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Ice skates made from animal bones were used in Europe for millennia before metal-bladed skates were invented. Archaeological sites have yielded thousands of examples, some of them dating to the Bronze Age. They are often mentioned in popular books on the Vikings and sometimes appear in children's literature.
Even after metal skates became the norm, people in rural areas continued to use bone skates into the early 1970s. Today, bone skates help scientists and re-enactors understand migrations and interactions among ancient peoples.
This book explains how to make and use them and chronicles their history, from their likely invention in the Eurasian steppes to their disappearance in the modern era.
List of contents
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Preface
1.¿Skating Before Skates
2.¿How to Skate on Bones
2.1.¿Sources and Approaches
2.2.¿Selecting Bones for Skating
2.3.¿Making Skates
2.4.¿Attaching the Bones
2.5.¿The Pole
2.6.¿Skating!
2.7.¿How Fast Did They Go?
2.8.¿Wear and Discard
3.¿The Study of Bone Skates
3.1.¿Skaters and Scholars
3.2.¿Identifying Bone Skates in Written Records
3.3.¿Identifying Bone Skates in the Archaeological Record
4.¿How Ice Skating Came to Be
4.1.¿An Origin Story
4.2.¿The Steppes As a Homeland
4.3.¿Skates, Skis and Horses
4.4.¿Skating Across Europe
5.¿Tools or Toys?
5.1.¿The Question of Use
5.2.¿Bone Type
5.3.¿Complexity
5.4.¿A Note on the Earliest Skate Candidates
6.¿Skating and Skiing in Medieval Scandinavian Literature
6.1.¿Skates and Skis
6.2.¿Skaters and Skiers
6.3.¿Skating and Skiing
6.4.¿Skríða As a Generic Verb of Motion
6.5.¿The Similarity of Bone Skates and Skis
7.¿Skating on Bones in the Middle Ages
7.1.¿The Scandinavian Expansion
7.2.¿Bone Skates as Scandinavian Artifacts in Great Britain
7.3.¿Bone Skates on the Continent
7.4.¿Directions for Future Research
8.¿The End of the Bone Age
8.1.¿The Emergence of Metal-Bladed Skates
8.2.¿The Spread of the New Style
8.3.¿Where to Go from Here
Appendix: Modern Descriptions
A.1.¿Germany and Poland
A.2.¿Central Europe
A.3.¿Great Britain
A.4.¿The Northeast
A.5.¿Scandinavia
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
B.A. Thurber is an independent scholar based in Evanston, Illinois. Her previous publications include new editions of historic skating books and journal articles on subjects as diverse as historical linguistics, Scandinavian literature, and fluid dynamics.
Summary
Ice skates made from animal bones were used in Europe for millennia before metal-bladed skates were invented. Bronze Age archaeological sites have yielded thousands of examples. Today, bone skates help us understand migrations and interactions among ancient peoples. This book explains how to make and use them and chronicles their history.
