The Catalogue of the Collection of London Antiquities in the Guildhall Museum lists 16 bone skates. The first, #134, is "said to have been found with two Roman sandals" at London Wall. A few of these skates, including #134, were drawn by Charles H. Whymper; his drawing is preserved in the British Museum. "Five skates… Continue reading Bone skates in the Guildhall Museum
Category: Bone skates
The bone skates from Novgorod
I've finally gotten hold of Oleg Oleynikov's paper on the bone skates from medieval Novgorod. It came out last year, but only recently appeared in the online archive of Russian Archaeology (2021, issue 4, pages 102–118). It's in Russian, and I don't know Russian, so I have been looking at the pictures and references and… Continue reading The bone skates from Novgorod
Bone skates vs. archetype skates
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
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
Skates Made of Bone is out!
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.