The Nordic Games were conceived by Viktor Balck, who also was president of the ISU. The World Figure Skating Championships were sometimes combined with the Nordic Games which was the case here. Very rare footage.
Can't think what we will be watching from Sweden in fifty years? Start listening to current affairs in Sweden, and you will quickly grasp the future picture.
The music sort of evokes that feeling, also. It serves as an audible reminder that every skater depicted in this video has passed away. It's like traveling through a time machine.
This is amazing, and the skating performance is very beautiful, i was so surprised by 0:13, the woman hooks her ice skate into the ice, twists around herself and then makes 3 small 'hops'. I've never seen that move before in my life, and also the thick decorated winter clothes they are wearing makes the ice skating so beautiful. Thank you so much for uploading this, you have opened my eyes.
Kdrama 59 I think the heavy, head-to-toe clothes made it extremely difficult to do much of anything. Looks like Victorian influence very much in play here.
The clothing is Edwardian era. The fabrics would be wool, cotton, linen... layered to keep them warm. Even with the heaver clothing, I still think they skated with athleticism, and style.
Back when sports were a past time and no one had the time or resources to train non-stop for 4 years. It was simply done for enjoyment and an escape from the harsh realities of life.
Some of this is school figures. They eliminated those in the Olympics 20 years ago. School figures caused spectators to get angry and bewildered when great free skating performances got low scores because of previous low school figure scores, which a lot of spectators didn't even know existed. Also, a lot of spectators bought tickets to those thinking they were going to see real ice skating and instead saw the most boring event in the Winter Olympics. One man said it was "like watching grass grow."
Then came Sonja Henie in the short skirts she could wear because she began on the world stage as a child, and her jumps and spins, and her theatricality and charisma, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Thank you for sharing this vintage film-how interesting to think about those skaters of the past and how thrilled they seemed to be having fun on the ice.
Like as in geometric shapes they were to make on the ice, the 8 shape, the circle shape, in a specific way. It is to figure skating what playing the scales is to learning the piano. It was decided that there is no more sense to performing the figures at a world competition of ice skating than there was playing scales at a concert.
Victoria Chism They teach you figures to learn the basics of skating. Is obviously not necessary to make perfectly precise figures anymore, but they're still there (or they were when I was learning)
J S We didn't see the part of the program that would have had jumps, spins, etc. All we saw were the school figures and a bit of ice dancing that included one moment of a man boosting up a woman into the air. www.jacksonskates.com/html/jumphist.html#axel for list of firsts for various jumps. skateguard1.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-history-and-evolution-of-spinning.html for spins including the Jackson Haines spin in 1906 by a woman in an ankle length skirt that must have been very dangerous. Women like Isabella Butler were physically handicapped by the layers they were forced to wear, including a corset, but they did well in keeping up with the men who had far more freedom in every way. The professional skaters, particularly in the US, Canada, and UK, both men and women, were allowed to make their skating exciting and entertaining, in ice shows, in Vaudeville, in silent movies, between hockey games, in a nightclub, indeed anywhere a creative person could make an iced surface. This was the era that saw many men and women enthusiastically embrace the new technology and societal changes in order to make a splash in the world. To them, watching society matrons doing the minimum of what might conceivably be considered a sport while wearing the maximum, was old-fashioned before 1913 rolled around. skateguard1.blogspot.ca/2016/03/isabella-butler-figure-skatings-best.html skateguard1.blogspot.com/2015/01/mabel-davidson-skatings-first-female.html skateguard1.blogspot.ca/2013/06/spotlight-on-madge-syers-mother-of.html
Costumes were not part of the competition. If you notice they are also all skating "figures" it was true figure skating. It is nothing but money making by the communist association and the political motives that govern the NWO ISU.
Costume design has nothing to do with athleticism. today figure skating is a sad sad parody and nothing more than theater. Disney on Ice did it all better.
No, not really. That was the current fashion of dressing in public and as far as I can tell it was outdoors....but much of figure skating stems from ballet. At that time, you could have gone to a classical ballet performance, just as you can today.
Wow so basically skating the figures meant continuously skating a figure 8... This documentary really shed significant light to how people skated many years and how far we’ve come since...
While all the figures originated from and were variations on a figure 8, there were approximately 40 figures in total that were eventually skated in competition. Each one utilized a different foot, edge, and/or direction. It took tremendous discipline and skill to master the figures.
I remember doing figures at 5 a.m., in complete silence, with nothing but the sound of your blade slicing through the ice. It was very Zen-like. I have no idea where you get this film from, but it is wonderful. Thank you 💖
Those hats were adorned with feathers, flowers, decorations. Animal furs were more common then. Fashion was very dark though it seemed but more colorful during dances and formal events.
Probably that the future has lost all sense of common decency and morality. While they obviously erred on the side of caution, the figure skating routines of today-costumes, choreography and music-sadly get more and more risqué every year.
Победители этих первых соревнований, в основном, из Швеции и Австрии, но сейчас фигуристов из этих стран даже не видно на крупных соревнованиях. Этот спорт больше не популярен в Вене и Стокгольме?
Lovely - yet all I can see is those horrible social restriction on 'ladies'. This almost felt like conduct unbecoming for lifting a leg - Thank God things have changed. Thanks for this amazing footage ;-)
Most of what you're seeing the skaters do are the compulsory figure 8's. It's only been in the last few years those were eliminated from competitions. I agree with you, something remarkable was lost when those were tossed out the door. Skaters had to show such precision and control to pull off the compulsory 8's. Now they're only judged on freestyle skating. It's so sad.
Really? Why? It's an outdated term formally used in English invitations, what is more interesting to me how the figure skating named women as ladies and that hasn't changed, but back then, the men's event was gentlemen.
Weird figure skating used to be painting figures in the ice with your skates, it feels like such a strange thing to compete in, I'm sure it's very difficult and you need a skill for it though. I think the history is important but good that it has and is evolving.
That was quite amazing. And so very lovely. No jumping it seems-it really was FIGURE skating. (Though in Swedish it's called _konståkning,_ which loosely translates to 'art riding'. (The 'riding' part is a little weird, but I reckon ice skates are method of transportation, much as a bicycle is.) But let's say art skating; as a word, it's nice to have the artristy aspect in the name of the sport, isn't it? Sets the tone.
Figure skating today is a completely different sport. Compulsory figures was actually still performed and judged in Championships and were the biggest part of the total score for years after freestyle became more popular and incorporated into the Olympics. Nowadays Compulsory figures aren't performed anymore in competitions and it's all about technical and artistry.
You would never guess that a competition was taking place, and how those ladies managed to skate in such long dresses is amazing, but it looks like they didn't have many jumps, it was just skating around in circles. I wonder what they would think of today's skating competitions?
Hello, I am Adam a film student and wanted to ask if it was fine for us to use this footage for my student documentary! Hope to hear back from you soon :)
Many people credit Sonja Henie for the change from long dresses to short skirts. She was allowed to get away with wearing much shorter skirts because of her youth -- she won her first Norwegian championship at age 10.
I wonder if they still are required to do the figures. Like skating an eight pattern. They used have to do it for completion thus the term - figure skating. But I don't know if it is a requirement still.
