Knattleikr, the Saga Ball Game: Sources and Corrections

Knattleikr, "ball-play", is the ball game of the Icelandic sagas. It was played with a wooden bat and a hard ball, on frozen lakes and fjords or on open fields, from autumn into winter, and players were matched by strength. Whole districts came to watch, women sat on the slope, and in one saga a young woman hides the ball under her cloak so that the man who threw it has to come and fetch it. No bat or ball has ever been found, the rules are lost, and every text is Icelandic, written in the 1200s and 1300s. This page gives the source for every slide.

Every factual claim in our knattleikr carousel and in its caption, with its source. Section numbers 01 to 05 match the number at the top of each slide; 07 to 10 are the later slides' places in the carousel. The photograph on the fifth image, a page of the medieval Icelandic law-book, is real. The other pictures are modern illustrations, not finds.

How we cite the sagas. We read each passage in the Icelandic text: the normalized Old Norse on heimskringla.no where it has the saga, otherwise the modern-spelling text on snerpa.is. Chapter numbers are the modern ones, which both sites share, except in Víglundar saga, where heimskringla.no's chapter 13 is snerpa.is's 14. Unless a published translation is named, the English glosses on this page are ours. The sagas were written in Iceland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, about people who lived two to four hundred years earlier. They are not Viking Age records, and we do not treat them as reports of real matches.

Slide by slide

Cover. "She caught the ball and hid it under her cloak. He sat with her all day."

The scene is Hallfreðar saga, chapter 2, in the text of the manuscript Möðruvallabók as printed on snerpa.is. An autumn feast and a ball game were held at Grímstungur in Vatnsdalur, and Ingólfr came up from lower in the valley to play, with many men. Veður var gott og sátu konur úti og horfðu á leikinn, "the weather was good, and the women sat outside and watched the game". Valgerðr Óttarsdóttir sat up on the slope with other women, and the ball flew up there. Valgerður tók knöttinn og lét koma undir skikkju sína og bað þann sækja er kastað hafði: "Valgerðr took the ball, put it under her cloak, and told the one who had thrown it to come and fetch it." Ingólfr had thrown it. Hann bað þá leika en hann settist niður hjá Valgerði og talaði við hana allan þann dag, "he told them to play on, sat down beside Valgerðr and talked with her all that day".

The saga says she "took" the ball; "caught" is the slide's word for taking a ball that has just flown to you. Valgerðr is the sister of the poet Hallfreðr, and the saga calls her the fairest of women. Vatnsdæla saga, chapter 37, tells the meeting differently: at an autumn assembly Ingólfr's ball flies to Valgerðr, hún svipti að möttli sínum, "she twitched her cloak about her", and they talk for a while. The hidden ball is Hallfreðar saga's alone, which is the version the slide follows.

Sources: Hallfreðar saga ch. 2 (snerpa.is); Vatnsdæla saga ch. 37 (snerpa.is).

01. A bat, a hard ball, a man your strength

The bat is the knatttré, "ball-wood", in Egils saga ch. 40 and Gísla saga ch. 18, where one is broken in anger and mended on the spot. Two other words turn up: knattgildra in Grettis saga, which Cleasby and Vigfússon's 1874 dictionary explains as "a trap to catch the ball", and knattdrepa, "ball-smiter", in Víglundar saga. No text describes the bat's shape, length or wood. The ball is the knǫttr. It was hard enough to split a man's forehead and to bounce far across ice (Grettis saga ch. 15), but no saga says what it was made of.

The places: Lake Miðfjarðarvatn in Grettis saga ch. 15; the ice of Miðfjörður in Þórðar saga hreðu ch. 3, því að snemma lagði fjörðinn, "because the fjord froze early"; the ice of Þorskafjörður in Gull-Þóris saga ch. 2; ice within sight of Þorgrímr's grave-mound at Sæból, with snow on the ground, in Gísla saga ch. 18. Other games are on dry land: the plains at Hvítárvellir, á öndverðan vetr, "at the start of winter" (Egils saga ch. 40), and the fields at Leikskálavellir (slide 02). Hence "on frozen lakes and fjords or open fields". The season runs from the Winter Nights in October, "mostly in the autumns" as Grettis saga puts it, and in one saga until after Yule.

The pairing is Grettis saga's: Var þar skipat saman þeim sem jafnsterkastir váru, "those of most equal strength were set against each other". In Gísla saga ch. 15 Gísli asks for the sides to be shared out evenly. "One on one" is the usual arrangement, not a rule: in Gísla saga ch. 18 two men play as a pair against two.

What the players did: they struck the ball (sló knöttinn, Grettis saga ch. 15), caught it on the run and threw it (tók knöttinn á skeiði, Gísla saga ch. 15), and caught it and ran off with it while the others chased (Egils saga ch. 40). Players were thrown down and wrestled. No goal, score, point, line or referee appears in any passage we read. What the sagas record is who was stronger: at the end of the game in Gísla saga ch. 15, Þorkell says Nú má þat sjá, hverr sterkastr er, "now we can see who is strongest". B. A. Thurber's study of the game ("The Viking Ball Game", Scandinavian Studies, 2015) concludes, in its published summary, that the point "seems not to be getting the ball into a goal to earn points for the team, but to provide an opportunity for the players to gain social status". We have read that summary, not the full article.

Sources: Egils saga ch. 40; Gísla saga ch. 15 and 18; Grettis saga ch. 15 (all heimskringla.no); Þórðar saga hreðu ch. 3; Gull-Þóris saga ch. 2 (snerpa.is); R. Cleasby and G. Vigfússon, An Icelandic-English Dictionary (1874), s.v. knatt-leikr, knatt-gildra, knatt-drepa; B. A. Thurber, "The Viking Ball Game", Scandinavian Studies 87 (2015), pp. 167 to 188, abstract.

02. They built halls for it

Eyrbyggja saga ch. 43: Þat var siðr Breiðvíkinga um haustum, at þeir höfðu knattleika um vetrnáttaskeið undir Öxlinni suðr frá Knerri, "it was the custom of the Breiðavík people in autumn to hold ball games at the Winter Nights below the Öxl, south of Knörr". The place, the saga adds, has been called Leikskálavellir, "game-hall fields", ever since, ok sóttu menn þangat um alla sveitina, "and people came there from the whole district". Váru þar gervir leikskálar miklir. Vistuðust menn þangat ok sátu þar hálfan mánuð eða lengr: "great game-halls were built there. People moved in with their provisions and stayed half a month or longer."

Most of the younger men played. One man, Þórðr blígr, sat á stóli ok sá á leikinn, "sat on a stool and watched the game", kept out, the saga says, by his over-eagerness to win, and not, like the two brothers, by too much strength. And: Þeir bræðr, Björn ok Arnbjörn, þóttu eigi at leikum hæfir fyrir afls sakar, nema þeir lékist við sjálfir, "the brothers Björn and Arnbjörn were thought unfit for the games because of their strength, unless they played against each other". This is one district's custom, in one saga; it is not evidence that every game lasted two weeks.

Sources: Eyrbyggja saga ch. 43 (heimskringla.no).

03. "The game went on as before"

Grettis saga ch. 15. Young men from five districts held ball games on Lake Miðfjarðarvatn, in the Miðfjörður country of north Iceland, and those who came from farther off stayed there. Grettir fór til leika fyrir bœn Atla bróður síns, þá er hann var fjórtán vetra gamall: Grettir went to the games at his brother Atli's request, "when he was fourteen winters old". He was set to play against Auðunn, a few years older. Auðunn struck the ball over Grettir's head, and stökk hann langt eptir ísinum, "it bounced far along the ice". Grettir, angry, fetched it and put it straight into Auðunn's forehead, so that the skin split. Auðunn swung his knattgildra at him; Grettir ducked under the blow; they wrestled, and Auðunn won and knelt on him until others pulled them apart.

Grettir's line is a proverb: þræll einn þegar hefnist, en argr aldri, "only a slave takes revenge at once, and a coward never". It is also a promise to wait, and the saga keeps it: years later Grettir rides to Auðunn's farm to settle the matter. But at the lake nobody let it become a feud, ok hélzt leikrinn sem áðr, "and the game carried on as before". The English translation by William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon, free on sagadb.org, calls the chapter "Of the ball-play on Midfirth Water".

Sources: Grettis saga ch. 15, with ch. 28 (heimskringla.no); The Story of Grettir the Strong, tr. W. Morris and E. Magnússon (1869), ch. 15.

04. "As if there were no game"

The law is Grágás, the laws of the Icelandic Commonwealth, in the manuscript called Konungsbók, "the King's Book". We read the clause in Vilhjálmur Finsen's edition, Grágás: Elzta lögbók Íslendinga (Copenhagen, 1852), in the section on killings, Vígslóði, ch. 92, p. 167. In our normalized spelling: Hvar þess er maðr gengr til fangs at vilja sínum eða leiks, ok sé hann eigi lengr at en hann vill, þá skal hann sjálfr sik ábyrgjast, ef hinn vill honum eigi mein gera, nema hann fái örkumbl eða bana, ok meta þá sem engi leikr sé. "Wherever a man goes to wrestling or to a game of his own will, and stays in it no longer than he wishes, he answers for himself, if the other does not mean him harm; unless he suffers a maiming injury or death, and then it is to be judged as if there were no game."

The slide shortens the clause in one place: it leaves out the condition that the man stays in no longer than he wishes. Its "a game or a wrestling match" is the clause's own range: the law covers every game and every wrestling bout, not knattleikr alone. The last part is the point: a killing or a maiming at play was not excused because it happened in a game. The sagas show why the law needed saying. In the late Harðar saga ch. 23, an outlaw feud is fought out as a game, and before evening "six of the Strand men lay dead". Egils saga says the six-year-old Egill lost at ball, and what he did next began a feud. Most of the games in the sagas end with no one dead.

The photograph is a real page of Konungsbók, but not the page that holds this clause. It is the Wikimedia Commons file "Gragas GKS 1157 fol, s. 84, sp. B.jpg": the manuscript GKS 1157 fol, page 84, column B, in the public domain. We show it so you can see what the law-book looks like; the clause itself is in Finsen's printed text above.

Sources: Grágás, Konungsbók, ed. V. Finsen (1852), Vígslóði ch. 92, p. 167, read in the archive.org scan (our normalization and gloss); Harðar saga ch. 23 (snerpa.is); Egils saga ch. 40. Photo: GKS 1157 fol, p. 84, col. B, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

05. "The burden's ledge"

Gísla saga ch. 15. The game is on the pond called Seftjörn, below the farm of Sæból, near the grave-mound of Vésteinn, Gísli's brother-in-law, who has been killed at night. Gísli throws Þorgrímr so hard that the skin comes off his knuckles. Þorgrímr gets up slowly, looks at Vésteinn's mound and speaks half a verse: Geirr í gumna sárum gnast. Kannkat þat lasta, "a spear rattled in men's wounds. I can't complain of that." It reads as a boast about the killing, and Gísli takes it as one. Gísli tók knöttinn á skeiði ok rekr á milli herða Þorgrími, svá at hann steypðist áfram: "Gísli caught the ball on the run and drove it between Þorgrímr's shoulders, so that he pitched forward", and answered: Böllr á byrðar stalli brast. Kannkat þat lasta, "a ball cracked on the burden's ledge. I can't complain of that."

Gísli's reply keeps Þorgrímr's second line word for word and swaps the first, which is why the slide calls it a parody. Byrðar stallr, "the ledge of the burden", is a kenning for the back, where a load is carried. "A killer" is the slide's shorthand: the saga does not name Vésteinn's killer at the killing, but it makes clear that Gísli believes it was Þorgrímr, and he later kills him for it.

Sources: Gísla saga ch. 15, verses 7 and 8 (heimskringla.no).

07. Hurling, shinty, hockey or cricket?

We give no answer, because there is none. People have compared knattleikr to all four, and to more. Cleasby and Vigfússon's dictionary called it "a kind of cricket or trap-ball". The re-enactors at Hurstwic write that "some authors have compared the game to various modern games, including hockey, rugby, lacrosse, and cricket", and that "a bat similar to a modern cricket bat or a hurley stick has been suggested". The English Wikipedia article says the game was "probably similar to early versions of the Irish sport of hurling" and its "See also" list names shinty for its "similar stick and ball play". Thurber compares it with lacrosse. No source shows that any modern game descends from knattleikr, and we do not claim it. "You can catch it, and you can knock a man down" is under 01.

Sources: Cleasby and Vigfússon, s.v. knatt-leikr; Hurstwic, "Knattleikr: The Viking Ball Game"; Wikipedia, "Knattleikr", read September 2026; Thurber 2015, abstract.

08. A real name, with its story

Valgerðr is the woman who hid the ball, in Hallfreðar saga ch. 2 (see the cover). It is a real Old Norse name, borne by several women in the sagas and in the book of settlements. Our Viking name generator lists it, citing Landnámabók. Its list holds more than four hundred given names and about a hundred bynames, each with the medieval source it is attested in; that is the slide's "hundreds, each with its source".

09. Glad and cheerful

The line is Hávamál, stanza 15: glaðr ok reifr skyli gumna hverr, unz sinn bíðr bana, "glad and cheerful should every man be, until he meets his death" (the slide has "until his death arrives"). Hávamál is a poem of advice put in Odin's mouth, preserved in an Icelandic manuscript of the thirteenth century; the slide's link to the ball game is ours, through Grettir's "the game went on as before".

The blade is our 12-inch forge-finished seax: a 305 mm blade of 1075 high-carbon steel, a rosewood handle with plain metal fittings, 17 inches (432 mm) overall, in a stitched cowhide sheath. GLADR OK REIFR on the slide is the Old Norse words in capitals, with the letter ð written as D. Engraving is optional: you choose the words, and we laser-engrave them to order, letter for letter.

Sources: Hávamál st. 15 (heimskringla.no).

10. A ring at the ball game

Víglundar saga ch. 13 (snerpa.is ch. 14). Games are held on Esjutjörn, and Víglundr and his brother go á brekkuna, sem konurnar sátu, "up the slope where the women sat". Ketilríðr sits between them, gives Víglundr a new name, "Víglundr the Fair", and a ring er faðir minn gaf mér í tannfé, "which my father gave me as a tooth-gift", the gift a child received on cutting its first tooth. Víglundr gaf henni á mót hringinn Haraldsnaut: "Víglundr gave her in return the ring Haraldsnaut." Víglundar saga is a late saga, a fourteenth-century romance, which is why the slide says "a late saga says".

The piece is our 925 sterling silver ring: a band of about 7 g, made to order in your size, with a Norse animal worked round it. It is a modern piece and copies no particular find.

Sources: Víglundar saga ch. 13 (heimskringla.no).

Caption. The penalty box, and what we don't have

"What we don't have: a bat, a ball or a rulebook." We found no museum or excavation record of any object identified as a knattleikr bat or ball. Hurstwic says the same: "No examples of the playing equipment are known to survive." Every modern rule-set is a reconstruction, and Hurstwic calls its own "pure conjecture". The board game hnefatafl is in a similar position: pieces survive, but no Viking rules do.

"Every account of a game comes from an Icelandic saga written in the 1200s or 1300s." The one other kind of source, the law-book under 04, is Icelandic and of the same period, and it describes no game. The only knattleikr in a saga written by a contemporary of the events is a dream: in Íslendinga saga, before the battle of Bær in 1237, a dream is told of a game in which karlar einir, "only men", took part (Sturlunga saga, ed. Guðbrandur Vigfússon, 1878, vol. I, p. 352).

"The 'penalty box' and 'captains' you see online come from a modern broomball club's website." The Gameplay section of the English Wikipedia article cites a page called "Ancient History" by an Australian broomball club, copyright 2001 to 2004. The site is gone, but the 2006 Wayback Machine copy opens with "Apparently there was Broomball already 1000 years ago in Iceland!" and lists "There was a captain on each team", "There were penalties and a penalty box", "The playing field was lined", tar and sand on the soles of the boots, and "annual tournaments that lasted 14 days". The captains, the penalties, the lined field and the tar and sand are in no saga passage we read. The fourteen days are Eyrbyggja saga's "half a month or longer", one district's autumn custom, turned into tournaments. The nearest thing to a captain is in Gull-Þóris saga ch. 2, where one group of young players makes Þórir their fyrirmaðr, their leader, for his generosity.

"Slide 5 shows a page of the law-book, not this clause." See 04. The rest of the caption is covered under the cover and 01 to 04.

What we do not claim

• That the sagas are Viking Age sources. They were written in Iceland in the 1200s and 1300s, two to four centuries after the people in them.
• That knattleikr was played all over Scandinavia. Every text is Icelandic. A few legendary sagas, Icelandic fantasies of the same centuries, set games at royal courts abroad.
• That any bat or ball has been found, or that we know what the ball was made of.
• That the rules are known. No goals, points, captains, lined field or penalty box appear in the texts.
• That players were always paired one on one. It was the usual way; Gísla saga ch. 18 has two against two.
• That women played. They watched from the slope, and one took the ball.
• That the hidden ball is in both sagas. It is Hallfreðar saga's; Vatnsdæla saga tells the meeting differently.
• That players died in every game, or that the game trained warriors. Most games in the sagas end with no one dead, and no text gives the game a military purpose.
• That the Grágás clause is a knattleikr law. It covers every game and wrestling bout.
• That the photograph on the fifth image shows the clause. It is another page of the same manuscript.
• That knattleikr is the ancestor of hurling, shinty, hockey or cricket, or that the Vikings gave the Irish hurling. People have compared it to them; that is all.
• That the link from Hávamál to the ball game is medieval. It is ours.
• That the blade, the ring or any picture other than the Grágás photograph copies a Viking find. The engraving is done by laser.

Corrections

None yet. If you find an error, tell us, with a citation.

Frequently asked questions

What was knattleikr?

Knattleikr was the ball game of the Icelandic sagas, played with a wooden bat and a hard ball on frozen lakes and fjords or open fields, from autumn into winter. Players were matched by strength, and whole districts came to watch. No bat or ball has ever been found, and every source is Icelandic, written in the 1200s and 1300s.

Did knattleikr have goals, captains or a penalty box?

Not in any saga. No goal, score, captain, lined field or penalty box appears in the texts. The captains and the penalty box come from a 2001 to 2004 web page by an Australian broomball club, which the English Wikipedia still cited in September 2026. The sagas record who was strongest, not who scored.

Is knattleikr the ancestor of hurling or hockey?

No source says so. People have compared it to hurling, shinty, hockey, cricket and lacrosse, and an 1874 dictionary called it "a kind of cricket". Those are comparisons, not a family tree. The rules of knattleikr are lost, so nobody can show that any modern game grew out of it.

Did women play knattleikr?

No passage has a woman playing. Women watched from the slope, and in Hallfreðar saga one of them, Valgerðr, took the stray ball and hid it under her cloak, so the young man who threw it had to come and fetch it. A thirteenth-century account of a dream says "only men" were at the game.