svensson combines archival material with

field studies to present a history of skiing resorts as “genuine places for
skiing” constituted in the twin process of “social articulation” through
marketing texts, journals and tutorials, and material investments in resort
infrastructure. While the mix of narrative, technological, and material
mechanisms for making skiing a popular sport is emphasised in other
contributions to this collection, Svensson draws a useful distinction
between the development of cross-country and Alpine skiing, with the
former reliant on small-scale resorts and “domestic know-how”, while the
latter characterised by large-scale enterprises and “imported ideas” from
Alpine regions.
Christof Thöny brings the reader’s attention to the Arlberg region of
western Austria, which has been labelled “the cradle of professional ski
instruction”.70 Thöny focuses on the early geographical and infrastruc-
tural growth of Arlberg as a world-class ski resort touching upon mod-
ernisation developments such as the construction of ski lifts, the expansion
of tourist accommodation in the Arlberg resort villages and the changes
in economic structures, such as ski lift companies. Although Arlberg
became a major brand in the ski world relatively early, it was not until
after World War II reconstruction that it became modernised and that
the various separated regional snow fields were merged into one large ski
arena connected by various lifts. As Thöny shows, American know-how
and financial contributions from the Marshall Plan and the European
Recovery Programme Fund had a considerable impact on this develop-
ment. He also explores the expansion of infrastructure and the produc-
tion as well as import and export of ski knowledge, particularly in the
field of ski instruction.
Günter Bischof focuses his attention on the United States’ western
region, exploring the origins of Sun Valley, “America’s first destination ski
resort”. Bischof shows how “European” elements of skiing have been
translated into an “American” context and how many new cultural ele-
ments and innovative inventions emerged out of this significant connec-
tion. Many of these new inventions, such as the chairlift, as Bischof
shows, found their way to Europe in the postwar reconstruction era and
helped modernise the sport in Europe. Bischof focuses his analysis on the
work of the actual “cultural translators”, those who were responsible for
16 A. Podkalicka and P. Strobl

the creation of Sun Valley. By highlighting the role of European transmi-

grants in the process of developing Sun Valley, Bischof shows the intense
entanglements between the American and the Central European ski
industries during the pre– and post–World War II years.
Stanisław Jędrzejewski brings to international readers an account of
how skiing was popularised in the 1950s and 1970s Poland. Jędrzejewski
analysis explains this evolution as an intriguing product of combined
top-down public campaigns pursued by the communist government
seeking international visibility through (mediated) sports and parallel
efforts by keen skiers, journalists, and social activists. While the media—
here analysed through the focus on newspapers and magazines—played
an important role in making skiing popular, Jędrzejewski’s chapter adds
to the collection by revealing its specific post–World War II communist
circumstances. The Polish media landscape consisted not only of state-­
owned media, mass media propaganda, and censorships tactics following
the model of wide-ranging communistic bureaucracy and control but
also the argued “diversity” in the popular press presenting recreational
sports to the public. The account foregrounds the impact of socio-­
economic factors—legislated paid holidays, the development of a domes-
tic ski manufacturing industry and also, from the 1970s onwards, the
increased opening of Poland to the West because of political changes.
Polish newspaper coverage of “the rapid development of professional and
amateur skiing in other countries” further inspired public discussion of
skiing in Poland, while the mining industry invested in building ski
resorts to ameliorate poor ski infrastructure significantly outpaced by
Western European Alpine countries.
Philipp Strobl explores skiing “down under” in Thredbo—Australia’s
“most international ski resort”.71 By following the life trajectories of some
of the main actors involved—many of them were migrants or transmi-
grants—in the making of this relatively young Australian ski resort,
Strobl uses a biographical approach. He analyses the resort’s initial years
in the late 1950s and early 1960s against the backdrop of an intensified
global diffusion of skiing and the emergence of transcultural ski cultures,
showing how ideas introduced from different parts of the skiable world
and local entrepreneurial knowledge intermingled when skiing as a mass
leisure practice was introduced to Australia.
 Skiing Transnational: Cultures, Practices, and Ideas on the Move 17

Collectively, the chapters in this collection show the diverse spaces and
trajectories of the translation and democratisation of the Alpine skiing
across different locations—and reveal just how much the widespread and
routinised influence of mediated popular culture had on the public
debates and the making of ski cultures.
By initiating this collection, as editors, we have intended to bring
together accounts of modern skiing across different countries, focusing
on ski resorts that came to symbolise places where skiing is practised as
a form of commodified entertainment. The completion of this collection
coincided with the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, South Korea in
February, 2018. As every four years for about two weeks, the popular
diet of the media public was replete with the stories and moving images
of spectacular athleticism, courage, and beauty—and canvassed against
the backdrop of the high-stakes political importance, which was the visit
of the North Korean delegation to South Korea since the 1950–53
Korean War. In Australia, where Aneta Podkalicka works, the competi-
tion occurred in the Australian time zone for the first time in 20 years—
the fact drummed up in the pre-event advertising of the extensive
television coverage offered by Australia’s free-to-air commercial televi-
sion station, Channel 7. On the local screens and in press, the South
Korean Games were further promoted through references to “the best
performed team that we’ve taken to an Olympic Games”72 and gold
medal hopes in an attempt to raise the profile of winter sports disciplines
in the country popularly known for its beach culture and high-octane
sports ambitions.
Across the globe, in Austria, where Philipp Strobl works, skiing has
been a national sport as long as one can remember, with competitive
winter games’ achievements historically reliable and strong. In Austria,
the mediation of winter sports has a long-standing tradition. In 2018, the
Pyeongchang Winter Olympics were freely available 24 hours on national
television and radio broadcasting station ORF, in addition to an ava-
lanche of commentary across newspapers, many of which enthusiastically
celebrating Austria as the “most successful ski nation in the Alpine ski
contests”,73 or as a country being in a “Medaillienrausch” (medal buzz).74
This collection itself is a result of transnational collaboration by the
editors with different disciplinary backgrounds (Philipp—social and cul-
18 A. Podkalicka and P. Strobl

tural history, Aneta—cultural and media studies) and native languages,

sharing academic interest in sports and, at one point, working together at
Swinburne Institute for Social Research in Melbourne. The volume that
includes the authors writing about skiing in the United States, Turkey,
Poland, Sweden, Austria, and Australia is the testament to the transna-
tional development of skiing, and also reflects our own transnational aca-
demic trajectories.
While international in scope, Leisure Cultures and the Making of Ski
Resorts is by no means exhaustive nor does it offer a complete overview
about developments in all ski nations. The editors would have liked to
include contributions from other parts of the skiing worlds, for example
Japan, New Zealand, Chile, and so on. But we believe we have offered an
overdue transnational assessment of developments in the postwar ski
industry providing a starting point for further research. In this context,
we also would like to point towards the single bibliography at the end of
this collection, which offers a comprehensive overview about the litera-
ture on this subject.

Notes
1. Jon Wonroff, “Editor’s Foreword,” in Historical Dictionary of Skiing, ed.
E. John B. Allen (Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 2012), ix–x, ix.
2. Andrew Denning, “How Skiing Went From the Alps to the Masses,” The
Atlantic, accessed February 23, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/busi-
ness/archive/2015/02/how-skiing-went-from-the-alps-to-the-
masses/385691/
3. E. John B. Allen, Historical Dictionary of Biography (Lanham: The
Scarecrow Press, 2012), 3.
4. Roland Huntford, Two Planks and a Passion: The Dramatic History of
Skiing (London: Continuum, 2008), 15f.
5. Allen, Dictionary, 5.
6. Allen, Dictionary, 5.
7. John Fry, The Story of Modern Skiing (Lebanon: University Press of New
England, 2006), 11–12.
8. Allen, Dictionary, 5.
9. Allen, Dictionary, 5.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 PLATE XXXVIII

SHRUBBY CINQUEFOIL.—P. fruticosa.

Of all the cinquefoils perhaps this one most truly merits the title
five finger. Certainly its slender leaflets are much more finger-like
than those of the common cinquefoil. It is not a common plant in
most localities, but is very abundant among the Berkshire Hills.

Silvery Cinquefoil.
Potentilla argentea. Rose Family.

Stems.—Ascending, branched at the summit, white, woolly. Leaves.—Divided

into five wedge-oblong, deeply incised leaflets, which are green above, white with
silvery wool, beneath.
The silvery cinquefoil has rather large yellow flowers which are
found in dry fields throughout the summer as far south as New
Jersey.

Golden Ragwort. Squaw-weed.

Senecio aureus. Composite Family (p. 13).

Stem.—One to three feet high. Root-leaves.—Rounded, the larger ones mostly

heart-shaped, toothed, and long-stalked. Stem-leaves.—The lower lyre-shaped, the
upper lance-shaped, incised, set close to the stem. Flower-heads.—Yellow,
clustered, composed of both ray and disk-flowers.
A child would perhaps liken the flower of the golden ragwort to a
yellow daisy. Stain yellow the white rays of the daisy, diminish the
size of the whole head somewhat, and you have a pretty good
likeness of the ragwort. There need be little difficulty in the
identification of this plant—although there are several marked
varieties—for its flowers are abundant in the early year, at which
season but few members of the Composite family are abroad.
The generic name is from senex—an old man—alluding to the
silky down of the seeds, which is supposed to suggest the silvery
hairs of age.
Closely allied to the golden ragwort is the common groundsel, S.
vulgaris, which is given as food to caged birds. The flower-heads of
this species are without rays.

——— ———
Clintonia borealis. Lily Family.

Scape.—Five to eight inches high, sheathed at its base by the stalks of two to
four large, oblong, conspicuous leaves. Flowers.—Greenish-yellow, rather large,
rarely solitary. Perianth.—Of six sepals. Stamens.—Six, protruding. Pistil.—One,
protruding. Fruit.—A blue berry.
 PLATE XXXIX

Clintonia borealis.

When rambling through the cool, moist woods our attention is

often attracted by patches of great dark, shining, leaves; and if it be
late in the year we long to know the flower of which this rich foliage
is the setting. To satisfy our curiosity we must return the following
May or June, when we shall probably find that a slender scape rises
from its midst bearing at its summit several bell-shaped flowers,
which, without either high color or fragrance, are peculiarly
charming. It is hard to understand why this beautiful plant has
received no English name. As to its generic title we cannot but
sympathize with Thoreau. “Gray should not have named it from the
Governor of New York,” he complains; “what is he to the lovers of
flowers in Massachusetts? If named after a man, it must be a man of
flowers.... Name your canals and railroads after Clinton, if you
please, but his name is not associated with flowers.”
C. umbellata is a more Southern species, with smaller white
flowers, which are speckled with green or purplish dots.

Yellow Lady’s Slipper. Whip-poor-Will’s Shoe.

Cypripedium pubescens. Orchis Family (p. 17).

Stem.—About two feet high, downy, leafy to the top, one to three-flowered.
Leaves.—Alternate, broadly oval, many-nerved and plaited. Flowers.—Large,
yellow. Perianth.—Two of the three brownish, elongated sepals united into one
under the lip; the lateral petals linear, wavy-twisted, brownish; the pale yellow lip
an inflated pouch. Stamens.—Two, the short filaments of each bearing a two-celled
anther. Stigma.—Broad, obscurely three-lobed, moist and roughish.
The yellow lady’s slipper usually blossoms in May or June, a few
days later than its pink sister, C. acaule. Regarding its favorite
haunts, Mr. Baldwin[3] says: “Its preference is for maples, beeches,
and particularly butternuts, and for sloping or hilly ground, and I
always look with glad suspicion at a knoll covered with ferns,
cohoshes, and trilliums, expecting to see a clump of this plant among
them. Its sentinel-like habit of choosing ‘sightly places’ leads it to
venture well up on mountain sides.”
The long, wavy, brownish petals give the flower an alert, startled
look when surprised in its lonely hiding-places.
 PLATE XL

SMALLER YELLOW LADY’S SLIPPER.

—C. parviflorum.

C. parviflorum, the small yellow lady’s slipper, differs from C.

pubescens in the superior richness of its color as well as in its size. It
also has the charm of fragrance.

Early Meadow Parsnip.

Zizia aurea. Parsley Family (p. 15).

One to three feet high. Leaves.—Twice or thrice-compound, leaflets oblong to

lance-shaped, toothed. Flowers.—Yellow, small, in compound umbels.
 This is one of the earliest members of the Parsley family to
appear. Its golden flower-clusters brighten the damp meadows and
the borders of streams in May or June and closely resemble the
meadow parsnip, Thaspium aureum, of which this species was
formerly considered a variety, of the later year.
The tall, stout, common wild parsnip, Pastinaca sativa, is
another yellow representative of this family in which white flowers
prevail, the three plants here mentioned being the only yellow
species commonly encountered. The common parsnip may be
identified by its grooved stem and simply compound leaves. Its roots
have been utilized for food at least since the reign of Tiberius, for
Pliny tells us that that Emperor brought them to Rome from the
banks of the Rhine, where they were successfully cultivated.

Golden Club.
Orontium aquaticum. Arum Family.

Scape.—Slender, elongated. Leaves.—Long-stalked, oblong, floating. Flowers.

—Small, yellow, crowded over the narrow spike or spadix.
When we go to the bogs in May to hunt for the purple flower of
the pitcher-plant we are likely to chance upon the well-named golden
club. This curious-looking club-shaped object, which is found along
the borders of ponds, indicates its relationship to the jack-in-the-
pulpit, and still more to the calla lily, but unlike them its tiny flowers
are shielded by no protecting spathe.
Kalm tells us in his “Travels,” “that the Indians called the plant
Taw-Kee, and used its dried seeds as food.”

Spearwort.
Ranunculus ambigens. Crowfoot Family.

Stems.—One to two feet high. Leaves.—Oblong or lance-shaped, mostly

toothed, contracted into a half-clasping leaf-stalk. Flowers.—Bright yellow, solitary
or clustered. Calyx.—Of five sepals. Corolla.—Of five to seven oblong petals.
Stamens.—Indefinite in number, occasionally few. Pistils.—Numerous in a head.
Many weeks after the marsh marigolds have passed away, just
such marshy places as they affected are brightly flecked with gold.
Wondering, perhaps, if they can be flowering for the second time in
the season, we wade recklessly into the bog to rescue, not the marsh
marigold, but its near relation, the spearwort, which is still more
closely related to the buttercup, as a little comparison of the two
flowers will show. This plant is especially common at the North.

Indian Cucumber-root.
Medeola Virginica. Lily Family.

Root.—Tuberous, shaped somewhat like a cucumber, with a suggestion of its

flavor. Stem.—Slender, from one to three feet high, at first clothed with wool.
Leaves.—In two whorls on the flowering plants, the lower of five to nine oblong,
pointed leaves set close to the stem, the upper usually of three or four much
smaller ones. Flowers.—Greenish-yellow, small, clustered, recurved, set close to
the upper leaves. Perianth.—Of three sepals and three petals, oblong and alike.
Stamens.—Six, reddish-brown. Pistil.—With three stigmas, long, recurved, and
reddish-brown. Fruit.—A purple berry.
One is more apt to pause in September to note the brilliant
foliage and purple berries of this little plant than to gather the
drooping inconspicuous blossoms for his bunch of wood-flowers in
June. The generic name is after the sorceress Medea, on account of
its supposed medicinal virtues, of which, however, there seems to be
no record.
The tuberous rootstock has the flavor, and something the shape,
of the cucumber, and was probably used as food by the Indians. It
would not be an uninteresting study to discover which of our
common wild plants are able to afford pleasant and nutritious food;
in such a pursuit many of the otherwise unattractive popular names
would prove suggestive.

Common Bladderwort.
Utricularia vulgaris. Bladderwort Family.

Stems.—Immersed, one to three feet long. Leaves.—Many-parted, hair-like,

bearing numerous bladders. Scape.—Six to twelve inches long. Flowers.—Yellow,
five to twelve on each scape. Calyx.—Two-lipped. Corolla.—Two-lipped, spurred at
the base. Stamens.—Two. Pistil.—One.
 This curious water-plant may or may not have roots; in either
case it is not fastened to the ground, but is floated by means of the
many bladders which are borne on its finely dissected leaves. It is
commonly found in ponds and slow streams, flowering throughout
the summer. Thoreau calls it “a dirty-conditioned flower, like a
sluttish woman with a gaudy yellow bonnet.”
The horned bladderwort, U. cornuta, roots in the peat-bogs and
sandy swamps. Its large yellow helmet-shaped flowers are very
fragrant, less than half a dozen being borne on each scape.

Yellow Pond-lily. Spatter Dock.

Nuphar advena. Water-lily Family.

Leaves.—Floating or erect, roundish to oblong, with a deep cleft at their base.

Flowers.—Yellow, sometimes purplish, large, somewhat globular. Calyx.—Of five
or six sepals or more, yellow or green without. Corolla.—Of numerous small, thick,
fleshy petals which are shorter than the stamens and resemble them. Stamens.—
Very numerous. Pistil.—One, with a disk-like, many-rayed stigma.
Bordering the slow streams and stagnant ponds from May till
August may be seen the yellow pond-lilies. These flowers lack the
delicate beauty and fragrance of the white water-lilies; having,
indeed, either from their odor, or appearance, or the form of their
fruit, won for themselves in England the unpoetic title of “brandy-
bottle.” Owing to their love of mud they have also been called “frog-
lilies.” The Indians used their roots for food.
 PLATE XLI

INDIAN CUCUMBER-ROOT.—M.
Virginiana.

Winter-cress, Yellow Rocket. Herb of St. Barbara.

Barbarea vulgaris. Mustard Family (p. 17).

Stem.—Smooth. Leaves.—The lower lyre-shaped; the upper ovate, toothed or

deeply incised at their base. Flowers.—Yellow, growing in racemes. Pod.—Linear,
erect or slightly spreading.
As early as May we find the bright flowers of the winter-cress
along the roadside. This is probably the first of the yellow mustards
to appear.
 Black Mustard.
Brassica nigra. Mustard Family (p. 17).

Often several feet high. Stem.—Branching. Leaves.—The lower with a large

terminal lobe and a few small lateral ones. Flowers.—Yellow, rather small, growing
in a raceme. Pods.—Smooth, erect, appressed, about half an inch long.
Many are familiar with the appearance of this plant who are
ignorant of its name. The pale yellow flowers spring from the waste
places along the roadside and border the dry fields throughout the
summer. The tall spreading branches recall the biblical description:
“It groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth
out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the
shadow of it.”
This plant is extensively cultivated in Europe, its ground seeds
forming the well-known condiment. The ancients used it for
medicinal purposes. It has come across the water to us, and is a
troublesome weed in many parts of the country.

Wild Radish.
Raphanus Raphanistrum. Mustard Family (p. 17).

One to three feet high. Leaves.—Rough, lyre-shaped. Flowers.—Yellow, veiny,

turning white or purplish; larger than those of the black mustard, otherwise
resembling them. Pod.—Often necklace-form by constriction between the seeds.
This plant is a troublesome weed in many of our fields. It is the
stock from which the garden radish has been raised.
 PLATE XLII

WINTER-CRESS.—B. vulgaris.

Cynthia. Dwarf Dandelion.

Krigia Virginica. Composite Family (p. 13).

Stems.—Several, becoming branched, leafy. Leaves.—Earlier ones roundish;

the latter narrower and often cleft. Flower-heads.—Yellow, composed entirely of
strap-shaped flowers.
In some parts of the country these flowers are among the earliest
to appear. They are found in New England, as well as south and
westward.
 The flowers of K. amplexicaulis appear later, and their range is a
little farther south. Near Philadelphia great masses of the orange-
colored blossoms and pale green stems and foliage line the railway
embankments in June.

Rattlesnake-weed.
Hieracium venosum. Composite Family (p. 13).

Stem or Scape.—One or two feet high, naked or with a single leaf, smooth,
slender, forking above. Leaves.—From the root, oblong, often making a sort of flat
rosette, usually conspicuously veined with purple. Flower-heads.—Yellow,
composed entirely of strap-shaped flowers.
The loosely clustered yellow flower-heads of the rattlesnake-
weed somewhat resemble small dandelions. They abound in the
pine-woods and dry, waste places of early summer. The purple-
veined leaves, whose curious markings give to the plant its common
name, grow close to the ground and are supposed to be efficacious in
rattlesnake bites. Here again crops out the old “doctrine of
signatures,” for undoubtedly this virtue has been attributed to the
species solely on account of the fancied resemblance between its
leaves and the markings of the rattlesnake.
H. scabrum is another common species, which may be
distinguished from the rattlesnake-weed by its stout, leafy stem and
unveined leaves.

Dandelion.
Taraxacum officinale. Composite Family (p. 13).
 PLATE XLIII

RATTLESNAKE-WEED.—H. venosum.

If Emerson’s definition of a weed, as a plant whose virtues have

not yet been discovered, be correct, we can hardly place the
dandelion in that category, for its young sprouts have been valued as
a pot-herb, its fresh leaves enjoyed as a salad, and its dried roots
used as a substitute for coffee in various countries and ages. It is said
that the Apache Indians so greatly relish it as food, that they scour
the country for many days in order to procure enough to appease
their appetites, and that the quantity consumed by one individual
exceeds belief. The feathery-tufted seeds which form the downy balls
beloved as “clocks” by country children, are delicately and beautifully
adapted to dissemination by the wind, which ingenious arrangement
partly accounts for the plant’s wide range. The common name is a
corruption of the French dent de lion. There is a difference of opinion
as to which part of the plant is supposed to resemble a lion’s tooth.
Some fancy the jagged leaves gave rise to the name, while others
claim that it refers to the yellow flowers, which they liken to the
golden teeth of the heraldic lion. In nearly every European country
the plant bears a name of similar signification.

Poverty-grass.
Hudsonia tomentosa. Rock-rose Family.

“Bushy, heath-like little shrubs, seldom a foot high.” (Gray.) Leaves.—Small,

oval or narrowly oblong, pressed close to the stem. Flowers.—Bright yellow, small,
numerous, crowded along the upper part of the branches. Calyx.—Of five sepals,
the two outer much smaller. Corolla.—Of five petals. Stamens.—Nine to thirty.
Pistil.—One, with a long and slender style.
In early summer many of the sand-hills along the New England
coast are bright with the yellow flowers of this hoary little shrub. It is
also found as far south as Maryland and near the Great Lakes. Each
blossom endures for a single day only. The plant’s popular name is
due to its economical habit of utilizing sandy unproductive soil
where little else will flourish.

Bush-honeysuckle.
Diervilla trifida. Honeysuckle Family.

An upright shrub from one to four feet high. Leaves.—Opposite, oblong, taper-
pointed. Flowers.—Yellow, sometimes much tinged with red, clustered usually in
threes, in the axils of the upper leaves and at the summit of the stem. Calyx.—With
slender awl-shaped lobes. Corolla.—Funnel-form, five-lobed, the lower lobe larger
than the others and of a deeper yellow, with a small nectar-bearing gland at its
base. Stamens.—Five. Pistil.—One.
 PLATE XLIV

BUSH-HONEYSUCKLE.—D. trifida.

This pretty little shrub is found along our rocky hills and
mountains. The blossoms appear in early summer, and form a good
example of nectar-bearing flowers. The lower lobe of the corolla is
crested and more deeply colored than the others, thus advising the
bee of secreted treasure. The hairy filaments of the stamens are so
placed as to protect the nectar from injury by rain. When the
blossom has been despoiled and at the same time fertilized, for the
nectar-seeking bee has probably deposited some pollen upon its
pistil, the color of the corolla changes from a pale to a deep yellow,
thus giving warning to the insect world that further attentions would
be useless to both parties.

Cow Wheat.
Melampyrum Americanum. Figwort Family.
 Stem.—Low, erect, branching. Leaves.—Opposite, lance-shaped. Flowers.—
Small, greenish-yellow, solitary in the axils of the upper leaves. Calyx.—Bell-
shaped, four-cleft. Corolla.—Two-lipped, upper lip arched, lower three-lobed and
spreading at the apex. Stamens.—Four. Pistil.—One.
In the open woods, from June until September, we encounter
the pale yellow flowers of this rather insignificant little plant. The
cow wheat was formerly cultivated by the Dutch as food for cattle.
The Spanish name, Trigo de Vaca, would seem to indicate a similar
custom in Spain. The generic name, Melampyrum, is from the
Greek, and signifies black wheat, in reference to the appearance of
the seeds of some species when mixed with grain. The flower would
not be likely to attract one’s attention were it not exceedingly
common in some parts of the country, flourishing especially in our
more eastern woodlands.

Meadow Lily. Wild Yellow Lily.

Lilium Canadense. Lily Family.

Stem.—Two to five feet high. Leaves.—Whorled, lance-shaped. Flowers.—

Yellow, spotted with reddish-brown, bell-shaped, two to three inches long.
Perianth.—Of six recurved sepals, with a nectar-bearing furrow at their base.
Stamens.—Six, with anthers loaded with brown pollen. Pistil.—One, with a three-
lobed stigma.
What does the summer bring which is more enchanting than a
sequestered wood-bordered meadow hung with a thousand of these
delicate, nodding bells which look as though ready to tinkle at the
least disturbance and sound an alarum among the flowers?
 PLATE XLV

MEADOW LILY.—L. Canadense.

These too are true “lilies of the field,” less gorgeous, less
imposing than the Turks’ caps, but with an unsurpassed grace and
charm of their own. “Fairy-caps,” these pointed blossoms are
sometimes called; “witch-caps,” would be more appropriate still.
Indeed they would make dainty headgear for any of the dim
inhabitants of Wonder-Land.
The growth of this plant is very striking when seen at its best.
The erect stem is surrounded with regular whorls of leaves, from the
upper one of which curves a circle of long-stemmed, nodding
flowers. They suggest an exquisite design for a church candelabra.
 Prickly Pear. Indian Fig.
Opuntia Rafinesquii. Cactus Family.

Flowers.—Yellow, large, two and a half to three and a half inches across.
Calyx.—Of numerous sepals. Corolla.—Of ten or twelve petals. Stamens.—
Numerous. Pistil.—One, with numerous stigmas. Fruit.—Shaped like a small pear,
often with prickles over its surface.
This curious-looking plant is one of the only two representatives
of the Cactus family in the Northeastern States. It has deep green,
fleshy, prickly, rounded joints and large yellow flowers, which are
often conspicuous in summer in dry, sandy places along the coast.
O. vulgaris, the only other species found in Northeastern
America, has somewhat smaller flowers, but otherwise so closely
resembles O. Rafinesquii as to make it difficult to distinguish
between the two.

Four-leaved Loosestrife.
Lysimachia quadrifolia. Primrose Family.

Stem.—Slender, one or two feet high. Leaves.—Narrowly oblong, whorled in

fours, fives, or sixes. Flowers.—Yellow, spotted or streaked with red, on slender,
hair-like flower-stalks from the axils of the leaves. Calyx.—Five or six-parted.
Corolla.—Very deeply five or six-parted. Stamens.—Four or five. Pistil.—One.
 PLATE XLVI

FOUR-LEAVED LOOSESTRIFE.—L.
quadrifolia.

This slender pretty plant grows along the roadsides and attracts
one’s notice in June by its regular whorls of leaves and flowers.
Linnæus says that this genus is named after Lysimachus, King of
Sicily. Loosestrife is the English for Lysimachus; but whether the
ancient superstition that the placing of these flowers upon the yokes
of oxen rendered the beasts gentle and submissive arose from the
peace-suggestive title or from other causes, I cannot discover.
 Yellow Loosestrife.
Lysimachia stricta. Primrose Family.

The yellow loosestrife bears its flowers, which are similar to

those of L. quadrifolia, in a terminal raceme; it has opposite lance-
shaped leaves. Its bright yellow clusters border the streams and
brighten the marshes from June till August.

Rock-rose. Frost-weed.
Helianthemum Canadense. Rock-rose Family.

About one foot high. Leaves.—Set close to the stem, simple, lance-oblong.
Flowers.—Of two kinds: the earlier, more noticeable ones, yellow, solitary, about
one inch across; the later ones small and clustered, usually without petals. Calyx.—
(Of the petal-bearing flowers) of five sepals. Corolla.—Of five early falling petals
which are crumpled in the bud. Stamens.—Numerous. Pistil.—One, with a three-
lobed stigma.
These fragile bright yellow flowers are found in gravelly places in
early summer. Under the influence of the sunshine they open once;
by the next day their petals have fallen, and their brief beauty is a
thing of the past. On June 17th Thoreau finds this “broad, cup-like
flower, one of the most delicate yellow flowers, with large spring-
yellow petals, and its stamens laid one way.”
In the Vale of Sharon a nearly allied rose-colored species
abounds. This is believed by some of the botanists who have travelled
in that region to be the Rose of Sharon which Solomon has
celebrated.
The name of frost-weed has been given to our plant because of
the crystals of ice which shoot from the cracked bark at the base of
the stem in late autumn.