The oldest skis, and why there is no single date.

Why this page gives ranges, not an answer

Several of the oldest skis in the sources below were found in bogs and mires, and each has been dated by the people who studied it. Those dates do not always agree, and at least one find has been redated by more than a thousand years. The Russian sport-science journal that studied the Yirkapa fragment says, in a search summary we could not open, that researchers do not agree on when and where the first skis appeared. The Christian Science Monitor reported in 2006 that ski historians and anthropologists argue over two main candidates, Scandinavia, where the oldest preserved skis are, and the Altai region.

Much of what follows comes from two kinds of source. Store norske leksikon (SNL), the Norwegian encyclopedia, gives radiocarbon ranges in an article last updated in November 2024. The International Skiing History Association (ISHA) publishes a compiled timeline put together between 2005 and 2007 by a group of ski historians led by Elisabeth Hussey, which it says FIS published on its website in 2008. ISHA calls the list a research tool and says it is inevitably subjective. Each timeline entry below is credited to the historian the timeline names.

The oldest skis found, find by find

Two disagreements stand out. For Norway's oldest ski, the ISHA timeline's 5100 BC entry for a Vefsn ski is far older than SNL's 3343 to 2939 BC for the Drevja ski in Vefsn, which SNL calls the oldest in the country. For the Kalvträsk ski, SNL's radiocarbon range, Vaage's 2700 BC and the tourism pages' 5,200 years do not match. The ISHA entry adds that Berg had first dated Kalvträsk to 1300 BC before carbon dating. For Hoting, "about 2500 BC" and "about 4,500 years old" agree with each other, but the Wikipedia summary's 4500 BC does not.

Kalvträsk, Sweden

The ISHA timeline says the Kalvträsk find of 1924 was two skis and a pole. Search summaries of the Skellefteå tourist office's page say it turned up in a mire near Skellefteå while a ditch was being dug, and that the original is held by the Västerbotten Museum in Umeå. The museum's own page was not reached, so those details are unconfirmed.

A ski that turned out to be younger

SNL gives a warning example. The Øvrebø ski, excavated in Vest-Agder in 1929, was long held to be at least 2,500 years old. It has since been redated to between 1430 and 1630 CE. SNL also says Norway's first bog find of a ski was made in Alvdal in 1906.

Museums and the ice

The Holmenkollen Ski Museum in Oslo says the oldest ski in its exhibition dates from the Stone Age and belongs to the Science Museum in Trondheim, and invites visitors to explore 5,000 years of skiing history; its page gives no exact date for that ski. SNL says the museum holds about 800 pairs of skis, several of them prehistoric. Finds from melting Norwegian glaciers are reported, in a search summary of the Secrets of the Ice glacier-archaeology programme, to include a ski radiocarbon-dated to about AD 750 and an object, either a ski or a snowshoe, dated to about 650 BC; the programme's page was not opened, so these are unconfirmed.

A 2017 New York Times article says FIS recognises a ski from a northern Russian bog as the oldest scientifically dated evidence of skiing. No FIS page saying so was found, so that is the newspaper's statement only.

Rock carvings

• Alta and Rødøy, Norway. SNL says Stone Age rock carvings showing skiing are at least 4,000 years old, at Alta in Finnmark and at Rødøy in Nordland, where the carving probably depicts skiers.
• Rødøy, a second date. The ISHA timeline gives the Rødøy carving as about 2500 BC, carbon dated, but names no source for the entry, so it is unconfirmed.
• Bolommid, Norway. The ISHA timeline lists carvings at 4000 BC, credited to Rune Flaten (2004).
• East Karelia. The ISHA timeline lists carvings of several hunters on skis at Lake Onega and the River Uikujoki at about 2000 BC, credited to Eero Naskali (1990) and Eino Nikkila (1966).
• Norway, in the press. The 2017 New York Times article says Norwegian cave paintings from about 4000 BC are considered evidence of Scandinavian ski culture.

The Altai claim

A painting of hunters chasing ibex under a rock outcrop in the Altai mountains of northern Xinjiang, China, includes a figure on skis. The New York Times article (2017) says Chinese archaeologists date it to more than 10,000 years ago, that it has not been carbon-dated, and that ski historians are somewhat sceptical of the age. It says the historian Shan Zhaojian was taken to the site by Altai herders in 1993 and announced at a Beijing news conference in 2006 that China was the original home of skiing.

The Christian Science Monitor reported that on 25 January 2006 the state news agency Xinhua claimed skiing began in the Altay region 100 to 200 centuries ago, citing cave paintings of four hunters on boards with poles. The Monitor said Xinhua named no researcher behind the date and that historians did not rush to accept it. Wikipedia's Altay Prefecture article, seen only in a search summary, gives a still wider range of 10,000 to 30,000 years. None of these dates has a radiocarbon result behind it in the sources read, and this site does not pick between them and the Scandinavian finds.

Sagas, gods and early printed accounts

In written sources, skiing appears in Nordic sagas and myth and later in European books.

• SNL says Snorre Sturlason's sagas of the Norse kings describe skiing as common in Norway more than a thousand years ago and praise the Sami as fine skiers.
• SNL says Norse mythology had a ski god, Ull, and a ski goddess, Skade.
• SNL says the Birkebeiner race commemorates 1206, when two skiers carried the infant king's son Håkon Håkonsson to safety over the mountains during Norway's civil war.
• The ISHA timeline lists 1521 to 1522 for the episode involving Gustav Vasa, ski troops and two farmers from Mora, which the Vasaloppet, founded in 1922, commemorates (credited to Nikkila, 1960).
• The ISHA timeline lists Olaus Magnus's map, the Carta Marina (1539), which shows hunters on skis, and his 1555 book on the northern peoples with woodcuts of skiing.
• The ISHA timeline lists 1689 for Valvasor's description of people on the Bloke plateau, in today's Slovenia, using wooden boards to descend steep slopes.

The story continues in Norway, where skiing became a sport in the nineteenth century: see Norway and Sondre Norheim. Every date on this page is also in the timeline.