Next Step : Tiny Village Greets Games With Norwegian Reserve : * Lillehammer folk try to carry on normally while awaiting the onslaught of 100,000 Olympic fans.

The Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan epic may be the hot pre-Olympic story in the United States, but here it draws a cluck, a shake of the head, occasionally a blank stare.

Here, in this vest-pocket city of the XVII Olympic Winter Games, the folks have other fish to fry. And bake. And poach. And simmer in sauce.

It’s an extraordinary time in this otherwise ordinary Norwegian community, these last few days before it all comes down, and almost everybody is trying to carry on in a reasonably ordinary fashion.

That’s a little difficult, though, when you don’t know what to expect. And no matter how exuberantly the politicians and Olympic types spout the successful-Games line, Sven Citizen isn’t quite sure just what will happen, or how he feels about it all.

There is pride, of course, that of all the cities in all the world, this city will have the Winter Olympics. But there is a little Norwegian reserve working here too--and maybe even the niggling suspicion that maybe, just maybe, this little city might have taken too big a bite.

Some who are old enough remember another little city with big ambitions--Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1980--and the fiasco it pulled down over its ears.

Those Winter Games will forever be remembered for the U.S. hockey team’s “Miracle on Ice” and Eric Heiden’s five gold medals in speedskating while thousands of ticketed fans--of hockey, speedskating and other events--sat marooned in outlying parking lots, unable to get where they wanted to be because of a colossal transportation snafu.

Lake Placid’s plan was to close the city to vehicular traffic, direct the car-borne fans to those outlying lots and take them by bus to the various venues. It probably would have worked, if someone had ordered the buses.

Lillehammer’s plan is to close the Olympic region to vehicular traffic, direct the car-borne fans to outlying parking lots and take them by bus to the various venues. But the folks in the Lillehammer Olympic Organizing Committee say they have ordered the buses and have been stressing for years that public transportation, not private cars, is the right way to these Games. Extra train services to Lillehammer have been set up, especially from Oslo, where up to six trains an hour are scheduled to depart each day of the Olympics. So, nobody is really expecting another Lake Placid. But . . .

“This is normally a town for 23,000 people,” said Oyvind Kvernen, a clerk in the Sport and Fritid sports shop. “I think the transportation will work, but each day (there) will be 100,000 people here. Each day! That’s too many people all at once. That’s too tough for the city. Transporting all those people. . . . I hope it will work.”

As long as they’re coming, though, Sport and Fritid wants some of what they’re bringing with them and is holding up its end of the Olympic souvenir market. There are gloves, pass holders, fanny packs and T-shirts, all bearing the Lillehammer ’94 emblem--the northern lights, snow flurries, the Olympic rings and “Lillehammer ‘94”--right in there with the ski jackets, parkas, cross-country equipment and Lakers, San Francisco 49ers and Boston Celtics caps.

Kvernen reported that business has been better than usual, with the real bonanza still several days away. “That’s when the wealthy tourists will come,” he said.

But there will be no gouging, he added: “If we don’t take the prices up, then the tourists will return. Otherwise, the people will say Norway is very expensive and not come back.”

Over at Foto Olsen, where they are putting in a “pro shop” in anticipation of a run on rental photographic equipment, Lars Erik Skraefsrud shared some of Kvernen’s concern.

“It’s going to be hectic,” he said. “It will be fun while it lasts and most people are pretty excited, but I think some will be relieved when it’s over. I think the transportation will work, but I don’t know what 100,000 people will do.”

Neither did Lisbeth Berntsen in G.C. Lunde’s bakery, where the windows are decorated on one side with gingerbread Olympic scenes and frosted gingerbread evergreens, and on the other with three decorated cakes, two in honor of Lillehammer ’94 and one recalling the ’52 Oslo Winter Games.

“I don’t know if there’s a place for everybody,” she said.

Not to worry, said Eva Snilsberg of the Lillehammer Turist Kontor. Everything is going to work out just fine.

“Lots of people and lots going on,” she said. “And most are already impressed with Lillehammer. The sun is shining and it’s lovely here when the sun is shining. That makes all the difference in the world.”

And just down the block, Harald Belsvik has auctioned off T-shirt No. 993, the one proclaiming seven more days till the Games begin, for 6,800 Norwegian kroner. He started at 1,000 days till the Games and has been auctioning a shirt a day for more than three years on Storgata, a pedestrian shopping mall, turning the proceeds over to the Lillehammer organizing committee.

Not many shirts are left, not many days are left before Saturday’s opening ceremony.

“We’ve been working on this for several years, so I’m happy it’s coming,” Belsvik said. “But in a way, I’ll be happy to see it end, because the town will be back to normal.”

Not an unpopular sentiment in this little Olympic city.

BACKGROUND

Lillehammer, 110 miles north of Oslo, is in the Troll Park Area, a region popular for Alpine and cross-country skiing and named for the mischievous dwarfs of local legend. Tiny Lillehammer’s most famous native, by some accounts, is Thor Bjorkland, inventor of the cheese slicer. With a population of 23,000, it is the smallest city to host the Winter Olympics since Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1980.