Every week when we submit our assignments, we can also submit a note to our mentor. To make a long story short, my mentor, Steve, jokingly told me that I should but something in my notes about hockey. He's big on hockey (he's Canadian, enough said) and said he likes trivia.
At first I thought about trying to find some weird, bizarre hockey trivia to add to my notes. But I had a feeling anything weird or bizarre I could come up with might be weird and bizarre to me, but not to someone who really likes hockey.
So, instead, I decided to uncover the secret origin of hockey. I was completely certain that Steve wasn't familiar with it (since I was the only person in the entire world who knew about it). And here is the true story behind hockey:
Once upon a time, in a land far to the north, there were Vikings. As I'm sure you are aware, Vikings were rather fond of pillaging and plundering. One cold afternoon after a particularly successful episode of pillaging and plundering, two Viking ships, captained by the fearless Ketilbiorn and the slightly more fearful Hogni, turned toward home. Unfortunately, they hadn't gone far when a huge storm swept them off course. After fighting the icy wind and waves for what seemed like ages, the crews of both ships collapsed from exhaustion. When they revived, they discovered that both ships had managed to stay together, but were frozen solid in the ice. Ketilbiorn spotted land off in the distance and realized that they would be able to walk across the ice to land. Both crews were ready to head out across the ice, but no one seemed very interested in carrying any of the gold they had recently plundered. Ketilbiorn and Hogni weren't keen on leaving the gold behind. The captains demanded, threatened, begged, and pleaded, but the crew was far more excited about making it to land than about carrying the gold. Hogni then had a brilliant idea. He spilled the gold coins onto the ice, pried some oars out of the ice, and told everyone that the crew who could hit the most gold coins across the ice to land would be given the last cask of ale. Being the competitive sort of Vikings, as well as being quite fond of ale, this was met with hearty approval, and both crews got busy whacking gold coins across the ice with oars. Two enterprising Vikings, Leiknir and Gorm, decided to try to block gold coins hit by the other crew. Once the crews and the gold were safely ashore, the winner was declared and the cask of ale presented. As it is difficult to successfully drink ale straight from a cask, the winning crew appropriated a cup from a Viking called Stanley (admittedly not a very Viking-like name, his parents were trying to be unique). The Viking crews enjoyed the competition so much that they continued to play it while stranded on this far away land. They decided, for whatever reason, to call this strange new land "Canadia" and named the new game "Ho-Ke" after the two captains who invented it. Gorm and Leiknir's contribution to the game was also honored with the creation of the "Go-Lei," whose job it was to block shots from the opposing crew.
And that is the truth behind how hockey began.
(Credit must also go to my husband for suggesting that the Vikings were involved. :-D)
