Welcome to Our Hermipedia Feature: Viking Games
Hermipedia is our part fiction, part fact presentation of everything you want or need to know about the characters, setting and things on Hermit Island, where our children’s book series, The Viking and the hermit takes place.
If you’d like to read all of our Hermipedia, just click on it at the bottom of this post, and it will give you the entire series to read and learn with your kids, and to just have fun…of course!
Now on to learning more about Viking Games!
Vikings would play a variety of games from swimming, running and racing, horse fighting, wrestling, skiing, curling, and a number of board games similar to chess.
Viking Games: Curling
The curling game was similar to shuffleboard with Scottish origins, where to play, you slide stones over a sheet of ice to reach a target area of four rings. Curling game has a nickname of “Chess on Ice”, and the vikings likely adopted these same style games with specific movements of game pieces to specific target game areas either on a board or on a sheet of ice, as a type of game of strategy they liked to play.
Viking Games: Board Games
The Viking Games on boards, usually had a King piece in the center of the board, that was trying to reach the outer edges of the board, and the larger number of pieces were trying to capture the King piece in the process.
This board game was called “Tafl”, and it spread everywhere the Vikings travelled, including Northern Europe, Ireland and England from earlier than 400 AD. It wasn’t until the 12th century that it was rivaled by the game of chess.
More Viking Games:
Since Vikings liked to battle, they valued athletic skills, and in particular needed great strength to handle a battle axe, sword and shield. They also needed to have endurance to run, and to swim well, since they spent much of their time on the water in Viking ships.
Viking’s Favorite Game in Our Story
Viking from our Viking and the hermit story, is an accomplished swimmer, and upon earning her place among the Viking men on Viking fishing trips, she then convinced her father to teach her to use a sword and shield.
Viking’s favorite game will always be swimming in the water, where she is most comfortable, very fast, and able to hold her breath under water for a very long time.
Being so comfortable in the water helps Viking to learn to spear fish with Hermit at Hermit Island Bay, where she must ride Sasha over the water and away from the uggies to catch her fish…
