Is Ski an Old Norse Word? Norse Skiing, Sources and Corrections
"Ski" really is an Old Norse word: skíð, which meant both a split stick of firewood and a ski. The Norse gave skiing a goddess, a god and a place in their kings' bragging verses. But the oldest skis in the North are older than the Vikings, and most of the texts were written down after them. This page says which is which.
Every claim in our skiing carousel, slide by slide, with its source. Section numbers match the number at the top of each slide. Each source is labelled by period, because skiing in the North is thousands of years older than the Viking Age, and almost everything written about it was written in the 1200s.
Slide by slide
01. A split stick of firewood
Old Norse skíð has two senses in the standard dictionary: "a billet of wood, fire-wood", and snow-shoes, "such as are used by the Finns, Norsemen, and Icelanders". In Njáls saga people split skíð for the fire. Norwegian kept the word as ski, and English borrowed it from Norwegian. There is one isolated English example from 1755; regular use starts in the 1880s.
Sources: Cleasby and Vigfusson, An Icelandic-English Dictionary (1874), s.v. skíð; etymonline, s.v. ski.
02. They inherited it: older than the Vikings
A pair of skis melted out of the ice at Digervarden in Norway: one in 2014, its partner on 20 September 2021, a few metres away. They are about 1,300 years old, radiocarbon-dated to around AD 700, with their bindings still on. The oldest skis in the Nordic countries, from Kalvträsk in Sweden, are about 5,000 years old. None of these is a Viking ski.
Sources: Finstad, Martinsen, Hole and Pilø, Journal of Glacial Archaeology 3 (2016, published 2018), pp. 43 to 58; Lars Pilø, Secrets of the Ice, 5 October 2021.
03. Skadi and Ullr, on skis
Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning ch. 23: Skaði "travels much on skis and with a bow and shoots animals. She is called ski-god or ski-lady" (öndurgoð or öndurdís). Snorri wrote in the 1220s, but the name is older than he is: verses attributed to the ninth-century poet Bragi and to Eyvindr skaldaspillir in the tenth century already call her Öndurdís. That makes her the best-attested Viking Age skiing fact we have.
Sources: Snorri, Gylfaginning ch. 23 and Skáldskaparmál (the Bragi verse); Ynglinga saga ch. 9 (Eyvindr, Háleygjatal). Text read at heimskringla.no.
Gylfaginning ch. 31: "Ullr heitir einn, sonr Sifjar, stúpsonr Þórs. Hann er bogmaðr svá góðr ok skíðfærr svá, at engi má við hann keppast": he is so good a bowman and so good on skis that no one can compete with him. Skáldskaparmál lists his kennings, including öndurás, ski-god. Ullr's skiing rests on Snorri alone, which is why Skadi comes first on the slide.
Sources: Snorri, Gylfaginning ch. 31; Skáldskaparmál ch. 21. More on Ullr in our article on Ullr.
04. I can glide on skis
A verse attributed to Harald Hardrada, preserved in Morkinskinna, lists eight skills, among them "I can glide on skis" (skriða kann ek á skíðum). Fagrskinna says he made these verses on his way home from Byzantium, in the 1040s. Rognvald Kali, later Earl of Orkney, copied the second half word for word in Orkneyinga saga and claimed nine skills. In Heimskringla, King Eysteinn tells his brother Sigurd: "I am much better on skis than you."
Sources: Morkinskinna (Unger ed.); Orkneyinga saga ch. 58 in the standard numbering; Heimskringla, Magnússona saga, the comparison of the kings. Some scholars doubt that Harald composed the verse himself; "attributed" is deliberate.
05. Two skiers and a toddler
Hákonar saga, written in the 1260s, tells how in January 1206 the Birkebeiners crossed the mountains in frost and snow with the heir, Hákon, born in the summer of 1204. On one stormy stretch "they chose two men who went best on snow shoes to go with the boy", Thorstein and Skærvald. "There was no other food for the boy than by melting snow in his mouth." Later, farmers lent them horses. The boy became King Hákon IV.
The Birkebeiner race has run since 20 March 1932. Skiers carry a 3.5 kg pack, a weight fixed in 1993, and it is widely described as standing for the baby king. The race runs from Rena to Lillehammer; it commemorates the story and does not follow a route mapped in the saga.
Sources: Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar ch. 4, ed. Vigfússon (Rolls Series, 1887), trans. Dasent (1894), vol. 4, pp. 4 to 5; Maihaugen museum on the Birkebeinerrennet.
Also on the last slide: the ski of the sea-kings
Poets could call a ship "the ski of sea-kings" (skíð sækonunga). In a verse attributed to Bragi, Thor fishes for the World Serpent from "Eynæfir's ski", that is, a sea-king's boat.
Sources: Snorri, Skáldskaparmál ch. 64 (ship kennings) and ch. 11 (the Bragi verse); Cleasby and Vigfusson, s.v. öndurr.
What we do not claim
- That the Vikings invented skiing. The skis above are all older.
- That Ullr was the god of winter or of snow. No medieval source says so.
- That Olaf Tryggvason was a famous skier. His skills chapter in Heimskringla lists climbing, walking the oars and juggling.
- That the Norse used one long ski and one short kicking ski. That system is documented for recent centuries, not for the Viking Age.
- That the baby was skied the whole way. The saga says two skiers took him through one stormy stretch.
Corrections
None yet. If you find an error, tell us, with a citation.
Keep exploring
Frequently asked questions
Is "ski" an Old Norse word?
Yes. It comes from Old Norse skíð, which meant both a split piece of firewood and a ski. Norwegian kept it as ski, and English borrowed it from Norwegian, where it became common in the 1880s.
Was there a Norse god of skiing?
Two. Snorri says Ullr was so good on skis that no one could compete with him, and calls Skadi the ski-god or ski-lady. Skadi's ski name is the older of the two: it already appears in verse attributed to Viking Age poets.
Did the Vikings invent skiing?
No. The oldest skis found in the Nordic countries are about 5,000 years old, and a well-preserved pair from Norway is about 1,300 years old, older than the Viking Age. The Vikings inherited skiing.