Ever heard of handball? Here in Denmark it's a pretty big thing. Handball might have the same importance to Danes as soccer to Germans.
Handball in Denmark
Germany, July 2010, 30°C soccer world cup, England vs Germany
In the past years, Germans have discovered that even when you hardly can see what is going on on the screen, public viewing is more fun than watching the game in your living room. Why? Watching the game in public includes screaming and singing creative choruses such as "Deutschlaaaaand, Deutschlaaaaand" , while watching the game at home could look like this: You sitting on your sofa and hear your neigbour scream "TOOOOOOR" (goooooal!) before you can see the goal happening on your tv screen. mhmm.
Back to Denmark. Today was the final game of the handball world cup. And guess who was playing? DENMARK! Being interested in culture, Respaced Girl didn't wanna miss it and watched it with her friends from Denmark.
It was the best handball game I have ever seen. (ok,.. honestly it was the first I've ever seen). Every minute of it was exciting. You never knew who is going to win - the French and Danish players ran from one side of the field to the other. France/Denmark/France/Denmark. Tire. Overtime. Team Denmark lost.
Both of the girls had played handball for a few years and knew about the rules and the players. "This guy is super untidy and always leaves his hotel rooms in disorder". "This guy is 19 years old!". And also
It was the vikings who invented handball. They used to play handball with the cut off heads of their enemies.
The vikings were the ancestors of the Danish people. I was fascinated. After the game, Respaced Girl, a blogger who aims to be as credible as possible, started to do more research about the history of handball.
Unfortunately I didn't find any information about this online. Most of the ressources I found said that the sports was born on 29th October 1917. In BERLIN.
Not giving up on the Danes I continued my research and found out that in 1898, the Dane Holger Nielsen had already developped an early set of rules for the game. Thanks to Holger Nielsen handball players are not allowed to do more than 3 steps with holding the ball in their hands.
What I learned today...
The story about the vikings playing with the heads of their enemies turned out to be a myth (retold by Anne's handball teacher). Maybe sports is more interesting than I thought..
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