Happy Easter - playing Kubb

Glad Påsk!!

Easter in Sweden is not really a big event.  Honestly, for most of Sweden, Easter is a four day weekend.  Friday and Monday are 'red letter' days, basically bank holidays... businesses are closed.  When we arrived back home from Copenhagen at 7:30pm on Saturday night we planned on ordering sushi from the restaurant across the street.  Closed.  Only grocery stores, larger restaurants and chain stores are open this weekend.  

Small displays of chocolate eggs or marzipan chicks, color feathers, small to large paper mache eggs appear in stores a few weeks before Easter and batches of twigs topped with color feathers start showing up at flower vendors.

the explanation for the feathers is that they represent the traditional, symbolic palm frond at Easter

I was happy to find a few bags of plastic Easter eggs... no big bins or rows of plastic eggs for Easter egg hunts! There were a few traditional egg hunts around town but they seem to be the exception rather than the norm.  Friends living in the suburbs had egg hunts with neighbors.  Small scale.

I have not heard any references to the Easter bunny at all, but curiously the large paper mache eggs filled with treats for the girls were covered with scenes of the Easter bunny doing his job.  Go figure!

Sweden has giant, paper mache Easter eggs filled with candy and surprises instead of baskets

The Easter tradition or belief in Sweden (a pretty non-religious country) is that witches fly to Blåkulla on Maundy Thursday to have dinner with the devil.  Why?  I have no idea.  Traditionally (and maybe this happened in the suburbs, because we didn't see it) children dressed up as witches and went begging for treats (yes, like Halloween) from their neighbors.  

happy girl!

Peeps from the U.S.!!

No big Easter brunch this year, but we did make some of our favorites:  curried deviled eggs, beignets, Bloody Marys, cheese grits and bacon. 

spicy (I add quite a bit of Tabasco), curried deviled eggs... a tradition since 1999!

beignets

Bloody Mary!

I cleaned up the balcony and put out the furniture

our little slice of true blue Swedish sky from the balcony, we could also hear a military band!

We were determined to spend a family afternoon outside on a gorgeous, 60 degree Easter Sunday.  It's always a challenge to get out the door before 4pm. Gordon packed up a smorgasbord lunch and we walked along the water to Djurgarden.  We were not the only ones with this idea because when the weather is nice in Stockholm the masses are out walking, biking, soaking up the sun. 

We didn't want to push it with a long walk so we found a spot, as free of goose poop as possible, on the lawn across the street from the Nordiska Museum.  The girls brought their jump ropes and we brought the Swedish lawn game Kubb (pronounced: koob), (a.k.a. Viking chess).

The object of the game is to knock over wooden blocks by throwing wooden batons at them.  It sounds crazy but we did get into it!  Here are the rules as we understand them (meaning we probably have something wrong!)

• the playing pitch is an 8x5 meter rectangle
• two sides face each other (8 meters)... although we shortened our distance after the first few attempts to knock over the kubbs because we couldn't knock over anything
• each side has a base line (5 meters wide)
• 5 wooden blocks are placed along each baseline, these are the base kubbs
• the wooden king is placed in the center of the pitch
• to start, each team throws one baton toward the king, whoever lands closest starts
• a team stands behind the its baseline and throws their six batons underhand (only holding the end of the baton, not the middle) at the base kubbs
• IF you are lucky enough to knock over any base kubbs with your batons the other team then has two chances to throw the knocked over base kubb onto the pitch between the king and your baseline... these are now field kubbs
• if, in two throws, the kubb doesn't land in the space between the king and your baseline, you get to place the kubb in the field, no closer than the length of a baton from another kubb
• the most important rule of the game:  the king is like an 8 ball in pool... if you knock it over before the end of the game, you lose
• confused yet?!  if it is your turn and there are field kubbs in front of your opponents base kubbs, you must knock over all the field kubbs first. 
• if you accidentally knock over your opponents base kubb while trying to knock over a field kubb that's okay, just set it back up
• IF you fail to knock over all of your opponents field kubbs on your turn your opponent can stand in line with the closest field kubb to your side of the pitch on their turn (unless they are trying to knock over the king)
•  let's review: throw batons, knock over blocks, field kubbs first, base kubbs second, don't knock over the king until the very end
• this is the point where we probably have missed something in the rules...  once you have successfully knocked over all of your opponents kubbs (field and base) you turn around and throw the baton between your legs to knock over the king.  We have not found this backward throwing direction anywhere but it's how the girls played it at school... and it's fun and funny.  
• rules can vary country to country

At first we were pathetically bad, but after shortening our pitch and many rounds we did get better.  Tip:  team up with Audra!  Maybe you'll see her one day at the Kubb World Championship held annually in Gotland, Sweden or at the U.S. Championship held annually in 'The Kubb Capital of North America' - Eau Claire, WI, USA.  There's a whole other world out there!

 

what form!

Audra is the ringer! 

knocking over the King Kubb!

ice cream on a perfect Easter day! 

All in all it was a really nice day.  As much as the girls are happy here and really like living in Sweden, holidays make them really miss Atlanta, family and friends.  No matter how many Easter eggs you hunt for and deviled eggs you eat, nothing can take the place of the people you know and love.  xoxoxo