Viking Games

Vikings used to play a wide choice of games ranging form typical sports activities as running, swimming, wrestling or skiing, through ones resembling e.g. curling, up to intelectual and strategic board games. In this section we would like to present you two of the less renown but very characteristic Viking games. First of them is called "Hnefatafl", while the other remains known as "Kubb".

HNEFATAFL

HNEFATAFL and its numerous variants were played on odd-sized boards as small as 7 x 7 and as large as 19 x 19. Usually wooden, they sometimes had holes drilled in the center of each playing square, the pieces being pegged -this made for easy storage or even for traveling boards. Most boards had the starting positions of the pieces marked in two distinct patterns to facilitate setting up. In some cases, the board is drawn Go-style, the pieces standing at the intersections of the lines rather than at the centers of the squares. the recorded rules are all post-period, there are no significant differences between variants of widely separate geographic location.. Among the many names for games known from literature we have Tafl, Brannan-Tafl, Hala-Tafl, Hnefa-Tafl, Tann-Tafl Hnot-Tafl, Kvatru-Tafl and Skak-Tafl, although the rules for many of these remain unclear. In any case the rules may have differed from place to place.

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KUBB

KUBB is a team, open air game, in this game it doesn't matter what's your nationality age sex belief all that is important is to have much fun. The name of the game Kubb means "wooden block" in the Gotland dialect of Swedish the games aim is to knock over wooden blocks by throwing wooden sticks at them. There are typically twenty-one game pieces used in Kubb:

• Ten Kubbs, rectangular wooden blocks about 15 cm tall and 8 cm square on the end.
• One King, a larger wooden piece around 30 cm tall and 10 cm square on the end, sometimes adorned with a crown design on the top.
• Six Sticks, wooden batons around 30 cm long and anywhere from 3-5 cm in diameter.
• Four Stakes, or other markers, to designate the corners of the pitch.

If you want to learn more about Kubb tactic or join a worldwide kubb community visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubb or http://www.kubbin.com/kubb_rules.htm for more information.

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