who invented ice skates

Nobody knows a single, named “inventor” of ice skates. Historians see them as a very old Scandinavian invention that evolved over thousands of years, not a one‑person breakthrough.

Quick Scoop

• The earliest ice skates we know of were made from animal bones (usually horse or cow) and date back to around 1800 BCE in what is now Scandinavia and southern Finland. People strapped these bone runners to their feet with leather.

• These first skates were mainly a practical tool for winter travel over frozen lakes, rivers, and canals, not for sport or fun.

• Metal‑blade skates appeared much later. The Dutch are credited with adding sharpened metal edges to skates around the 13th–14th centuries, turning sliding bone “gliders” into true cutting blades that could carve into the ice.

• Over the 18th–19th centuries, inventors and skaters refined designs: lighter blades, better clamps, and eventually blades permanently fixed to boots, which made modern figure skating and hockey possible.

Notable Names (But Not “The” Inventor)

• Dutch craftsmen : Early metal‑edged steel skates in medieval Netherlands, often credited with inventing the modern type of blade that actually cuts the ice.

• Robert Jones (18th century) : Wrote one of the first treatises on skating, helping to formalize technique rather than hardware, but often mentioned in early skating history.

• Jackson Haines (19th century) : American skater known as the “father of modern figure skating”; he popularized blades permanently attached to boots and used a shorter, curved blade that made dance‑like moves and spins possible.

• E. V. Bushnell (1848) : Invented an all‑steel clamp skate, an important step toward secure, adjustable skates before full boot‑blade integration became standard.

So if you’re asking “who invented ice skates,” the most accurate answer is:

Ice skates weren’t invented by one person. The earliest versions came from prehistoric Scandinavians using bone skates, and later Dutch and other European makers developed the metal‑edged blades that turned them into the modern skates we recognize today.

TL;DR: No single person invented ice skates; they evolved from bone runners in ancient Scandinavia (around 1800 BCE) into metal‑edged skates in medieval Holland and then into today’s sport skates through many later designers and skaters.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.