What We Do With Our Spare Time Isn’t Nearly as Strange as What our Ancestors Did
By: Nicol Valentin
Tags: Sports, History, Weird, Animals, Culture

What We Do With Our Spare Time Isn’t Nearly as Strange as What our Ancestors Did

It’s amazing how time can change our perception of fun

What do you do to have fun? Go to a ball game? Meet your friends for a drink? Go for a hike? Even in the past, people liked to amuse themselves.

The way our forefathers went about it, however, was often very different from how we entertain ourselves now. In fact, some of them were downright creepy.

Just check out this list of odd historical pastimes and see if there’s any you’d like to add to your bucket list. My guess is you probably won't.

Extreme Swimming

Given what we know of the Vikings’ warlike nature, it’s not surprising that everything and anything was turned into a competition.

So when Vikings went for a swim, they didn’t just race to the nearest longship and back. Instead, these guys got their kicks trying to see how long they could hold their friends underwater.

In The Laxdaela Saga, a fellow named Kjartan just randomly decides to drag a guy he’d never even met before underwater and hold him there. There’s no formal introduction, not even a hey do you mind if I try to kill you?

Instead, the two drag each other under the water three times. Each time being progressively longer. Finally, they wade onto the bank. That’s when Kjartan finds out his opponent was King Olaf himself. (Although truth be told, he didn’t seem very impressed.)

Vikings were so extreme it wasn’t unusual for them to try this stunt with their armor on. Don’t think it’s possible? Well, these guys actually managed to do it.

Sure, the Vikings were pretty extreme, but the Egyptians might have them beat with their water jousts. Two boats met in the Nile river with the goal of knocking each other's occupants into the water.

Not so bad, until you realize the water was filled with crocodiles and hippos. Even if you could swim, your odds of survival weren’t real high since you probably ended up being the main course at the Crocodile Cafe.

Those who didn’t get knocked into the water still risked death. Hippos happen to have a bad reputation for capsizing boats and killing the occupants.

Knucklebones were used like modern dice ( Wikipedia)

Knucklebones

A little more on the milder side were games played with knucklebones.

The playing pieces, made from the pastern bone of a sheep, goat, or calf, had a similarity to modern dice. Ancient Greeks referred to them as “astragaloi.” and according to Sophocles, they were taught the game by one of the gods.

No offense to the gods, of course, but it is possible the game was actually invented in Egypt. Either way, variations were played all over the world.

Knucklebones were popular across a spectrum of ages, from children to adults. Children played the more innocent jack like version while the men used the pieces like dice.

Using four bones, they would throw the pieces thirty-five times. Like modern dice, each side had a unique value but unlike today's games, it wasn’t the side facing up that counted but the one facing down.

Women used knucklebones too, but in their own unique way. For young unwed women, tossing the bones was like tossing your fate into the hands of Aphrodite.

In fact, the best throw, with all the bones showing different sides, was referred to as an Aphrodite throw. Not surprisingly, a girl waiting to be married was sometimes referred to as “loving knucklebones” (philastragale).

The game was obviously taken seriously since pieces have been found in large quantities in certain tombs, sanctuaries, and homes. Interestingly, the largest find has been near Delphi, the site known for its ancient Greek oracle.

Stool Ball

Stool ball was another pastime that could end in marriage. When maids in the 11th century weren’t busy milking cows, they would use their stools for a little game with the boys.

Using a soft ball about the size of an apple, one fellow would try to hit the legs while the girl attempted to block it with her hands or a paddle. If she was successful, she ran to another stool and back before the guys recovered the ball. A kiss or a cake was awarded to the winner.

The game was popular during Easter celebrations, probably because it was spring and love was in the air. In fact, the game's reputation as a girl getter stayed with it for some time.

William Shakespeare used the phrase “playing stool ball” as a euphemism for sexual behavior in his play The Two Noble Kinsmen.

Animal Baiting

Hopefully, no one in the modern era would find this a fun sport, but back in the day, it provided amusement for none other than Queen Elizabeth I herself.

In 1559, the queen treated the French ambassador to a baiting of bulls and bears at her Whitehall palace. Yet it wasn’t just a pastime for the aristocracy, average Joes could watch fights in nearly every Elizabethan town.

Our famous playwright, Shakespeare, had a place called the “Bear Gardens” right across from his Globe Theatre. People flooded in to watch bears fight chimps, dogs, and bulls to the death. The games could go on for four or five hours and the betting was heavy.

Bears were led into a pit where there were chained to a stake by the leg or neck. A pack of dogs, usually either bulldogs or mastiffs, were then released.

Happy spectators watched as the bear clawed, bit, and killed as many dogs as he could. They usually stopped the games before the bear itself was killed, since replacement costs were pretty high.

Because of this, bears fought in multiple games and often took on an almost celebrity-like status. One bear, given the name “Sackerson” even made an appearance in yet another of Shakespeare's plays, “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”

Fox Tossing

Animal Baiting was a spectator sport, but in the 17th-century fox tossing was the rage, and it was a hands-on activity.

Teams of two would hold each end of a sling that was flat on the ground. The foxes were then let loose onto the field. When a fox crossed the sling, the pair would pull as hard as they could, catapulting the fox into the air. Whoever tossed their fox highest was the winner.

If foxes weren’t available, fun could still be had with whatever animal could be found; hedgehogs, badgers, wild boars, cats, or even wolves. Of course, the danger here is obvious. Oddly enough, most animals don’t like being unwillingly tossed into the air and tend to retaliate.

The greater danger, however, was to the animals. With heights of 7.5 meters being recorded, the outcome wasn’t pretty.

To give you an idea of how many animals were victimized in this way one German noble tossed and killed 647 foxes, 533 hares, 34 badgers, and 21 wildcats at just one of his parties.

Anthropomorphic Taxidermy

Yet another pastime involving animals. Luckily, this time we don’t need to worry about them being harmed because, well, they’re already dead.

Anthropomorphic taxidermy was the clothing and positioning of dead animals in human-like settings. Imagine dead kittens in sweet little dresses having a tea party, or dead hedgehogs enjoying an afternoon of ice skating.

You can thank the Victorians for this little gem. It all stemmed from a love of fantasy and history mixed with a slightly morbid preoccupation with death.

The 19th century saw drastic improvements in science and technology. All that great new stuff was showcased at the first world’s fair in London’s Hyde Park in 1851. One of the 14,000 exhibits was the anthropomorphic taxidermy tableaux of a German named Hermann Ploucquet.

Not only was Queen Victoria impressed, but the whole fair was as well. Even names such as Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Lewis Carroll, and Charlotte Bronte thought it was cool. Ploucquet’s dioramas, although not without their critics, became an overwhelming success.

His work influenced a guy named Walter Potter who became the most widely known anthropomorphic taxidermist. Potter had a collection of 10,000 pieces in his museum at the time of his death. There are some great examples of his work here.

Mummy Unrolling

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that Victorians only found dead animals exciting, because they didn’t.

They also found excitement in dead people. Mummies specifically. The 19th century had a case of Egyptomania. They fell in love with all things Egyptian, including mummies.

Europeans seem to have had a thing for them since around the 1600s. It was so rampant in the early 1800s it was said to be hardly respectable to come home from Egypt “without a mummy in one hand and a crocodile in the other.”

A nice evening out then might include a lecture from some “expert” followed by a nice dissection. Mummies were often bought at auctions and may not be as ancient as some people would have liked to believe.

Eventually, mummy unrolling lost the blessing of the scientific community as the idea of preserving ancient cultures rose in popularity.

Sources:

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