There is a piece of wood on the floor. Someone hits it with a stick and the pointy, oval shaped wood takes off. With a fast swing you hit the piece of wood and it flies through the air, like a baseball. This is how it must have been when some shepherds in Slovenia got bored centuries ago. Waiting for the harvest, they made up a game. But did the shepherds invented it by them selves or did someone pick it up from somewhere? In any case, the Slovenians are enthusiastic about their game and are demonstrating it at the European Sports for All Games.
“It is not entirely clear where and when the game exactly started,” say Martin and Rok, two young men from Slovenia. “There are stories about the ancient Greeks and about a game in India. That game is called Gilli Danda and is so old that it probably comes closest to the original. There are many variants of what we call pandolo in Slovenia.”
Intangible Cultural Heritage
In the early 90s serious work has been done to make pandolo popular in Slovenia. Back in 1993, a tournament was organized by the fathers of Martin and Rok, among others, in Koper, a coastal town on the Gulf of Trieste. Since then, the game has developed into a sport, with the now established pandolo association having managed to have the sport recognized as an intangible cultural heritage.
Oval-shaped
The name of the game comes from the playing object – an oval-shaped piece of wood with a sharp point at each end – that lies on the floor. That’s the pandolo. The pandolo must be beaten as far as possible with a wooden club (the maca). The defending team, which consists of three people, has to catch the wooden ‘ball’ so that it stays in the air for as short a time as possible. It’s about the distance the object travels. The team that knocks the pandolo the furthest wins the match.
The pandolo competition in Slovenia consists of a series of tournaments, which are mainly played in the coastal towns. The Croatian community also participates in those tournaments. “And we organized an international tournament not that long ago. Italy was there. Spain, Romania. The game is played in other variants in those countries, but they all participated in our pandolo.”
Tiepelen
Perhaps Friesland can also sign in for a next tournament. After all, the game tiepelen was once played in the Northern Netherlands, which bears great resemblance to pandolo. In any case, the infrastructure is tailor-made for the game. “The pandolo has to be on an even, hard piece of ground to hit it up. I noticed that the majority of the country of the Netherlands is flat. So that’s perfect!”