Commonplace Folklore: Day XXXI

Ernest Walker Marwick and John D. M. Robertson

“In Sanday, probably one of the earliest islands to be settled by the Norsemen, Dr Hugh Marwick found a game which, although I have no Norse parallel, seems so like the kind of thing which would have delighted Viking boys that I am inclined to accept it as survival. Each player removed the turf from a small area of ground leaving within the area a narrow strip of grass untouched. Then each, with a skilful twist of his hand, threw up his knife so that it fell point downward into the earth. The distance which the point penetrated the earth was measured, and that distance was cut away from the player’s strip of grass. The first player to have his strip completely cut away was the winner. Sanday boys played this game with their pocket knives, but it is easy to imagine bright-bladed viking knives turning somersaults in the Orkney air.”

An Orkney Anthology, The Selected Works of Ernest Walker Marwick, edited by John D. M. Robertson, Volume One, published in 1991.