This short video illustrates the major advantage of metal-bladed skates over bone skates. Even if the earliest metal-bladed skates were used with poles (I'm not sure when people started pushing with their feet), it was much easier to turn on them. Here I'm trying to keep the hockey circle between my feet on my archetype… Continue reading Bone skates vs. archetype skates
Category: Bone skates
The bone skates from Lincoln Castle
Lincoln Castle Revealed from Oxbow Oxbow's new book about Lincoln Castle, Lincoln Castle Revealed: The Story of a Norman Powerhouse and its Anglo-Saxon Precursor describes two bone skate fragments found during the excavation. The authors date them to before the Norman Conquest and include them in the catalog of artifacts under "Recreation"—where they are the… Continue reading The bone skates from Lincoln Castle
Bone skates and keywords
I used Gephi to make a graph of all the keywords connected to bone skates in the WBRG reference database. Graph generated using Gephi. Most of the results aren't very surprising. Of course bone skates are strongly linked to worked bone, bone, Europe, and the Middle Ages (1000–1500). More surprising are the links to North… Continue reading Bone skates and keywords
Arthur MacGregor
Arthur MacGregor is one of the heroes of bone skates studies. He proved that bone skates really were skates in 1975 by making a couple of pairs and skating on them. The next year, he published a really great review article. His dissertation Skeletal Materials presented the bigger picture. And then his book Bone, Antler,… Continue reading Arthur MacGregor
Did Swedish immigrants to the Midwest use bone skates?
Two facts are clear: People were still using bone skates in Sweden in the nineteenth century (see pp. 143–145 of my Skates Made of Bone).Many people immigrated from Sweden to the midwestern United States in the nineteenth century. This combination of facts had led me to wonder whether Swedish immigrants to the Midwest used bone… Continue reading Did Swedish immigrants to the Midwest use bone skates?
Sven T. Kjellberg’s experiments with bone skates
In 1940, Sven T. Kjellberg published the results of his experiments on bone skates. He concluded that the bones he evaluated weren't used as skates, but others could have been. I reached a different conclusion from his results.
Skates Made of Bone is out!
My book on bone skates, Skates Made of Bone: A History, is finally out. My copy has arrived, and the publisher, McFarland, is filling orders. You can get it directly from them or from the bookstore of your choice.
Gösta Berg
Gösta Berg (1903--1993) was a Swedish ethnologist who worked on skating, skiing, and other winter activities. His writings include three papers on bone skates, written in three different languages over a period of nearly thirty years.
How long were the races?
In his Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (Description of the Northern Peoples), Olaus Magnus describes races on bone skates that are "8--12 Italian miles" long. The question is, how long is that?
Skates Made of Bone
My book on bone skates is available for pre-order! You can get it directly from the publisher, McFarland, from Amazon, or from whatever bookstore you like best.