No one is entirely sure about the origin of the game kubbs. There are many competing theories, but what everyone can agree on is that the game is incredibly old, more than 1,000 years old, and from Scandinavia.
Some popular theories are that the game originated from Vikings spending their evenings playing with the leftover bits of wood after chopping firewood. This theory is one of the most widely accepted because kubb means block of wood in Swedish. Another theory is that Gustav Viksrom III, the King of Sweden in 1613, invented the game as an alternative to fighting.
If tribes or clans had a problem, the leaders of each group would play instead of fighting. Today it is just a fun game played all over the world as a way to enjoy friends and the outdoors.
Here is how you play:
- First you need 1 king, 10 kubbs, 6 throwing sticks, 4 or 6 corner pins and
a hammer. - A king is the largest wooden piece, 30 cm tall. Often they have a crown on the top.
- Kubbs are smaller rectangular wooden blocks 15cm tall.
- The throwing sticks or batons are skinny cylindrical sticks about 30 cm long and relatively thick.
- The corner pins are also long skinny cylindrical sticks that have pointed ends.
- The corner stakes should be used to mark the corners and the center of the field. The field should be a rectangle 7 to 15 feet wide and 15 to 30 feet long.
- The king is placed upright at the center of the field.
- Five kubbs are placed upright on each team’s base line.
- Each team then tries to knock over all of the opposing team’s kubbs with the throwing sticks, and then the king.
- Teams can be as small as one player or as large as six players.
- Throwing sticks should be distributed evenly among the team members.
- Sticks must be tossed underhand.
- A kubb should be removed after it is knocked over.
- The sticks must be thrown from behind the base line.
- The king should be knocked over last.
- If you topple the king before all of the kubbs, the game is automatically lost.
