Ball Games

This exhibition explores Asia’s fundamental role in the development and refinement of games. It brings together some of Asia's most significant examples of boards, pieces, and other game playing paraphernalia from museums and private collections worldwide.

The Norse people delighted in games and sports. Both indoor board games and outdoor sporting competitions appear to have been regular leisure time activities. The saga literature and archaeological evidence support this view.

Medieval games, and especially children&# 39;s games, reconstruc ted from medieval manuscript s and descriptio ns.

Links to extant pieces of pre-17th century gaming equipment, as well as depictions of people playing games.

Some of the sports, games, music, verse, dancing, toys, and other pastimes of the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Despite the full agricultural year that most people faced, there was always time for folk to partake in games, challenges, tests of skill and general larking about.

In spite of a large body of literature on the Norse world during the Viking era the topic of Norse pastimes is poorly represented. This paper is an attempt to provide a survey of what is currently known about the topic. A listing of available articles, archaeological artifacts, references from some of the sagas, books, and web pages will all be given space here.