Oar walking, underwater wrestling and horse fighting – historian examines the sports and games of the Vikings

Playing ball games is an activity played by children around the world. While today’s parents might worry that their sons and daughters might get scrapes and bruises, in the Viking world such a game could end with an axe being driven into an opponent’s head.

This detail comes from a new article, ‘What the Vikings did for fun? Sports and pastimes in medieval northern Europe’, which was published last month in the journal World Archaeology. In it Leszek Gardeła of the University of Aberdeen uses saga accounts and archaeological evidence to see what men, women and children from Scandinavia and Iceland amused themselves with during the Viking-era, and found that their were several popular pastimes.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

You've Read 'The Canterbury Tales.' Prepare to Play the Board Game

A dozen years ago, Alf Seegert was into playing solo video games, and his wife-to-be was feeling left out. "Can't we play something together?" she asked Mr. Seegert, who works today as an assistant professor/lecturer in the University of Utah's English department.

That conversation led Mr. Seegert to The Settlers of Catan, a board game that the couple has been playing as a Saturday-night ritual with friends ever since. He became so enamored of games of that genre, which are known as German-style or Eurogames, that 10 years ago he decided to try making some of his own. He joined the Board Game Designers Guild of Utah, a group of like-minded geeks who test drive one another's creations and offer advice and camaraderie.

Click here to read this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education