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Varpa is an old Swedish outdoor game developed in the Viking age, and currently played in Gotland, a large Swedish island in the Baltic Sea, where it is the most popular and important sport.

varpa player in Gotland

Varpa is similar to Boules, but they throw a flat and heavy thrower known as varpor or varpa, while in Boules they throw a metal ball. Varpa is a word which means throw. The varpor or varpa is made of stone or aluminum. Back in the days, stones were always used, but now aluminum is usually used. The varpa can weigh from a half to five kilos.

The rules of varpa are not that difficult, the object of the game is to throw the stone, or the varpa, as close to a pin as you can. The stick is 15 meters away for women and 20 meters away for men.

You can either compete in a team or individually. If you compete individually, you throw 36 times, and you win if you are the one with the closest to the pin overall.

Similar Sports

• Horseshoes — players toss horseshoes at stakes in the ground.
• Bocce — is part of the boules sport family, similar to bowls and pétanque.
• Pétanque — a type of boules in which the objective is to throw hollow metal balls towards a small wooden target ball
• Digor — a sport from Bhutan in which a pair of spherical flat stones are hurled at two targets fixed in the ground 20m apart.
• Quoits — a traditional target throwing game in which rings are thrown at a target spike, the aim is to get them as close as possible to the target.

Related Pages

• List of Boules-type sports
• Complete list of sports
• About Bowling Sports
• About Sport in Sweden
• The Encyclopedia of Sports — a list of every sport from around the world.

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