Ice skates

It giet oan!* Skating has been a popular pastime for centuries in the Netherlands. Nowadays, when there is enough frost, people skate the ‘Elfstedentocht’, an ice skating tour along eleven Frisian cities,  as a national sport or skate recreationally on natural or artificial ice for their winter entertainment. However, the way people skate has changed enormously over the centuries. Whereas nowadays people skate on skates such as Norwegian skates and clap skates, in early medieval Frisia people skated on a completely different type of skate: bone skates

Bone skates

Bone skates or bone runners oldest type of skates, made from smooth-ground animal bones. They were usually made from the metatarsal and metacarpal bones of cows or horses, but examples made from radius and rib bones also exist. In a few cases, deer bones have been found. Bone skates usually have holes in the side, so that they could be attached to a shoe with a leather cord or tendon. The way of skating on bone skates is very different from skating on iron or metal skates, because the skater cannot push off on bone skates. To move forward, sticks with sharp points were often used to push oneself forward on the ice. That considerable speeds could be achieved with these sticks is evident from an eyewitness account by William Fitz-Stephen's in London in 1173:

‘(...) for they fit the leg-bones of animals to their feet, binding them firmly round their ankles, and hold in their hands poles shod with iron, which they strike against the ice, and thus impel themselves on it with the swiftness of a bird or a ball from an engine [cannon].’ (In: The Life and Letters of Thomas à Becket.)

Based on the known and dated finds of bone skates to date, it has been established that this method of skating began in the Bronze Age from around 2000 BC onwards. The earliest find from the Netherlands that has been dated with certainty are the skates from Ezinge in the province of Groningen, dated to 100-300 AD. Skating on bone skates continued in Europe until the 19th century.

Means of transport

In the early middle ages – and other earlier periods – skates were mainly used as a means of transport. Winter was the time when waterways froze. The usual means of transport by water in early medieval Frisia, ships and boats, often did not sail during wintertime (also see our earlier post ‘Ships’). Skating on ice offered an alternative during this season. This is evident from a study by F. Formenti and A. Minetii into the relationship between energy consumption and modes of transport on ice. The study showed that in North(-Western) European countries, including the Netherlands, it was faster and less energy-intensive to skate across a body of water (lake or river) on skates than to walk around it through the snow. However, some bone skates from Frisia have two or three vertical holes, which suggests that they may also have been used as runners under sledges (Roes 1963). Such sledges were also pushed forward with sticks and were still used in Germany around 1830. Bone skates have been found throughout the entirety of former early medieval Frisia.

Happy holidays!

With this last message of 2025, we at Monetarii Dorestatii wish you a wonderful Yuletide season with a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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*‘It giet oan’ is a well-known Westlauwers-Frisian expression used to herald the start of the Elfstedentocht, an ice skating tour along eleven Frisian cities, when the ice proved thick enough to skate on it. ‘It giet oan’ means ‘it goes on’ in English.