Atlantic Sports are those traditional European Sports with close links to the Gaelic Games; such as Basque Pelota (a form of Handball popular in the Basque Country), Calcio Fiorentino (a Renaissance game of Football in Florence, Tuscany), Georgian Lelo Burti (a traditional Football game in Georgia which has similarities to rugby); Medieval and Ancient British Football, Jeux et Tradi Normandie (the Traditional Sports and Games brought to Normandy by the Vikings), and Scandinavian Baseball (Finnish Pesapallo, Brannbol – traditional Rounders-like games of Scandinavia and Germany).

Basque Pelota

Pelota is the Traditional Game of the Basque People of Sourthwest France and North Central Iberia (Spain). Their language is the oldest in Europe, and the only non-Indo-European language left in Western Europe according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and therefore with some justification the Basques refere to themselves as the only Native Europeans. The sport is similar to the GAA and European game of Handball, played with a curved glove which is used to propel the ball off one of two perpendicluar walls on a four-sided court, with the other two sides open (Jai Alai). Another version is played in pairs (Parejas) or singles (Manomanista) with the hand (Mano)

Medieval British Football

According to later legend Celtic Britons played the Romans at a game of Football in Derbyshire on Shrove Tuesday AD 217 after a battle. These games of Football had no formal rules, or numbers per side and are also known as Medieval or Mob Football with the objective usually to get the ball back to a base at either your own teams end or the opposing teams. Variations on the theme include Uppies & Downies (those living up the hill versus those living down the hill) and Town versus Country. These sports are also known in Continental Europe. In Britain these days they are mainly played in the Celtic fringes of England and Scotland: Cornish Hurling in Cornwall, Manx Cammag in the Isle of Man, Orkney Ba Game in the Orkney Islands, Shaking the Hales in Northumberland, Uppies & Downies in Cumbria, and the Shrovetide Game in Derbyshire. Other games include Eton Fives, a version of Handball first played in the Middle Ages by Peasants against the Church Walls at Eton College, with a handrail providing an obstacle down one side.

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Calcio Fiorentino

This is the Eirball – GAA World / Irish North American and World Sports Archive landing page for Calcio Storico Fiorentino, one of the earliest forms of organised football in the world, and which bears a striking resemblance in play to Gaelic Football, as well as a shared Atlantic heritage in a pre-Roman/pre-English, pre-Catholic Rennaisance or Revival. To view results of Calcio Fiorentino just click on the links in red/blue (purple) below the introduction.

This is the GAA World (Eirball) Landing page for the All-Time Results of Calcio Fiorentino.

Header Picture Credit: [1] MONACO – CIRCA 1963: A stamp printed by MONACO shows an illustration of the Calcio Fiorentino field and starting positions from a 1688 book by Pietro di Lorenzo Bini, Florence, circa 1963 By Sergey Goryachev / www.shutterstock.com

Introduction

Calcio Storico Fiorentino is a Renaissance Football game first played in Florence (Fiorentina), Tuscany in the 1400s by workers on breaks from work in the city. It was the first organised football in the world, rather than the Medieval mob football which preceeded it and where there were no rules or restrictions on numbers playing. It could be seen as part of the wider Renaissance whereby Tuscany’s ancient pre-Roman, pre-Catholic past was brought back.

[References: [4] Calcio Storico Fiorentino Sito Ufficiale (2020) CALCIO STORICO FIORENTINO [Internet] Available from: http://calciostoricofiorentino.it/?q=calcio-storico-fiorentino [Accessed 4 August 2020] and [5] Calcio Storico Fiorentino Sito Ufficiale (2020) Studies & Documentation [Internet] Available from: http://www.calciostoricofiorentino.it/?q=studi_e_documentazione [Accessed 4 August 2020]

*The Tuscan language (Etruscan) is one which predates the Latin arrival in the Italian peninsula, and even though the letters and sounds are known there is no knowledge of the word meanings as no document translating Etruscan to Latin or Greek has ever been found. It does, however, sound similar to Basque, and therefore could be incuded in the Celtic sports section as part of the “Atlantic” or “Black Atlantic” family along with the Celtic languages, Basque and Berber (Tamashek) – half the words in the Gaelic language are of an Indo-European origin (Greek, Latin, Germanic, Slavic etc)and half of a North African Afro-Asiatic origin (Berber, Tuareg, Maltese, Hebrew, Arab etc).

[References: see Encyclopedia Brittanica sections on Indo-European, Celtic, and Afro-Asiatic languages: Encyclopedia Britannica | Britannica ]

Georgian Lelo Burti

Lelo, also known as Lelo Burti, is the traditional ball game of Georgia, a small republic in the Caucusus Mountains between Europe and Asia near Turkey and Russia that is newly independent. Lelo is possibly why Rugby Union is so popular in Georgia, and is their Native Sport, currently undergoing a revival. [Reference: 2-3] The Georgian language shows some similarities with the Basque language and therefore could be included in the “Atlantic” or “Black Atlantic” family of languages [Reference: 4].

References

[2] Lelo Burti (2014)Index [Internet] Available from: https://web.archive.org/web/20160914183050/http://lelo.comyr.com/index.htm [Accessed 24 August 2020]

[3] Google Translate (2020) [Internet] Available from: https://www.google.com/search?q=google+translate&rlz=1C1CHBF_enIE835IE835&oq=google+translate&aqs=chrome.0.69i59l2j0l5j69i64.5275j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 [Accessed 24 August 2020]

[4] Encyclopaedia Brittanica (2022) Georgian (language) [Internet] Available from: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Georgian-language [Accessed 28 January 2022]

Jeux et Tradi Normandie

The Fédération de Jeux et Sports Traditionnels Normande et Vikings runs competitons in the Traditional Sports of Normandy (North France) and the Vikings who settled there [References: 3].

From Wikipedia: “La soule, later choule or sioule, is a traditional team sport that originated in Normandy and Picardy. The ball, called a soule, could be solid or hollow and made of either wood or leather. Leather balls would be filled with hay, bran, horse hair or moss.” [References: 4]

It therefore would have close links with both the Traditional Celtic Games and the Atlantic or “Black Atlantic” Games.

References

[3] Fédération de Jeux et Sports Traditionnels Normande et Vikings (2020) DESCRIPTIF DES JEUX [Internet] Available from: http://jeuxtradinormandie.fr/ [Accessed 23 October 2020]

[4] Wikipedia (2020) La Soule [Internet] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_soule [Accessed 23 October 2020]

Scandinavian Baseball

Scandinavian Baseball (Pesapallo, Brannbol) are Baseball games that are closer to Rounders than the Modern American Sport, and although Pesapallo (Finland’s National Sport) has been modernised a great deal, the other Scandinavian versions of the sport (e.g. Brannbol) are very much still traditional sports like Rounders and would undoubtedly have the same roots.

Pesapallo

Pesapallo is the Finnish version of Baseball and is their National Sport. It has an unusual form of pitching and players run zig-zags through bases. There is a game played on their National Holiday every year at the Finnish Embassy in Ireland.

Here is a Video of the sport from the New York Times, as shared by the Irish-Finnish Society on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/IrishFinnishSociety/posts/1326676680678956 [Accessed 27 June 2019]