THE SCENE: For medieval Scandinavians, childhood snowball fights were treated as mock exercises in combat training.
THE TEXT: Every winter, while the snow lasts, the young fellows, urged on by their elders, assemble in bands at some elevated spot, all working alike to fetch huge masses of snow. With these, at least while they are on holiday, they busily erect defenses shaped like the walls of military camps; a building of this sort, which is fitted with windows, they sprinkle continually with water, so that the snow, being bound together by the water, may become more effectively hardened as the cold comes on. By their care and enthusiasm the forts are made so strong that they could stand up not only to light blows but to brazen balls and even, if necessary, to the shock of tortoise formations.
When such preparations have been made, these youngsters are divided into different squads, some of whom go inside the walls to defend them, while others remain outside for the attack. In these white forts there is no shortages of black or dark-grey banners, or there are green juniper bushes. Under these, desiring not money but only praise, they embark on their enjoyable combat; neither party employs any other weapons except snowballs, thrown by hand from each side at the other. There is a fixed penalty, of being plunged naked into icy water, to deter any of the throwers from enclosing a stone or a piece of iron, wood, or ice in one of these snowballs. There are moreover among the attackers those who burrow like rabbits through the lower foundations of the snow walls and make their way in, to force the defenders of the rampart from their positions.
Absconders, however, and any timid creatures who quit the field, have snow put down their backs between their skin and clothing when they have been caught and, after being chastened with insults and abuse, are set free, so that they may come back on a later occasion with more more courage and perseverance to defend the camp with greater zeal.
– A Description of the Northern Peoples, Olaus Magnus, 16th Century AD
