THE SCENE: Olaus Magnus, the Archbishop of Uppsala, describes the danger that medieval ice-skaters faced when skating on thin ice: frigid decapitation.
THE TEXT: You are never in greater peril or nearer to death than when you set off skating while the ice is covered with even the thinnest layer of snow. For rivers or brooks, silently and swiftly entering the lake from its shores, wear away the ice by their constant movement so that it cannot grow thick and firm, unless the streams themselves are held in check by a very hard frost. But sometimes rash skaters, ignorant of or scorning the properties of ice and racing with more temerity than caution, are drowned, their bodies lamentably left under the ice and on top of it their heads, which have been sliced off by the sharp edge of the ice as if by an axe.
– A Description of the Northern Peoples, Olaus Magnus, 16th Century AD
