Who first set out with ski poles on asphalt? You might expect one name and one date. The truth is more interesting: nobody single-handedly invented Nordic Walking, it came together in pieces over about sixty years, in different hands and in different countries. Here is the whole story, from skiers who did not want to go soft in summer to World Cup races.
The 1930s: skiers without snow
The beginning is simple. According to the international Nordic Walking organisation INWA, Finnish competitive cross-country skiers were already using poles outside the season in the 1930s. The snow melted but fitness had to be kept up, so they walked and climbed hills with the same poles they knew from winter. It was not a new sport. It was a trick for surviving the summer.
1966: a PE teacher who wanted everyone to be able to do it
The turning point came in 1966. Leena Jääskeläinen, a PE teacher from Espoo in Finland, came up with an idea that sounded almost laughable at the time: walking with ski poles as fitness for everyone, not just for athletes. The poles were meant to engage the whole body, not just the legs, in people who had never heard of skiing. Her name is rarely mentioned today, but it was she who turned a summer trick into movement for ordinary people. She prepared a public demonstration only in 1987, at the Finlandia Walk event in Tampere, so from the idea to the first public showing it took twenty-one years.
1979: coach Repo writes it in a handbook
At about the same time, coach Mauri Repo, the former head coach of cross-country skiing in the Finnish federation, was dealing with the subject too. In 1979 he described walking with poles as part of his training system in the manual *Hiihdon lajiosa*, that is “Parts of skiing”. For skiers it was one of the summer parts of training. The picture below is the original page from his materials, with a description of the exercise.
It is one of the oldest surviving descriptions of walking with poles as part of training. You do not have to understand Finnish to see what it is about: a diagram of a hill, numbered stretches and instructions on how to walk and rest. The basis is there: movement that engages the arms and so trains more than walking alone could.
1988: the first poles for ordinary walkers
Nine years later, in 1988, the American company Exerstrider made, according to Wikipedia, the first poles designed directly for fitness walkers. That turned improvisation into a product: they were no longer just ski poles, but poles designed directly for walking. That this happened in the USA and not in Finland shows that the idea travelled and only needed the right tool.
1995–1998: science and a name
In 1995 the first scientific study of walking with poles was published, in the journal *Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise*, and it came from the Kenneth Cooper Institute in Dallas. That was the moment when an “interesting idea” became something that could be measured. A year later the Finnish federation Suomen Latu joined with the Vierumäki sports institute and the pole maker Exel to organise the activity.
In 1997 the name appeared. According to INWA it was coined by Aki Karihtala and the Exel team, and Exel at the same time launched the first composite Nordic Walker poles. Wikipedia places the spread of the name two years later, in 1999, and both statements may hold: one about when the name arose, the other about when it caught on. In 1998 in Finland 160,000 people walked regularly with poles and half a million had at least tried. Finland even gave Nordic Walking the award *Health Promoting Action of the Year*.
2000 and on: from Finland to the world
In 2000 Aki Karihtala founded in Finland the International Nordic Walking Association INWA, devoted to education and promotion. In 2001 Nordic Walking appeared for the first time at the ISPO sporting goods fair and Exel began distributing poles worldwide. Nine years later, in 2010, people walked with poles in more than forty countries and Exel had sold six million pairs. In the same year the first World Nordic Walking Day took place, on 10 October 2010.
The next chapter is organised: between 2016 and 2019 INWA trained over a hundred instructors in China and introduced World Cup races. In 2019 the first official race course was created in Tallinn. And in 2024 over three hundred athletes competed in a World Cup race in Lahti, Finland. That a summer trick of cross-country skiers became a competitive discipline is something the skiers of the thirties would hardly have expected.
So who invented it?
The sources differ in detail, which is why the honest answer is this: nobody alone. Skiers came with the poles, Jääskeläinen with the idea for everyone, Repo with the description in a handbook, Exerstrider with the first poles, Exel with the name and with worldwide sales, and INWA with education. Each added a piece. Whoever looks for one name will find five, and none is wrong.
What it means for you
Nordic Walking is a young sport with roots that can be followed back less than a century. The poles you hold are the result of sixty years of trying: they are lighter than ski poles, have a strap, replaceable tips and a length you choose according to your height. That you walk today with poles along a forest path has its basis in the summer training of skiers from the thirties and in the idea of one PE teacher that everyone should be able to do it.
When someone in the street asks you “where are your skis”, they have actually hit closer than they know.
Do you know anything about the history of Nordic Walking where you live, about the first groups or the first poles? Tell us in the forum. You will not read such stories anywhere else. And if you are interested in races, look at the events calendar.
Text: Kompas.
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