Oval balls

"Isn't it a little... well... a little oval?"

Norway shrugged. He had no idea, he had just done what they had told him to.

Norway, or Sverre Sønsteby as was his cover name, worked as a sailor and had been assigned the task of buying a football for the newly formed football and athletics team Viking. The year was 1899, and nobody in the club owned a football, so they might as well take advantage of their friendship with one of the sailors that frequently sailed the North Sea. He might as well act as a courier.

Norway, who had just been in the pitiful city of Hull in the footballs birthplace, England, and used the opportunity to visit the store Hall & Hamlyn, which was approximately five streets away from the harbor, to get a football.

When he got to the store, which mainly sold hospital equipments like towels, bandages, beds and enema, he slammed one shilling and six pence on the counter. In return, he got neither a sling nor a bed pan, but a brand new ball.

Back home in Stavanger sat the young founders were waiting anxiously for Viking's very first football. But when it came, it was as mentioned before, surprisingly oval. None of the young Stavanger-men had ever seen a football on anything other than photos or drawings, so they quickly let slide the balls rather odd bounce and the lack of its ability to actually roll normally. It was impossible to predict what direction the ball would go in, and if you hit it on the pointy ends, it was surprisingly painful. But you would just have to grit your teeth and go at it. The fact that it was a rugby ball they were playing with wasn't found until quite a while later.

In Scandinavia we've had a bit of a tradition of playing games with odd balls. The Vikings were of course early out with a club in one hand and a sword in the other to say hello to the natives. It is told in the chronicles that they had out of pure joy over winning a battle, had cut off the head of an English king of some sort and started playing football with it. Norwegian historians claim that these were Norwegian vikings, while the danes of course claim it was an early version of Danish dynamite that was behind the uncontroversial ball choice.

The football spread from England in the middle of the 19th century like a smoldering fire. It strolled over to The Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland before it arrived in Norway in 1885 with two men returning from England after studying. They thought the game was a mighty fine pastime, so they started the process of founding Norway's first football club, Christiania Football-club.

AN.

I know, I know. It's weird. But someone thought it would be funny. I'll include Norway in the drabbles (if I make more), so you don't have to worry… or maybe you should.