Description : Making an ice skate from a bone is fairly simple. First take a cow or horse radius and cut the two ends at an angle. Then plane down the flattest part of the bone. Now all you need is to attach the shoe to the skate, using laces attached at either end. To improve this, some skates had pegs set in holes drilled in both sides to hold the laces. The photo shows a Carolingian shoe placed atop a skate from a later period. Fourteen such skates have been found at Saint-Denis, all dating from the 10th to the 12th centuries.

This type of object is known from other archaeological sites in Northern Europe, including Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Poland and Russia. Its use was described by William Fitz Stephen in a text about the life of Saint Thomas Becket written circa 1170-1180. The author recounts how, in winter, children played on the frozen Thames: ".others, more adept at playing on the ice, strap animal bones to their feet and propel themselves with the aid of iron-tipped sticks. as swiftly as the flight of a bird or the javelin from a catapult."