[MR] Olympic sport is period!

[Tracie Brown]

>My favorite winter Olympic sport is period!
>So, how soon can we get an SCA curling league up and running?
> 
>Ingvild

   ... or down and sliding!  First you freeze a pond...

And what about trying some speed or figure skating on Viking 
era bone skates? (I know you have some, Ingvild.)
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/christmas/articles/21184170?
source=Evening   (you may have to refresh to read this 
article)
or here:
http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/daily_living/text/ice
_skates.htm   
Scroll down the same page for a depiction of the 16th century 
winter biathlon (skiing and archery)

In paragraph 22, William FitzStephen describes 12 century 
skating and a sort of ice jousting, which seems to have the 
same excitement (and injury rate) as ice hockey:
http://www.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/florilegium/introduction/
intro01.html
A pair of bone skates, possibly contemporary with FitzStephen:
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/frames.shtml?
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/MOLsite/piclib/pages/bigpictu
re.asp?id=232

St. Lidwina, Patron Saint of Skating. After a nasty fall at 
the age of 16, she began to have religious visions. She was 
popularly venerated as a saint for centuries before formal 
canonisation in 1890.
http://www.inghist.nl/Nieuws/Actueel/Onderzoek/Projecten/DVN/l
emmata/data/Lidwina%20van%20Schiedam

1565. Bruegel the Elder depicts skating, curling and perhaps 
some ice golf:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bruegel/bird-trap.jpg

Skating, primitive ice hockey (more like ice golf), and a 
*lot* more going on in this 1608 painting:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/avercamp/rijks-winter-
landscape/

Or maybe a little cross-country skiing? 
http://www.wildsnow.com/articles/olaus/magnus.htm

Have fun out there.

-- Signy