Wax & Pine Tar

Ah, wax.  For millenia people have been trying to figure out the best way to make their skis run on snow.  Given that no snow day is the same as the next, there's always a challenge.  The Norwegians might have been the first to document the use of pine pitch to seal their ski bases against moisture, but it was gold miners in California who are credited with focusing on SPEED in the development of their treatments (called "dope"), and the Swedes who invented the first non-tar synthetic ski waxes - Swix (ref. Harald Bjerke, Swix, Historien og Menneskene).  But Norway has a rich history of commercially-produced waxes; at one time they boasted around 200 manufacturers, and that doesn't include all the tinkerers who were boiling their own goop on the kitchen stove!!!  Plus, Swix is now considered a Norwegian company, after being spun out decades ago from Swedish pharma giant Astra AB, now the Astra in AstraZeneca.

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