About

About the content

This blog is about the history of ice skating, loosely interpreted. See Aims & scope. You can find posts by category or by searching.

About the author: Bev Thurber, PhD

I am an independent scholar whose research focuses on the history of ice skating. My book on bone skates was published by McFarland, and I’m working on a number of other writing projects.

Publications relating to skating (mostly)

Books

Robert Jones, A Treatise on Skating: Revisited and Enhanced. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Skating History Press, 2023. Publisher link.
Gerhard Ulrich Anton Vieth, On Skating. Translated by B. A. Thurber. Skating History Press, 2022. Publisher link.
Markus Wild, Beverly A. Thurber, Stephen Rhodes, and Christian Gates St-Pierre, eds. Bones at a Crossroads: Integrating Worked Bone Research with Archaeometry and Social Zooarchaeology. Sidestone, 2021. Publisher link.

There is no skating in this book, but you can read it for free online.
B. A. Thurber, Skates Made of Bone: A History. McFarland, 2020. Publisher link; Bookshop link.
E. F. Benson, Skating Stories. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Skating History Press, 2020. Publisher link; Bookshop link.
H. E. Vandervell, The Figure Skate: A Research into the Form of Blade Best Adapted to Curvilinear Skating. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Skating History Press, 2020. Publisher link; Bookshop link.
Henry C. Lowther, English Skating: Edges and Striking; Principle of Skating Turns; Combined Figure-Skating. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Skating History Press, 2019. Publisher link; Bookshop link.
Frostiana: Or a History of the River Thames in a Frozen State. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Skating History Press, 2018. Blog post; Publisher link; Bookshop link.
G. H. Fowler, On the Outside Edge: Being Diversions in the History of Skating. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Skating History Press, 2018. Blog post; Publisher link; Bookshop link.
Cover imageR. Jones, A Treatise on Skating. Edited by B. A. Thurber. Skating History Press, 2017. Blog post; Publisher link; Bookshop link.

Videos

Check out my YouTube channel for some skating videos.

On TV:

  1. January 7, 2026: Skate through the Centuries Right Here in St. Louis! on Fox 2 studio STL (YouTube link for those outside the US)
  2. January 8, 2026: Ice skates made of bone on KSDK

The Evolution of Skating series on Schaatshistorie.nl:

  1. Bone skates (2021): English and Dutch.
  2. Archetype skates (2021): English and Dutch.

Peer-reviewed Articles

  • “Constructed identity and commodity culture in My Lucky Star.” With Ann Dolinko. The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914–1945 18, 2022. Direct link.
  • “The English style: Figure skating, gender, and national identity.” Sport History Review 50.2 (2021): 332–355. https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.2020-0023.
  • “The myth of skating history: Building elitism into a sport.” Leisure Sciences 43.6 (2021): 562–572. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2020.1870589.
  • ”The Viking ball game.” Scandinavian Studies, vol. 87, no. 2, 2015, pp. 167–188. Blog post. JSTOR link.
  • “The similarity of bone skates and skis.” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, vol. 9, 2013, pp. 199–217. Publisher link.
  • “A new interpretation of Frithiof’s steel shoes.” Scandinavica, vol. 50, no. 2, 2011, pp. 6–30. Publisher link.

Other Writings

Get in touch if you’d like pdf copies of these articles. I have also published book reviews and journal articles on historical and computational linguistics, archaeology, and fluid dynamics.

Website

Skating Figures in the Twenty-First Century