posted May 13th, 2009 - Great news came from Norway this week. IPC Delegate Trude Sviggum, who is also the Deputy Chair for IPC's Formation Skydiving Committee, had already discussed her plans to join the international NSL Network with teams, competitors and officials of her own 4-way community in Norway, and with the NSL management at the same time.

These plans finally materialized, and four competitions in Norway have now been added to the Calendar of Events. The dates can be found on Norway's home page. Three of these meets will be fully synchronized with the other events on the same weekends. Norway's national championship will most likely be its own separate event, as it stretches out over a few week days, as well.

The first meet of the 2009 season will already connect the Norwegian 4-way teams and competitors with seven other events from four different countries on the May 23 weekend. Teams from France and the Czech Republic will be competing, along with US teams of five different leagues.

The second meet in Norway on the June 20 weekend coincides again with seven other events, this time in Italy and the Netherlands and once again the Czech Republic, plus four events in the USA. The July meet connects the Norwegian teams indirectly and through the NSL leaderboard with teams from Finland, Austria amd more from the USA.

The Norwegian National Championship of 2009 follows shortly after the third meet of the regular season and concludes the 2009 season in the Scandinavian country. This event happens to be scheduled for the same time period as the Swedish Nationals 2009. There might be a chance to synchronize these two competitions, which do not fall on weekends.

Norway has always been a very strong member of the international skydiving community. The small Scandinavian country with a population of less than five million people has produced many world class competitors and teams over and over again. The NSL News has covered many of them on a regular basis.

The DeLand Norgies (Lise Nansen, Paul Kolbenstvedt, Carl-Erik Tuv, Torstein Valen) are probably the best known Norwegian team, as they won bronze medals for Norway in 1999, 2001 and 2003. The next and current national lineup, Arcteryx (Ditta Valsdottir, Derek Broughton, Ole Petter Hjelle, Mathias Nord), has caught the NSL News attention many times ever since the DeLand Norgies retired as the national team.

The NSL News has also covered several other Norwegian teams, including the female lineups of the Norgie Girls and Fortitudo. Trude Sviggum, who initiated Norway's move forward to join the international NSL network, trained and competed with the Norgie Girls and Fortitudo and knows everything about Formation Skydiving competition. She will help to keep the worldwide NSL News audience up-to-date when the Norwegian meets come up.

The NSL News has already covered the Norwegian teams and competitors who competed at the World Challenge 2009, Arcteryx Nice, Frost and DeLand Norgies members Lise Nansen and Paul Kolbenstvedt with Area 51. The meet videos of these three teams with Norwegian competitors at Bodyflight Bedford have already been shown on NSL YouTube TV.

NSL-TV now celebrates the expansion of the international network with some footage from the archives. The DeLand Norgies competed at the season opener of the Florida Skydiving League in January 2001 in DeLand. It was the year when the Norgies won their second set of bronze medals at the World Championship of Formation Skydiving 2001 in Spain.

The DeLand Norgies posted a 22.2 average after six rounds in DeLand, where they met Sebastian XL for the first time in the 2001 season. XL competed with Pete Allum, Steve Hamilton, John McIver and Toby Stafford in the lineup and finished in 4th place at the world meet later the same year. All 12 rounds of the two 2001 rivals in DeLand can now be watched on NSL YouTube TV.