“I went snowboarding in Oslo and randomly met Tiago Lemos on top of the mountain.”
Five nights, one currency
Norway was not on the plan. Mike Boisvert was in Copenhagen, took the train across the bridge to Malmö, and once he was that far north the bus to Oslo felt like an obligation. “Norway, I was not supposed to go, but I was so close. I was like, I have to go.” He stayed four or five nights, which is exactly as long as his friend Even Lassen could host him and roughly as long as his budget allowed. This was the tail end of eight months in South America and the money was gone; Norway has its own currency, the krone, and it is one of the most expensive places he has ever been. “I was eating in the supermarket there, man, no choice. Even the supermarket was expensive. It's like Switzerland.” The upside, as he puts it, belongs to the people who live there: the salaries match the prices.
A scene built for winter
The first thing to understand about skateboarding in Norway is the winter, which is as harsh as Canada's and comes with a stretch of months without sun. The scene answered the way a rich country can: indoor parks, real budgets, skate schools and pro skaters who came up through them. Oslo Skatehall is the huge indoor park Mike has in mind when he says “the indoor parks are pretty crazy”, and Skur 13 is the street park that hosted X Games Oslo. He skated neither, and he owns that: he arrived in spring, on almost the first day the city could skate outside, and there was no way he was going indoors. What he found outside was smaller than he expected for a capital of Oslo's size. “I thought it would be better in this, man. You would expect more.” His guess is that the scene was bigger a few years ago; his conclusion is that the talent is still there. “They seem to have really good talent, and they rip.”
The place that changed his mind about the trip is the Torshovdalen DIY park, which does not look like a DIY at all. There is a small ramp, a big ramp and a vert ramp, and on that first warm day of the year twenty or thirty people showed up to skate it. “Best spot ever.” It was cold by Mike's standards; by theirs it was a party. It is his number one place to skate in the country, and the reason he tells skaters that the real skate culture in Oslo is there, not in the city centre. Even took him around the spots he had skated his whole life, and Mike's honest reaction was that most of them are not spots, which is exactly why the DIY matters. He did put down a hard tail slide at one of them. “I don't know if I was the first one to skate that. It was not the worst, that's for sure.”
Skaters to know
Deedz (@deeddz) is, for Mike, the most famous skater to come out of Norway and a legend now, based between Portugal and Norway. “He doesn't look like he's from Norway, but he's Norwegian.” Mike has never met him; the timing has never worked. Silas Aagaard (@silas.aagaard) is his number one pick, and the one he actually knows: they met in Prague at the Mystic Cup, where Silas finished third or fourth at around sixteen. “When he does contests, he does lines, and he flips his board every trick. Every single trick. He's really, really good.” Mike said on the call that Silas would make a good Golden Ticket winner; he has since skated JACKALOPE Mississauga on his own, fifth in Men Street in 2026. Elias Nils (@eliasnils1) is the mini ramp master, the guy you have already seen destroying the Torshovdalen ramp in clips, from a town outside Oslo. Mike did not get to skate with him. “I wish I could have made a video with this guy. Maybe next time.”
Skate and snow in the same day
What Oslo has that almost no other capital has is a mountain forty-five minutes to an hour from the centre, so you can skate in the morning and snowboard in the afternoon. Mike, who has snowboarded three times in his life, went up, and on the hill he ran into Tiago Lemos, who lives in Norway on and off because his wife is Norwegian. “I went snowboarding, and he was just snowboarding there. I was like, what?” The resort he found on the map afterwards is Skimore Oslo, and he is fairly sure it is the one he rode. He is sure about his skills: “you can judge by my snowboarding.”
Below is the Oslo video, DIY, spots and hill included.
If you go
Mike will be honest about Oslo the city: it is a bit boring, not especially beautiful, and most people he has compared notes with agree. Go for the skateboarding and the mountain, and leave time for the rest of the country, because Norway is big and he only saw its capital. Bergen, the second city, is the one that looks like the Norway in your head, fjords and wooden wharves, and his research says the skating is good there too; Session Bergen is the skate shop he would start with. Trolltunga is the hike for real Norwegian nature. He wants to go north next time. The season matters: spring and summer are when the outdoor spots wake up, and when the DIY fills.
Mike Boisvert: “Norwegian skateboarding is pretty huge. Skate schools, pro skaters. The winter is harsh, though.”
Photos and video: Mike Boisvert / The Skate Nomad. Part of the JACKALOPE Skate Atlas, one country at a time, with the skaters who live there. See every country on the map.
