Category: Bone skates

H. W. Jacobi on bone skates

Bev

I recently got hold of a copy of De Nederlandse glissen by H. W. Jacobi, thanks to some kind people in the Netherlands. It’s a paper written for a course at the University of Amsterdam in 1976. This paper has gone viral (in the bone skates sense) despite its obscurity. It has been cited far more times than you’d expect for a student project (which is not at all).

Jacobi catalogs the bone skates in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden and the Groninger Museum, plus five from other places. The 160 artifacts that make it through the identification process (based on their shapes and wear patterns) are then classified into ten groups, which Wiebe Blau has summarized. An eleventh group, containing 20 artifacts, is for sled runners. Unfortunately, none of these skates are dated, or at least, Jacobi doesn’t provide dates for them. General periods in which bone skates were used in the Netherlands (from the 7th to 14th century at different places) are given, but that’s all.

Jacobi completes the project by making three pairs of bone skates and experimenting with them. The experiments are pretty similar to ones conducted by other archaeologists, most notably Arthur MacGregor at about the same time and Hans Christian Küchelmann and Petar Zidarov more recently. The most interesting difference is that Jacobi didn’t use a pole to push for fear of messing up the ice. Instead, Jacobi’s brother was responsible for propulsion: he (wearing his  modern skates) pushed Jacobi around the ice. Surprisingly, Jacobi was able to steer on bone skates. Nobody else has been able to do this, with disastrous results: In 1915, Antti Juvel, a 75-year-old Finn, reported that

if there was open water ahead, you had no choice but going into it, for it would be too dangerous to fall on the ice in such a great speed and turning was impossible.

Antti Juvel, translated by Auli Touronen and quoted in Küchelmann & Zidarov (2005:437)

Overall, Jacobi’s work is quite short (only 20 pages plus figures) but excellent for a student project. It remains the only detailed summary of the bone skates in these museum collections. However, better general sources on bone skates are available now and have been since Jacobi’s paper was finished—Arthur MacGregor’s two articles came out at about the same time, and he remains one of the heroes of bone skates.

References

Arthur MacGregor. 1976. “Bone Skates: A Review of the Evidence.” Archaeological Journal 133: 57–74.

Arthur MacGregor. 1975. “Problems in the Interpretation of Microscopic Wear Patterns: The Evidence from Bone Skates.” Journal of Archaeological Science 2: 385–390.

Hans Christian Küchelmann and Petar Zidarov. 2005. “Let’s skate together! Skating on bones in the past and today.” In From Hooves to Horns, from Mollusc to Mammoth: Manufacture and Use of Bone Artefacts from Prehistoric Times to the Present, Proceedings of the 4th Meeting of the ICAZ Worked Bone Research Group at Tallinn, 26th–31st of August 2003, ed. H. Luik, A. M. Choyke, C. Batey, and L. Löugas, pp. 425–445. Tallinn: Ajaloo Instituut.


Kalderhohdi Farm

Bev

In August, 1878, A. Heneage Cocks visited Iceland and got a pair of bone skates. Here’s the story as he told it to J. Romilly Allen:

I noticed the bone skates hanging up in Kalderhohdi Farm on the Log River SW Iceland when putting up there in August 1878. I remember carefully concealing my feeling of excitement when I saw what they were and the mutual satisfaction of the boy to whom they belonged and myself when they changed owners for the consideration of 20 ore (3d). (Allen 1896, 33–35)

I’ve already told you about bone skates. Today’s burning question is, “Where is Kalderhohdi Farm?”

I couldn’t find it. I think Cocks and Balfour, or perhaps the editor of the Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist, got it wrong. “Kalderhohdi” is pretty similar to “Kaldárhöfði”—similar enough that it might be what someone who doesn’t speak Icelandic heard. Plus, Kaldárhöfði Farm actually existed at the end of the nineteenth century! It’s even in the right area—southwestern Iceland—and close to a river, though the river is called Ölfusá; I haven’t figured the Log River out yet.

Frederick W. W. Howell visited Kaldárhöfði Farm in about 1900 and took a picture:

kaldarhofdi
Kaldárhöfði Farm in about 1900. Photograph by Frederick W. W. Howell, courtesy of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

The original image, with full bibliographic information, is at the Cornell University Library. That little creek in the front yard looks like a fine place to skate!

Reference

J. Romilly Allen. 1896. “The Primitive Bone Skate.” The Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist 2:33–36.

Bone skates

Bev8 Comments

herman-boy
A Hungarian boy on bone skates. From Herman (1902).

The first ice skates were made from the leg bones of animals. Skaters simply stood on them (tying them on was optional) and pushed themselves along with metal-tipped poles. The skater in the picture is using what seems to have been the most common technique: pushing with one pole between the legs. Two poles were also used in some areas.

The earliest skate candidates found so far are from Albertfalva, an early Bronze Age site near Budapest. These skates, which were made from horse bones, date to approximately 2500 BC. You can read more about them in Choyke & Bartosiewicz (2005), but their identification seems less certain now. More definite skates start to appear in central Europe during the Late Bronze Age. Skating on bones remained very popular well into the twentieth century, but was most popular during the Middle Ages.

Edberg & Karlsson (2016) argue that in medieval Scandinavia, bone skates were toys for children and used only for recreation, not for any practical purpose, because the hundreds of bone skates from two sites in Sweden are sized for children’s feet. This squares with William fitz Stephen’s twelfth-century account of bone skates in England:

“When the great marsh that washes the north wall of the city is frozen over, swarms of young men issue forth to play games on the ice. … Others, more skilled at winter sports, put on their feet the shin-bones of animals, binding them firmly round their ankles, and, holding poles shod with iron in their hands, which they strike from time to time against the ice, they are propelled swift as a bird in flight or a bolt shot from an engine of war. Sometimes, by mutual consent, two of them run against each other in this way from a great distance, and, lifting their poles, each tilts against the other. Either one or both fall, not without some bodily injury, for, as they fall, they are carried along a great way beyond each other by the impetus of their run, and wherever the ice comes in contact with their heads, it scrapes off the skin utterly. Often a leg or an arm is broken, if the victim falls with it underneath him; but theirs is an age greedy of glory, youth yearns for victory, and exercises itself in mock combats in order to carry itself more bravely in real battles.” (Douglas and Greenaway, 1968:961)

my-bone-skates
My bone skates.

I made a pair of bone skates from bones sold as dog treats and tried them out. I found that it is quite easy to skate without having the skates attached to my feet. In fact, this method has certain advantages: it is easy to jump off the skates if I hit a patch of rough ice, and it is much easier to get up after falling if I do it in my boots and then step back onto the skates.

The main disadvantage of bone skates compared with modern metal-bladed skates is their lack of maneuverability. Bone skates slide forwards, backwards, and sideways equally well. This makes it extremely difficult to stop or turn, problems which were well-known to skaters. In his description of games played on Gotland, P. A. Säve includes the following warning about bone skates:

“When the ice is very glassy, it goes at a burning speed; the most dangerous part … is splitting apart: the bone skates easily run to the sides, and that when sliding, one cannot turn aside or change course, if one sees a deep hole in front of one. The only thing to do in this case is to set the pole between the legs, lean back on it, and let it scratch the ice to slightly arrest the motion; but then, one should not be too close to the danger.” (Säve and Gustavson 1948:77, my translation)

This lack of maneuverability means that playing games like hockey or knattleikr on bone skates would have been impossible, but does not rule out the possibility of doing tricks. I was able to do a two-foot spin on my bone skates. Jumping tricks like those done by skateboarders may be possible, but I have not attempted any (yet).

A good place to learn more about bone skates is knochenarbeit.de, which includes a database of a few thousand bone skates.

References

O. Herman. 1902. Knochenschlittschuh, Knochenkufe, Knochenkeitel: Ein Beitrag zur näheren Kenntnis der prähistorischen Langknochenfunde. Mittheilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 32:217–238.

A. M. Choyke & L. Bartosiewicz. 2005. Skating with horses: Continuity and parallelism in prehistoric Hungary. Revue de Paléo-biologie, spéc. 10:317–326.

R. Edberg & J. Karlsson. 2016. Bone skates and young people in Birka and Sigtuna. Fornvännen 111:7–16.

D. C. Douglas and G. W. Greenaway, eds. 1968. English Historical Documents, Volume 2: 1042–1189. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

P. A. Säve and H. Gustavson. 1948. Svenska lekar, volume 1: Gotländska lekar.  Uppsala: Almqvist och Wicksells Boktryckeri AB.