Infopanel 29

The leisure activities of the Vikings

Thanks to archaeological finds of game pieces, it can be assumed that the Vikings must have been notorious board game players: dice, game pieces, and small figures were found in large numbers. However, chess, with its differentiated pieces, did not reach Scandinavia until after the Viking Age. The most famous Viking Age game was a strategy game called Hnefatafl, in which the king, initially placed in the center, is defended by a smaller group of his white pieces and must be captured by the larger black group. Numerous carvings show that the game of Nine Men's Morris was also extremely popular. The game boards were often made of beautifully decorated wood. The game pieces were made of stone, wood, bone, glass, and amber.

In addition to board games, reciting poems and satirical verses was a popular form of entertainment. Solving puzzles, some of which were quite complex, was also a popular intellectual challenge.

Physical activities

Later sagas describe rougher and more physical games as mere entertainment for trolls, but the ideas behind them certainly originated in the practical life of the Viking Age. These included, for example, pulling a hide across a fire, in which four players pulled on the four corners of a hide until one of the players stepped into the fire – a somewhat more drastic form of our tug-of-war. Wrestling matches could be held both indoors and outdoors. Outdoors – on frozen lakes, for example – ball games and races were held. Ice skating was also already practiced, for which sharpened horse bones were tied under the shoes.

In Iceland, horse fights also took place, in which the horse handler spurred his own horse with a stick. Due to the seriousness with which the fights were conducted, this sometimes ended in murder and manslaughter.