Stay athletic and march!

In 1940 Swedish Walking Association created and organized the “national march“. The purpose was to enchance the swedish people health and patriotism during ww2. These events repeated several times during the years 1940-45. There was a entry fee of 25 cents(öre). Those who did the predetermined march in a good amount of time was given the national march pin in bronze, silver or gold depending on the time.

The three grades of swedish walking association march pin. Note the bronze award is slightly bigger than the others.

In 1941 the finnish people wanted to compete against swedes. A national march match between Sweden and Finland was created and took place in May 4-25, 1941. Not only was it a match between the countries but a support for Finland during the winter war. 

A commemorative pin to the swedish/finnish competition

There where several criterias that had to be achieved:

• Adults had to be born in 1928 or earlier, if you were a child born later than 1931 you would not be allowed to patricipate.

• The walking distance was 15 km for the male competitors. You would have to do it in less than the maximum time 2 hours, 20 minutes.

• For the female competitors (and young boys born in 1928-31) the distance was 10 km. You would have to do it in less than the maximum time 1 hours, 40 minutes.

If you would meet the criteria and did the march under maximum time you got the chance to buy this pin in favor of Finland support.

The final score was calculated in relation to the countries population. Finland won the event with ground breaking 1,507,111 participants against the swedish 1,008,352 participants.

These are the so called march cards were the officials wrote times counted during the marches. 

They came in both swedish and finnish.

If someone is interested in how the national march looked like. Kulturarv Östergötland has a short video http://www.kulturarvostergotland.se/Article.aspx?m=336004&a=336928

As a fun side note. In the mid/late 90s the national march was resurrected in favor of cancer research. So I did that march in 97 (I think) and was given a national march pin!