Regarding the first written reports of skiing, German ski historian and teacher Carl J. Luther writes in The British Ski Year Book, 1952, about tales of horse-footed men from the north:
‘…Roman writer [Pomponius] Mela (A.D. 50) and Pliny the Elder who… mention men with horses’ feet… Mela speaks quite briefly of some fabulous people, including the “Hippopodes who have horses’ feet.” And Pliny, in Book IV of his famous Historia naturalis, has not much more to say of them. “There are also said to be other (islands) in which men are born with the feet of horses, called Hippopodes.’ 3
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- Illustration of Hippopodes, horse-footed man, and pointed-end pole from 1280 Hereford map – from Hippopodes (Horse-footed men). Reproduced in The British Ski Year Book, Uxbridge, England: Kind & Hutchings, Ltd., 15, 33, (1952), 65
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- Illustration of portion of upper left of Hereford map; includes a Scandinavian island, third from left of larger three islands, with Hippopodes figure above (image obtained by Google Search on Internet)
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- Illustration of 1280 Hereford map of Richard de Hollingham, first published by K. Miller, 1896 (image obtained by Google search on Internet)