From the moment of silence to the expressions of grief, Saturday’s Opening Ceremonies for the 17th Winter Olympics seemed preoccupied with somber memories instead of joyous visions of the sports festival to come.
“In the midst of all the excitement, we must not forget that happiness can quickly turn into grief,” said Gerhard Heiberg, the chairman of the Lillehammer Olympic Organizing Committee. “That is why all of us in Lillehammer send our warmest thoughts and our deepest sympathy to the inhabitants of Sarajevo, whose lives have taken a tragic turn and who have witnessed a world that suddenly collapsed into extreme suffering.”
Heiberg was one of three principals in Saturday’s presentation who made references to Sarajevo, the besieged host city of the 14th Winter Olympics in 1984.
The most moving came from Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee, after he asked for a moment of silence “in memory of the city of Sarajevo.” It is, Samaranch was implying, a city of the dead.
“Please stop fighting,” Samaranch implored. “Please stop killing. Drop your guns, please.”
At the time of the ceremonies Saturday, a shaky truce was holding in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a city whose suffering has been shared by Norwegians. They invited several young Bosnian athletes to train in this area, beginning last fall.
The crowd of 35,000 at the Lysgardsbakkene Ski Jumping Arena reserved one of its loudest cheers for the 10 athletes and six officials from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Some of those athletes carried Bosnian flags paired with Norwegian flags.
The Bosnians were among 66 nations who marched in ceremonies that began as a pale orange sun disappeared into the clouds over Lake Mjosa. Sporadic snow flurries fell in the 10-degree weather, adding to the effect on spectators who were asked to wear white ponchos to expand the winter landscape into the stands.
The whiteness was a perfect backdrop for a ceremony and folk show that became progressively monochromatic as it dragged to conclusion.
“It was typically Norwegian,” said an organizing committee employee. “We are a slow people. We cry when we see the king and the Norwegian flag, and that is about it for emotion.”
King Harald V pronounced the Games open in a somber monotone. Crown Prince Haakon, 20, carried the Olympic torch on its final leg and lit the cauldron that will burn until Feb. 27.
The third-from-last torch bearer, Stein Gruben, provided the dramatic highlight when he took off from the large jumping hill with the torch in one hand. Gruber’s short jump had taken on an extra dimension because the man who was supposed to make it, Ole Gunnar Fidjestol, had been knocked unconscious in a fall while practicing the leap Thursday.
Having the flame borne down a ski jump was one of the representations of Norwegian culture the ceremonies featured. There were also folk dances, a folk wedding, reindeer-drawn sleds and horse-drawn sleighs.
An eye-catching moment was the entrance of dozens of skiers descending the hill next to the jumps. Each skier turned in the telemark style, invented in Norway, that was the beginning of modern skiing technique.
“We want to present the world with Olympic Games the Norwegian way,” Heiberg said in his opening speech. “That means a sports festival-but also a folk festival.”
These are the first Winter Games of the new Olympic cycle, in which Summer and Winter Olympics will alternate at two-year intervals. They are also the first with no semblance of a unified Soviet Union.
“We hope these Olympic Games. . . . will provide a positive example in this constantly evolving world,” Heiberg said.
That evolution has expanded the number of participating athletes and nations to record levels. The entrance of the athletes takes nearly half the ceremony, even though some athletes chose not to attend.
Several prominent names were absent from the U.S. delegation, largest in the Winter Games, with 22 more athletes than runner-up Russia. The missing included figure skaters Brian Boitano and Nancy Kerrigan and speedskaters Bonnie Blair and Dan Jansen, all of whom had experienced the ceremonies in a previous Olympic appearance.
Kerrigan skipped the ceremonies at the advice of doctors who did not want her battered knee exposed to standing and sitting in the cold for several hours. The highlight of Kerrigan’s day was facing more than 1,000 media representatives from around the world at a news conference.
Luger Cammy Myler, a three-time Olympian, carried the flag for the United States. Earlier in the day, Myler looked like a standard-bearer for U.S. success as she recorded the second-fastest time in both of Saturday’s training runs.
Two princes, bobsledder Albert of Monaco and alpine skier Hubertus Hohenlohe of Mexico, were also flagbearers. Biathlete Mark Kirchner, one of the last emperors from the East German sports dynasty, carried the German flag, marking the second straight Winter Olympics in which a former East German athlete has been given that honor.
The best-known former East German, skater Katarina Witt, was home in Berlin. She arrives in the middle of this week.
Cross-country skier Marja-Liisa Kirvesniemi, a six-time Olympian, carried the Finnish flag. Figure skater Misha Shmerkin, a Russian emigre, was the flagbearer and lone athlete on Israel’s first Winter Olympic team.
Several former Soviet republics were also making their first Olympic appearances. That group included Armenia, two of whose three athletes are bobsledders from Massachusetts.
The Norwegians showed Scandinavian solidarity in giving a warm reception to the two nations that once ruled them, Denmark and Sweden. It was as if they were echoing Heiberg’s “very special welcome to the outstanding athletes of snow and ice assembled here today.”
Two of the best, Norwegian cross-country skiers Bjorn Daehlie and Vegard Ulvang, had a role in the ceremonies. Daehlie carried his country’s flag, while Ulvang recited the athletes’ oath.
Once the protocol of Olympic openings was completed, the ceremonies turned into a Norwegian folk tale narrated by Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann to a group of children seated near her and, by extension, to the audience. The protagonists of the tale were “vetter,” small creatures who pop up from under the earth.
The vetter are to remind us that people do not control all matters on the earth. Their message is to protect the planet and, through the Olympic athletes, to celebrate the common bonds of humankind.
That message is timeless on a planet where those bonds too often are broken, where there are too many Sarajevos, where pleas for peace like the one issued here Saturday too often leave only haunting echoes.
