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by SnowProblem 1048 days ago
It surprised me to see people changing into what looks like ice skates and another holding what looks like a hockey stick hitting a puck in the 1500s.

https://www.wikiart.org/en/pieter-bruegel-the-elder/ice-skat...

3 comments

It's strange how the rivers all used to freeze. If people had ice skates, it must have been quite frequent.

EDIT: Little ice age. See darkclouds's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37031308

One of the only reasons why we know people were playing golf on The Old Course at St. Andrews 600 years ago is because the king of England at the time thought his archers were spending too much time golfing versus practicing archery, and put out a decree to ban the sport among the soldiers. I don’t think anyone truly knows how old the sport is or when it first started being played at St Andrews.
It's fascinating that it shows a number of behaviours that are typical on a 21th century ice skate rink too. Including the show off doing a Besti squat[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besti_squat