Palace Norway: The story of the world’s oldest Eagles’ fanzine

In fact, it would take almost a decade before he encountered another Palace fan – but since then, he hasn’t stopped building new members of the community.

Now, as Palace prepare to take on Fredrikstad in his country, Crystal Palace Norway – of which Kai is a board member – have almost 130 members who make the regular pilgrimage to London, and whose fanzine ‘Ørneblikket’ (The Eagle Eye) has been running since 1991, making it the world’s longest-running Palace magazine.

“These football cards came in bubblegum packs in the 1970s,” Kai remembers. “When I was a little kid, we used to play with them in the schoolyard.

“One day I got hold of one with Dave Swindlehurst wearing the old red and blue sash, and I just fell in love with the shirt. I was about six or seven, and I decided there and then that this was going to be my team.

“I have stuck with them ever since. There was never a doubt in my mind that I was going to keep that promise to myself to keep on supporting the Palace.

“I didn’t meet a fellow Palace fan until many, many years later – probably a good 10 years after that. That’s when our supporters club got started.

“It was fantastic because I had never really been able to talk Palace with people around me. I have been involved for the past 34 years now!”

In this day and age, supporting a club from abroad is not so unusual. The Premier League is one of the UK’s biggest exports, and whether you are in Azerbaijan or Angola, Tanzania or Tahiti, you will find a bar showing the games with a series of die-hard fans to boot.

It requires huge dedication, but it is at the very least accessible. Worldwide kick-off times pose difficulties for sleep patterns, but one can at least follow their team from anywhere in the world.

It wasn’t always like this. In its earliest days, Kai and co. ran Ørneblikket as much as a newspaper as a traditional fanzine. They were the clearest purveyors of Palace news across Norway.

“In the beginning it served us as a news outlet, because if you lived here in Norway before the internet, none of the papers would write about Palace,” Kai explains. “It was a source for Palace fans to get to know more about the club and get to know some of the players and results.

“Even things like lineups wouldn’t be available back then. A few of us would have the Croydon Advertiser sports pages sent to us here in Norway, and we would use that for pictures and information.

“We would subscribe to the matchday programme and we would translate stuff and put it in our fanzine, because most people would have nothing [to read] about Palace.

“It’s been going for 34 years now. It’s the oldest running Palace fanzine anywhere in the world.”

Soon enough, it became more than a source of information; it was the basis for a growing community.

“Our fanzine has always served a twofold purpose,” Kai explains. “It’s one thing telling people about Palace and the players and everything, but it’s also a way of connecting with other Palace fans across all of Scandinavia.

“You’ll be hard pressed to run in to one, but we print a members list. You can see: ‘Alright, there is a guy who lives down the road who is actually a Palace fan – and there is a guy in the city. Maybe I should give him a call and we can go and watch a match together’.

“So it's always been a way of getting people to know each other as well. Of course, these days, it's a bit different because everything's available online and every single game is on TV, so you don't have the news bit anymore.

“It's about opinions. Our fanzine has always been a bit out of the ordinary. We might do articles on non-league clubs. We could do articles on fan culture.

“We could do things with what relates Palace to ourselves, personal opinions. Of course, people who go on trips and write their stories and such is always, always very interesting.”

And so, some 20 Norwegians recently went on one such trip: to Croydon, and then onto Wembley Stadium on Saturday, 17th May, to witness Palace’s finest hour, coincidentally on Norway’s national day – with Kai leading the charge.

“Wembley was fantastic!” he recalls. “It was everything I ever dreamed of in my 45 years of supporting Palace. We were standing right behind the goal for the penalty save and I remember thinking ‘this is our Dave Beasant moment!’

“As the final whistle went, I was crying my eyes out with all emotions, hopes and dreams of a lifetime put into that one moment.

"After the game, we went to the Wetherspoons in Wembley to wait out the crowds before going to back to Croydon!

“Now, Palace coming to Norway for their first real European game is special. It was something we could only dream of, and now it's happening, I'm elated.

“I will be there, of course, and will hopefully be joined by many more Palace fans from both England and Norway."

Thanks to his efforts, at kick- off today and next week – and for the rest of the season, and for every season after that – there won’t merely be a few interested spectators in Norway, but an entire growing and ever-more dedicated community.

Follow Crystal Palace Norway on Instagram, X and Facebook @cpfcnorway.

Fredrikstad v Crystal Palace

• Thursday, 28th August
• 17:00 BST
• Conference League
• Fredrikstad Stadion
• Live on Palace TV+.