Splitkein were a Norwegian company well known for producing some of the first laminated wooden skis back in the 1930s, we have some excellent examples elsewhere in the collection. Plastic, glass fibre and other composite materials took over from wood in the 1960s as the main components of ski manufacture, wooden skis were history. Doesn’t look like Splitkein transited well into the modern era as they sold out to the Austrian company Fischer in 1980.

This leaves us in a wee quandary as we are not sure if the Splitkeins we have here are the final attempts of the company to produce composite skis, or maybe Fischer made them keeping the well respected Splitkein brand name. We reckon they date from around 1980 whatever.

By contrast, Salomon was a French company founded back in 1947 – though now sold several times to various conglomerates and currently (2025) owned by Amer Sports based in Helsinki. Also dating from around 1980 the Salomon boots and bindings were commonly fitted to a range of different skis, the recently invented Salomon toe binding becoming popular for cross country skiing.

Our good friend, Andy MacDonald, kindly donated the boots & skis along with the Liljedahl ski poles and a Pindisport ski bag to put them in, cheers Andy.