(CNN) -- "Mittens don't clap," is how California-based cowbell importer Elisabeth Halvorson explains it.
And if you are the proud owner of a cowbell in North America, chances are it passed through her hands en-route to the U.S.
"Bells have been used,
especially in downhill skiing, for a long time. It started in
Switzerland, where in summer the cows all walk around the mountains with
bells on," added Halvorson.
"But in winter they are
in barns, and the bells are hung up. All the farmers were also the ski
racers in the old days, so their families went in the barns and grabbed
the bells.
"Olympians have told me
that when they're at the bottom of the hill, they can hear a little
shouting but they can really hear the cowbells."
Winter Olympic icon
Watch any ski race on television and you will hear the same dull, persistent background clanging.
Turn up in person and dull is the wrong word: stand in the right (wrong?) place and it's more a cacophony.
Already steeped in Alpine history, cowbells have become a global success and Winter Olympic icon over the last two decades.
Halvorson got into the
business ahead of the Salt Lake City Winter Games of 2002, where the
golden, oblong bells became a sought-after souvenir.
"It's really a European cultural thing that, in the past 15 years or so, has grown here in the States," she told CNN.
"If the Swiss are coming
to an event they'll bring really big bells, a foot high or more.
Belarus has some good bells too, and they come with sheepskins on.
"How many do we sell? I quit counting when we reached 70 tons -- and that was before the 2002 Games."
Halvorson imports bells
manufactured in Norway by a small family business Moen Bjøllefabrikk,
based in a factory south-west of Oslo.
"My grandfather started
it in 1922," says head of the company Lena Alette Moen Grude. "He began
producing bells for his neighbors' domestic animals and sheep."
The company has changed
with the times -- it now makes GPS tracking devices for livestock -- but
when a Winter Olympics is within sight, cowbells become their hottest
commodity by far.
"We produce
approximately 30,000 bells each year," says Moen Grude. "For us, it
started before the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer in 1994. The fans saw
it as the only souvenir that let them take the spirit of the Olympics
back home.
"For the Salt Lake City
Olympics, we produced 68,000 bells -- more than two years' production --
in two months. When there is a Winter Olympics, it dominates our
company.
"I remember producing
the bells for Salt Lake City, working late at night and listening to the
Games on the radio. I could hear the bells being rung in America as I
was engraving them in Norway. That was special."
Changing fabric
Like brass bands, or
singing at football matches, the ting-a-ling sensation of a cowbell
feels warm and traditional -- part of the very fabric of sport.
But that fabric is changing.
Where once making noise
at events was the responsibility of the fans, clubs and venues
increasingly see the atmosphere as theirs to generate, maintain -- and
police.
Go to most major sporting events in 2013 and the ambiance will be provided by vast, booming speaker systems.
In a world of YouTube,
endless TV channels and bewildering freedom of entertainment choice,
sports reach out and grab their audience by the ears.
So is the cowbell a relic of an age when fans were left to their own devices?
"Sport now sells music
and music sells sport," says academic Anthony Bateman, who researches
the relationship between the two at England's De Montfort University in
Leicester.
"The links are getting stronger and stronger and that is partly commercial.
"Music is pumped out to
encourage chanting and singing and there is a sense that, for example,
football clubs are intruding into what was once a fairly spontaneous
part of fan culture."
Records of chanting at
football matches go back to the 19th Century, with famous songs such as
Portsmouth's "Pompey Chimes" and Norwich's "On The Ball City" dating to
the late 1800s.
A century earlier, says
Bateman, early books on cricket described a "rambunctious crowd culture,
a little like the (present-day England supporters') Barmy Army".
Contrast that with an example from 2004, he says.
"The Premier League actually paid someone (Birmingham City fan Jonny Hurst) $16,000 to write chants for different clubs.
"People said that
typified the sterile, corporate atmosphere -- supporters are not trusted
to come up with their own songs any more. It was an organic
relationship in the past, and now things seem terribly forced."
Indoor sports arenas, in particular, now batter occupants with wall-to-wall music during stoppages in play.
Extreme outdoor pursuits
emerged hand-in-hand with a youth culture of music and video, while
football teams have been known to play recordings of chants to get a
crowd going as sports establish which techniques work, and which simply
alienate their fanbase.
"Sound is one way by which sports are now constantly reinventing themselves," concludes Bateman.
Cowbell in vogue
Yet diehard ski race
fans still stand on a slope and ring bells from a small Norwegian
factory, in the tradition of Alpine farmers.
And that tradition spreads by the month.
Moen Grude recently
packed off a shipment of bells with Norwegian fans heading to the
European Handball Championships. Cycling and triathlon are increasingly
the domain of the cowbell. Tennis racket manufacturers gave away branded
versions at the U.S. Open.
Halvorson denies any suggestion this last example is a sign that even the cowbell can go corporate.
"What's happening is
they're becoming collectible. A guy once called me, saying: 'My wife and
I just got divorced. The wife got the cowbells. Do you happen to have
this one? This one? How about this one?'
"They didn't make a
cowbell for Nagano but they did one for the Nagano Paralympics, then for
Lillehammer, Salt Lake, Torino and Vancouver. The Vancouver one is very
hard to find.
"But what we sell is fun. That's what we sell. A cowbell is simply an interaction between athlete and spectator."
