Released 10/21/2009

The Green and Gold take on a Viking game

Nothing releases mid-morning energy like being able to whing a wooden block the length of a Subway sandwich clear across the gymnasium.

Thwack.

Awesome.

It’s even more satisfying when doing so with precision wins a game. This is what Class 5 students experienced when they played kubb, a traditional Swedish pastime that their physical education teachers taught them as part of International Week.

Teacher Jeanne Allegra explained kubb to her class. “This is a Viking game,” she began. “They played it a very long time ago, and they still play it today.”

Her fifth-graders sat in a circle on the gym floor, without a word, watching her set up the game pieces as she talked. She paused for a moment and looked up at them.

“There are six wooden rods that you’re going to throw,” she continued.

The gym’s silence suddenly caved to an enthusiastic “Wooooo!”

Yup. This was going to be popular.

The girls stood in pairs on either side of the kubb “pitch” (though in this case it was not made of the traditional lawn) and took turns tossing the dowels across the pitch at five squat wooden pegs, called kubbs, set up on their opponents’ side. The goal?To knock down as many kubbs as they could.

Technique was key. Each dowel needed to be thrown underhand, at exactly the right velocity and with the right aim to send an opposing kubb skittering toward the padded gym wall. Ms. Allegra reinforced that the girls needed to toss the dowels, not roll them. “Try not to bowl!” was her cry, which punctuated the room’s frequent thwacks.

Chapin girls learn a lot about other countries and cultures every day: what other nations’ value systems are like, how their people are educated, what languages they speak and what important natural resources they provide to the world.

But this International Week lesson proved that it’s also valuable to know what people in far-off lands do for fun. And whether that might be fun for us, too.

Indeed it is.

Thwack.