Ice is Nice
Image from a 16^th century engraving of a Dutch skater using wooden platform skates

Skating by origin belongs to the North, to the Scandinavians and Germans who in earliest times were forced to acquire some means of travel over ice and snow. The skate in its most primitive form was from the long bones of deer or elk which have been ground down to be used as sledge runners.  The oldest pair of skates known date back to 3000 B.C. They were found at the bottom of a lake in Switzerland.  About  About 1000 AD, Scandinavians perfected the art of skating by strapping these “blades” made fromthelong bones of deer or elk to their boots.  To this very day the word "skate" in Dutch is "schenkel",whichmeans "leg bone".

Skating by origin belongs to the North, to the Scandinavians and Germans who in earliest times were forced to acquire some means of travel over ice and snow. The skate in its most primitive form was from the long bones of deer or elk which have been ground down to be used as sledge runners.  The oldest pair of skates known date back to 3000 B.C. They were found at the bottom of a lake in Switzerland.  About  About 1000 AD, Scandinavians perfected the art of skating by strapping these “blades” made fromthelong bones of deer or elk to their boots.  To this very day the word "skate" in Dutch is "schenkel",whichmeans "leg bone".

Skating by origin belongs to the North, to the Scandinavians and Germans who in earliest times were forced to acquire some means of travel over ice and snow. The skate in its most primitive form was from the long bones of deer or elk which have been ground down to be used as sledge runners.  The oldest pair of skates known date back to 3000 B.C. They were found at the bottom of a lake in Switzerland.  About  About 1000 AD, Scandinavians perfected the art of skating by strapping these “blades” made fromthelong bones of deer or elk to their boots.  To this very day the word "skate" in Dutch is "schenkel",whichmeans "leg bone".

In the 13th century wood was substituted for bone in skate blades.   These “platform” skates were attached to the shoe using leather straps.  The skater had to use a spiked pole or staff for propulsion.  By the 14th Century A.D. the Dutch were using wooden platform skates to which flat iron bottoms or runners were attached.  The iron blades reduced the friction of forward motion, and their resistance to lateral slipping enabled skaters to push themselves ahead.  Around 1500 AD the Dutch added a narrow metal double-edged blade to the wooden platform skates. This allowed them to abandon the pole and push off with one foot and glide on the other foot. This form of skating, which we still use today, is called the “Dutch Roll”. Iron blades were used in the Battle of Ijsselmeer, which took place in Amsterdam in 1592.  When the Dutch Fleet was frozen in at Amsterdam, the more powerful Spaniards planned on easily taking over the frozen vessels.  However, the Dutch musketeers came to their fellow countrymen’s aid on skates at great speed, and routed the Spaniards in no uncertain manner.

The first authentic Skating Club in the world was the Edinburgh Skating Club, founded certainly before 1784, and, tradition has it, as early as 1642. It is undoubtedly the oldest club.  The test for admission to the club in 1784 was to skate a complete circle on either foot, and jump over first one, then two, then three hats.

When the British and Dutch colonized America, they brought their skates along. The early center of skating in America was in Philadelphia, PA. In 1848 E. V. Bushnell of Philadelphia invented the strapless skate with the blades clipped right to the boot.  This revolutionized skating because for the first time skaters could twist, turn, spin, and leap without losing their blades.  The next year on December 21, 1849, the first skating club in the United States was founded, the Philadelphia S.C.  It had seven members.  New York followed in 1863.  Frankfurt was the first German club, starting in 1861, Vienna followed in 1867 and Troppau in 1868. The Cercie des Patineurs came into being in Paris in 1865. In 1830 The Skating Club, London, started, and functioned in the grounds of the Royal Toxophilite Society in Regent’s Park where, until as late as the First World War the costume de rigueur was a top hat and morning or frock coat.

Ice skating did not develop as an organized competitive sport until the steel skate blades became permanently attached to leather boots. The earlier iron blades dulled quickly, and street shoes, to which they were tied with straps, lacked ankle support. Using the two plate steel blade that he developed in 1865, Jackson Haines, the father of figure skating and a flamboyant New York born American Ballet-Master, successfully took his ballistic skating to several European capitals.  He skater, danced, jumped and spun his way into controversy and fame.  The toe pick or rake was added to the front of the Haines skate in the 1870's. This improvement made toe pick jumps possible. Called the “International Style”, Haines’s form of skating eventually overcame resistance in the U.S., and on March 20, 1914, the first national figure skating championships in the “International Style” were held at New Haven, Conneticut.  This is the type of figure skating you see on TV today. Haines was born in New York in 1840 and died in 1875 in Finland after catching pneumonia while traveling by sled from St. Petersburg to Stockholm. Haines died before his style of skating caught on.

In 1876 the first refrigerated sheet of artificial ice was laid in London’s Glaciarium and by the turn of the century, ice-skating had moved from a pleasant pastime to a year round sport.  It became professional - and very popular with the public.  However, the skating world still had to wait over 40 years for another major improvement to be made to skates.  In 1914 John E. Strauss, a custom blade maker from St. Paul, MN, invented the first blade made from one piece of steel. 

The next innovation was a change in the style of the boot.  The old style boots were designed so that they went all the way up past the calf of the leg.  In the early 1960’s the late Robert Henderson (Harlick Company) was the first to make a boot with a much lower cut.  This design became immediately popular and other companies soon followed.  This major change along with the all steel one piece blade lightened and strengthened the skates; thereby paving the way to the modern designs that facilitate today's triple and quadruple jumps.

Figure skating became an Olympic event in 1908, however Olympic figure skating events were not televised until 1960.  On Valentine's Day in 1961, a tragedy shook the figure skating world when flight 548 carrying the U.S. World figure Skating Team into the World Championships in Prague, crashed near Brussels, Belgium.  the entire U.S. World Figure Skating Team, the Coaches and U.S. Figure Skating Association officials were lost.   From this loss arose the U.S. Figure Skating Memorial Fund whic benefits all future figure skaters. 

 The first Olympic Games to include ice hockey for men took place in 1920 in Antwerp.  Speed skating for men was part of the 1924 Olympic Winter Games, but it was not until 1960 that women's speed skating was placed on the Olympic agenda. 

Have you developed your own personal style of skating ?  Would a pair of reindeer rib bones help?