Kubb

The history of Kubb is shrouded in mystery and there are several theories about the origins of the game. Most of these agree that Kubb evolved in Scandinavia and is over 1000 years' old and came about as a way for the Vikings to wile away the long summers' evenings. It is occasionally suggested that it may have developed in Northern France, but seeing as the Normans were originally from Scandinavia, the source was probably the same.
It has been suggested that Kubb evolved into the version played today from an early form where the Vikings used to play with the skulls and thigh bones of their victims of rape and pillage. Then as Christianity swept across Northern Europe, it was no longer deemed politically correct to kill people for the purposes of a friendly team game and so the Vikings started using wooden blocks instead. The more probable and mildly less gruesome (but far less interesting!) theory is that Kubb started off as a game played using the off-cuts resulting from chopping firewood. This is supported by the fact that in Swedish, the word "kubb" means block of wood