Games, Hunting and Entertainment in Norman Societies

Between the tenth and twelfth centuries, recreation in Norman-ruled lands depended on place, status and season. Hunting in England joined trained animals and control of land; Londoners gathered for annual contests; Roger II’s court in Sicily appears in the painted ceiling of Palermo’s Cappella Palatina.

Hunts, deer and land rights

An aristocratic hunt needed hunters, horses, hounds and people who knew the ground and the quarry. In England, red deer could be chased across open country by mounted hunters and dogs. This long pursuit was called par force. Another method was a drive: people moved deer towards hunters waiting at prepared positions. Woodland-dwelling roe deer were more often taken this way, since they were less suited to a long chase over open ground.

Both methods were known before the Norman Conquest of 1066. Afterward, animal-bone assemblages from English sites show a lower proportion of roe deer and a higher proportion of red deer, suggesting a shift in the kinds of hunting and meat that received emphasis. Chase and drive hunting continued side by side. A woodland enclosure called a haga could protect deer as they bred or help funnel them towards places where hunters could net or shoot them.

Access depended on law and property as well as skill. In England, a forest was a jurisdiction with particular rights and restrictions, not simply a stretch of trees. Deer parks were enclosed spaces where lords could reserve game and grazing. Existing enclosures did not all begin with the conquest: parks grew especially in the mid and later twelfth century, as expanding cultivation put pressure on wood pasture and lords sought to mark and protect their claims.

In his account of London around 1173, the cleric William FitzStephen says that many citizens enjoyed hunting with hawks and hounds. He names areas where Londoners could hunt: Middlesex, Hertfordshire, the Chilterns and Kent up to the River Cray. His description connects recreation to access across a broad landscape and to the animals and attendants needed to pursue game.

School games and seasonal contests in London

FitzStephen describes Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent begins, as a day of schoolboy contests. Lent was the fasting season leading to Easter. In the morning, pupils brought gamecocks to their masters for cockfighting; after dinner, young people went into the fields to play ball. Each school had its ball or baton, a stick carried for play, while wealthy older citizens watched the youths from horseback.

On Fridays in Lent, groups of young men rode out under an experienced horseman. They practised with blunted lances and shields, rehearsing mounted combat without using sharpened weapons. At Easter, the contest moved to the river: a shield was fixed on a pole in the stream, and a young man stood at the front of an oarless boat carried by the current. If he broke his lance against the shield without falling, FitzStephen says he had performed a worthy deed. A hard charge that failed to break the lance could throw him into the water. Two companion boats waited to rescue contestants who fell, while spectators watched from the bridge, wharves and riverside houses.

Summer holidays brought leaping, dancing, archery, wrestling and stone-casting. FitzStephen also mentions girls dancing with timbrels, small hand-held frame drums. His description of London’s religious plays adds performances about saints’ miracles and martyrs’ suffering to the city’s calendar. The account presents a sequence of civic entertainments: school activities, physical contests, music and staged religious stories, each with its own participants and place.

Winter weather created another kind of sport on the frozen marsh north of London. Some youths slid over the ice; others tied animal bones beneath their feet and pushed themselves along with pointed poles. Pairs also raced with poles and knocked one another down. The same activity could demand balance and skill while causing broken arms or legs.

Music, games and courtly display in Sicily

In Palermo, the Cappella Palatina preserves a different view of recreation. Its painted wooden ceiling, made during the reign of Roger II and associated with the chapel founded in 1131 and consecrated in 1140, shows musicians, dancers, gamblers, horsemen, wrestlers and animals among plant and geometric decoration. The ceiling places music, physical contests and games within the visual world of a royal chapel.