It is due, however, to the youth of Norway that ski-ing has of late years been reduced to a pleasure and an art; while the notice it has received abroad is owing mainly to the prominence given to it by accounts furnished to, and published in, English sporting and illustrated journals, and to allusions to it in the writings of various arctic explorers who have lately taken ski with them on their journeys as part of their travelling outfit.
Fig. 1.—An early form of Snowshoe.
From a Sketch by Laurentius Urdahl.
In turning to the history of the ski, it will be found that their origin is as much lost in oblivion as that of the wheel; but it is not too much to assume that human beings who have been created to adapt themselves to their surroundings at all times, have, in lands far separated and entirely apart, invented somewhat similar appliances with which they could float, as it were, and proceed over depths of snow that would otherwise bury them, or cross tracts of treacherous ice which would give way under the tread of a human foot. In this connection one need not refer solely to inhabitants of wintry countries, for it will be found that the natives of other regions, who have to traverse yielding surfaces, such as the great mud flats of Hampshire and elsewhere, wear pattens on their feet, and are thus able to wander in safety over a substance too soft to bear them otherwise. Such pattens are almost identical with those employed elsewhere for travelling over snow, and consist of slabs of wood, some 16in. to 18in. long, by 12in. or so in width, which are attached to the feet by toe straps and thongs. In these pattens, no matter whether they be made of withes or solid wood, we undoubtedly find the earliest form of snowshoes or ski, a form which, however, exists to the present day, and is met with in the north-eastern and northern portions of Asia, Thibet, the Caucasus, Armenia, Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, and, in a modified form, in North America, the principle of construction there being identical, viz., a ring or framework of wood supporting a net work of withes or sinews. There are, however, various modifications of the original round pattern; some of the shoes, possibly to prevent straddling, are more or less elongated, the length being increased as the breadth is diminished, while some, thus shaped, have occasionally leather stretched between the frames to allow of their wearer gliding, instead of walking, over the snow, and thus become veritable ski; for while the original object of the snowshoe or patten and the ski are identical, viz., - to support a weight on yielding surfaces, the patten remains a shoe for walking purposes, while the ski becomes a blade on which to slide. From this explanation the difference between patten or snowshoe and ski is possibly made clear for the first time.
While, as previously mentioned, it is impossible to trace the origin of the ski, mention of snowshoes is made hundreds of years before the Christian era. Xenophon refers to their being worn (as in Scandinavia to the present day) by the horses of the Armenians to prevent their sinking in the deep snow. Historical mention, from a period before Christ, is also made of the mountaineers of the Caucasus attaching discs of leather (probably leather-covered wood), studded with nails, to their feet to enable them to move over the snows of the fells. The ancient accounts, however, all refer to the patten, but Norwegian traditions dating back some 1,600 years make mention of the ski. The Greek historian, Prokopius, as well as other writers, including King Alfred of England, from 550 A.D. to 1070 A.D., drew attention to the Lapps, who were called “Skrid Finner,”[3] one saying they were the best of all men at ski-ing, and the fact of it being the Lapps who wore the ski, or who were the great exponents of ski-ing in those early times, would tend to confirm the theory of the ski themselves originating in Central Asia—those parts of the old world from which the Ugrians or Finns, Samoyeds, and other tribes of Mongols migrated northward and westward, till stopped by the waters of the Atlantic on the shores of the Scandinavian peninsula. There can be little doubt, however, that pattens were used for hundreds, if not thousands, of years before the thought of sliding over the snow, which led to the introduction of ski, entered the head of some inventive genius. The original ski were probably constructed by the Chukchis, or similar tribes, near the Behring Straits, or Sea of Okhotsk. They were formed, as already intimated, of elongated frames covered with leather, and were modified, subsequently, as migration increased, forests were met with, and wood was found to be a better and more durable material for the purpose required.
It will thus be seen that ski were extensively used in olden times by the Scandinavians as well as others. They also found their way from Norway to Iceland and Greenland. Of ski there are many types. The skridsko (sliding shoes), or ski of the Lapps, appear, if one is to judge from old illustrations from the sixteenth century (Figs. 2 and 3), to have been veritable shoes, the feet being placed in a hole made for the purpose at the heel of the ski. They are thus depicted as elongated (some 3ft. long) sabots. There is, however, no reason for assuming these sabot skis to have been the original form, for they were, at best, but a hybrid type of ingenious construction, possibly only used by the inhabitants of certain districts. The true Lapps’ ski, on the other hand, were comparatively short and broad, attached to the feet by toe straps and thongs, and covered with the skins of reindeer calves for the purpose of letting them glide easily without accumulating snow on the soles, of keeping the wood from splitting or fraying, and because, when thus covered, it was easier to ascend the slopes of the hills, the hairs which lay fore and aft, checking the tendency to slide backwards.
Fig. 2.—Skrid-Finner hunting (Olaus Magnus, ca. 1550).
