The sun is shining in most parts of Sweden and people are spending all their free time outside sunning themselves or working in their gardens. You will also see people playing “kubb”. The rules for kubb are these:

Each team has 5 blocks of wood (kubbs) which stand on a line (baseline) waiting for the other team to knock them down by throwing wooden sticks. The sticks have to be thrown so that the ends fly over each other and you have to throw underarm. Each turn each team gets to throw 6 sticks, when one of the blocks (kubbs) is knocked down the team whose blocks got knocked down throw the block on their opponents side of the field (but they have to wait until the other team have thrown all their sticks before throwing the knocked down ones. If more than one of the kubbs have been knocked down then you can throw one and then try to knock it down with thenext one so that they will be placed on top of each other making it even easier to hit. The team which has thrown the kubbs now have their turn to throw their 6 sticks. Before they can aim for their opponents blocks on their baseline they have to knock down the kubbs/blocks on the playing field (called field kubbs). Once the team has knocked these fieldkubbs down they are completely out of play and get removed from the field. If the team shouldn’t knock them down with their first 6 sticks the other team gets to move up to where the kubb is standing and throw from that line. In the center of the whole playing field a slightly bigger block of wood with a carved crown stands. You must not knock him down before all of the kubbs you are trying to knock down have been knocked down or you automatically lose. When the only kubb left for one team is the king they must knock it down from their baseline. When done so they win.

Kubb only really became popular during the 1990’s when the kubb sets started getting manufactured. On the island Gotland the World tournaments in Kubb are held every couple of years or so. This tradition started in 1995 and has been going on ever since.