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Ice cutting is a winter task of collecting surface ice from lakes and rivers for storage in ice houses and use or sale as a cooling method. Rare today, it was common (see ice trade) before the era of widespread mechanical refrigeration and air conditioning technology.
Ice harvesting generally involved waiting until approximately a foot of ice had built up on the water surface in the winter. The ice would then be cut with either a handsaw or a powered saw blade into long continuous strips and then cut into large individual blocks for transport by wagon back to the ice house.Jones, J. C. (1984) America's Icemen: An Illustrative History of the United States Natural Ice Industry 1665-1925. Jobeco Books, Humble, Texas. Because snow on top of the ice slows freezing, it could be scraped off and piled in . Alternatively, if the temperature is cold enough, a surface could be flooded to produce a thicker layer of ice.
A large operation would have a crew of 75 and cut 1500 tons daily.Tom Ward (1975). 9780771210129, City of Calgary Electric System, McClelland and Stewart West. . ISBN 9780771210129
Ice cutting was a considerable export industry for northern countries in Scandinavia and North America during the 19th century. It started in the United States around 1800, and spread to Scandinavia around 1820; by the mid century Norway had become a major exporter to England, Europe, the Mediterranean, and as far away as Kingdom of Kongo, Egypt and New York.Per G. Norseng, "The new Ice Age", Universitetsforlaget 2019. Coastal Telemark had 1,300 workers exporting 125,000 tons in 1895–96, while the Oslo Fjord was the main European export region with Nesodden municipality alone employing 1,000 men and exporting 95,000 tons in 1900, at a time when Norway's combined ice export at 500,000 tons stood as the world's largest. Den siste istid. NRK, March 2012. Visited on August 16, 2020.
Domestic production and sales were the largest single market source for ice in America and Europe. From the 1850s onwards ice cutting took on large-scale industrial proportions in Germany with Berlin as a key market.Ingo Heidbrink, " The Natural Ice Factory" , Norwegian Maritime Museum, retrieved August 16, 2020. In the 1880s, New York City had over 1500 ice delivery wagons and Americans consumed over 5 million tons of ice annually.
Many are made from the ice harvested this way. In some countries at high , and are made.
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