History of Skiing

The practice originated from the use of snow shoes, which spread the weight of the person wearing them over a large surface, thus reducing the force on the snow and making them less likely to sink into the ground. There are various theories on how these may have been developed into what we now know as skis.

What is not disputed is that it must have happened thousands of years ago. Norwegian rock drawings dating four or five thousand years ago show figures of men standing on planks and holding poles. Various reports from across the world detail the use of skis to traverse different types of terrain, but modernisation took its largest steps through the Scandinavian military in the seventeenth century. Companies of soldiers and then villages began to compete until small competitions were commonplace in Northern Europe. Sondre Norheim is hailed as the father of modern skiing with his introduction of the telemark technique and, from that point, the modern disciplines came into play and skiing as we now know it was born.