Abstract
The Olympic Games are, even by global standards, a large-scale and complex event, requiring detailed organization and attracting the highest levels of media coverage. In Norway there were great expectations, as people began to envisage the benefits the games might confer on the nation years before it took place. The initial ambition of using the Olympic winter games in Lillehammer to boost industrial development in one specific region southeastern Norway- grew into a determination to make Norway loom large on the map of the world, conveying an indelible impression of competence, and forging a clearly profiled national identity.
Keyword: Olympic，design，create，identity
The Olympic Games are, even by global standards, a large-scale and complex event, requiring detailed organization and attracting the highest levels of media coverage. In Norway there were great expectations, as people began to envisage the benefits the games might confer on the nation years before it took place. The initial ambition of using the Olympic winter games in Lillehammer to boost industrial development in one specific region southeastern Norway- grew into a determination to make Norway loom large on the map of the world, conveying an indelible impression of competence, and forging a clearly profiled national identity.
We were to exploit this unique opportunity to formulate ideals, to define how we want to perceive ourselves and how we want to be seen by others. The nation was to reinforce its self-esteem. And although there may be no causal relationship, nine months after the ceremony marking the closing off the “greatest-ever Winter Olympics” Norway voted no in the referendum on accession to the European Union. But preparations for the 1994 Olympic Games had already been set in motion several years earlier. Proposals for the Olympic symbols and the souvenirs had poured in from the public: polar bears and whales from the animal kingdom; snowmen, vikings, trolls and stave churches.
The range of items submitted suggested that many Norwegians sought the “quintessential Norway” in nature, in the fairy-tale realm, in mythology and the pre-industrial era. But the crucial question remained unanswered; what would constitute the “right” set of basic values for the event - the 1994 winter Olympics in a Norwegian way.
The official vision was one of a festival for the people
