Glima

We return again to our beloved Lavinavians, and this time again a little about their customs. In the last (if I don’t confuse anything) post, we talked a little about the differences between different Lavinavian tribes - from the words of an eyewitness, so to speak. Here we will consider one important tradition that has survived to this day.

This is a national type of wrestling called glyma (glima). The scribe describes it thus:

“... two husbands become close to each other, face to face. With the right hand, one husband grabs the second by the belt, with the left - by the pants on the hip. The other husband does the same. Then each tries to knock the other to the ground; whoever first touches the ground with any part of the body, except for the feet, will lose. Or whoever lets the other go first will lose too.”

Then he writes about some more minor rules, such as: punches and kicks are prohibited; it is forbidden to fall on the enemy or intentionally try to inflict any injury on him; put on jewelry that can injure the enemy ... In general, from this everything is immediately clear: glima is precisely that sport, a competition in strength and dexterity, and not a banal scuffle. And they treated him accordingly: the one who broke the rules could well be branded as níingr - an outcast, a person who has lost honor.

And this struggle eventually survived to our times and is now in use among all Lavinavian peoples. In Snelandia, glima is generally a national sport, in which competitions are held twice a year. The rules, of course, have changed a little compared to those times, but the meaning still remains the same.