habitants of
Sweden, both in the North saga and by foreign authors."

When used on ice, one runner would soon have been found more convenient
than the widely separated two, and harder materials used than wood:
first bone was substituted; then it, in turn, gave place to iron; and
thus the present form of skate was developed in the North at a period
set down by Scandinavian archaeologists as about A.D. 200.

Frequent allusions occur in the old Northern poetry, which prove that
proficiency in skating was one of the most highly esteemed
accomplishments of the Northern heroes. One of them, named Kolson,
boasts that he is master of nine accomplishments, skating being one;
while the hero Harold bitterly complains that though he could fight,
ride, swim, glide along the ice on skates, dart the lance, and row, "yet
a Russian maid disdains me."

In the "Edda" this accomplishment is singled out for special praise:
"Then the king asked what that young man could do who accompanied Thor.
Thialfe answered that in running upon skates he would dispute the prize
with any of the countries. The king owned that the talent he spoke of
was a very fine one."

Olaus Magnus, the author of the famous chapter on the Snakes of Iceland,
tells us that skates were made "of polished iron, or of the shank bone
of a deer or sheep, about a foot long, filed down on one side, and
greased with hog's lard to repel the wet." These rough-and-ready bone
skates were the kind first adopted by the English; for Fitzstephen, in
his description of the amusements of the Londoners in his day (time of
Henry the Second), tells us that "when that great fen that washes
Moorfields at the north wall of the city is frozen over, great companies
of young men go to sport upon the ice. Some, striding as wide as they
may, do slide swiftly; some, better practiced to the ice, bind to their
shoes bones, as the legs of some beasts, and hold stakes in their hands,
headed with sharp iron, which sometimes they strike against the ice;
these men go as swiftly as doth a bird in the air, or a bolt from a
cross-bow." Then he goes on to say that some, imitating the fashion of
the tournament, would start in full career against one another, armed
with poles; "they meet, elevate their poles, attack and strike each
other, when one or both of them fall, and not without some bodily hurt."

Specimens of these old bone skates are occasionally dug up in fenny
parts of Great Britain. There are some i