Words: T.J. Rutecki 2017-12-11 21:04:29
The ski is older than the wheel.
The wheel, the fundamental machine that powered the rise of civilization, is at least 2,500 years younger than the oldest wooden skis ever discovered. It may seem stunning that what is now considered a recreational object predates one of humanity’s greatest inventions by millennia. But from survival to politics to pure enjoyment, modern humans and skis have been intertwined since our beginnings.
This is the scope of Roland Huntford’s 2008 book, Two Planks and a Passion: The Dramatic History of Skiing. It’s a big subject to cover, and Huntford does so in painstakingly researched and annotated detail. In its 436 pages, Two Planks journeys around the world, examining everything from the ski’s role in historical military strategies, its influence on the European Age of Exploration, and the rise of the modern ski resort. And those are just a few of the nuggets to be found in the book.
The inspiration for Two Planks began while Huntford was researching Roald Amundsen’s ski-assisted, 1911 expedition to the South Pole, but his fact-finding soon led him deeper into skiing’s origins. While the subject matter stretches back thousands of years, Huntford remains remains mostly before 1945. But modern skiers can connect with much of the technology, including the invention of telemark bindings, the rise of the mechanized lift and the origins of base wax. As they will with some familiar characters. Both Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island, make appearances—although Stevenson was more of a toboggan rider than a skier.
The majority of modern skiing’s heritage originates in Scandinavia and central Europe, so that’s where Two Planks spends most of its time. In the process it includes subject matter as far-flung as Chinese border tribes during the Ming Dynasty and the 19th-century “dopers” of California’s Sierra Nevada, among many, many other stories, locales and people.
This isn’t Huntford’s first foray into ski history, particularly when it comes to polar expeditions. Alongside authoring Scott and Amundsen, Shackleton and Nansen, biographies about famous polar explorers, Huntford—who lives in Cambridge, England—also covered skiing in Europe and Scandinavia, where he visited and met with a number of the book’s places and personalities firsthand. While Two Planks is not light reading (it’s definitely fare for a history junkie), Huntford’s experiences do allow him to approach the dense subject matter with a surprising amount of familiarity.
For non-skiers, it may seem insane that someone would dedicate their life to sliding down mountains on two pieces of wood. But there are few passions we’ve held longer.
“Together with the hammer, the knife and the axe, the ski is one of the few Stone Age implements handed down to us in their original form,” Huntford writes. “The origins of skiing are bound up with the emergence of modern man.”
Two Planks and a Passion: The Dramatic History of Skiing is published by Continuum Books (now Bloomsbury Academic), and available at bookstores and online.
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