Julian Post-Melbye of the Cultural History Museum holds up the preserved ski for his colleague Espen Finstad.
Skiing has been a usefuland often necessarymode of transportation since at least 6,000 BCE.
However, most ancient skis are only known through rock art depictions and fragments of wood.
Julian Post-Melbye of the Cultural History Museum holds up the preserved ski for his colleague Espen Finstad. (Photo: Andreas Christoffer Nilsson/Secrets of the Ice/Museum of Cultural History, Oslo)
This makes a recent finding by a Norwegian team of archeologists all the more exciting.
Together, they form the oldest pair of intact skis ever discovered.
The exciting find is detailed onSecrets of the Ice, a blog run by archeologists of glaciers.
The binding. (Photo: Espen Finstad/Secrets of the Ice/Museum of Cultural History, Oslo)
The remains if viking settlements and other artifacts lie beneath the abundant (but melting) ice of Scandinavia.
In 2014, a team discovered a lone wooden ski complete with binding made of birch bark and leather.
In September 2021, the second ski at last emerged.
The skis reunited. (Photo:Museum of Cultural History, Oslo)
The pair dates to the pre-Viking age, about 1,300 years ago.
Scholars have postulated that skis might have had fur on the underside to provide grip going uphill.
However, a deep groove in the Norwegian pair suggests this may not have been the case.
At present, the ice has not yielded any clues.
As the years go by, there may be more Secrets of the Ice revealed.
