Sports
Nordic Vikings with Nordic Heritage and focus on Skating Team Sports has become an International Network looking for Cooperations with Local and International Partners for the Development. During the Years players and leaders from Nordics, Europe, Russia, Asia, North and Latin America has participated – and many of them has reach their countries highest National Club Level with International Representation.
A very famous Ishockey and Bandy player described the difference between Ice Hockey and Bandy like this – Ice Hockey is like Rock Music and Bandy is like Classic Music – If you also add that the Inline and Roller Hockey on wheels and another Surface you understand that the sports share a lot together.
President Nordic Vikings and Professor Harbin Sport University Per-Erik Holmström
Ice Hockey
Ice Hockey had its Heritage from UK – and when the sport moved to US and Canada and was played on pounds. The economic interest of developing the sport moved the game indoors – where fence and rinks was created, basically in the beginning to protect the paying Audience. In USA and Canada NHL soon became the brand and key Organisation for the Development. !920 the Sport became Olympic and it also started to became more popular in Europe and linked together by IIHF.
Ice Hockey is one of the most popular Winter Sports in Sweden and in Finland it is the biggest Sport. The last decade also Denmark and Norway have closed the gap to the Nordic Giants and on Iceland they are also working hard to develop the Sport.
Nordic Vikings has its first Heritage in Amercan Football and became European Champions 1994-1995, However since the start of the Financial Hockey League – (FHL) in the Stockholm Financial Market in 1998 – It soon became a dream to Host a NHL Team based in the Nordics with the name Nordic Vikings, but due to many reasons Nordic Vikings instead joined the Asia League Season 2005-2006. With support from IIHF and coordinated by Chinese Wintersports Nordic Vikings created a “Hausse in Beijing” for Ice Hockey and started the process for Ice Hockey in Beijing. 2006-2014 the devlopment in China for Nordic Vikings and especially in Beijing, was done mainly with support from Hokay Club. And from 2014 Nordic Vikings restarted the connection with Chinese Wintersport, but also started to support the new Beijing Hockey Association (BHA).
Nordic Vikings started to look more on the Spanish Market in conjunction with a Development Project between players from Latin America and the Nordic Region, where Swedish Ice Hockey and Swedish Inline Participated. Lars G Karlsson and Per-Erik Holmström was the key drivers and soon also KG Stoppel Djurgården became involved in the development process.
Bandy Sport
Bandy is the most “Classic Vintersport” in Sweden and was actually the base for the Ice Hockey development from the beginning. The Bandy Final in Sweden has the longest tradition of all Sports in Sweden exceept Figure skating. The sport has been given the nickname “Football on Ice” which gives a quite good idea of the Sport as such – 11 players on the pitch of Ice with basically Soccer Rules – The Bandy Sport also came from UK and become quite big in Europe and Russia as it was quite easy to just use the Football Pitches in the Nordic Region on natural Ice winter time. In Russia the sport is called “Russian Hockey” and was the biggest Wintersport until the mid 90ties when most clubs had got indoor arenas also in the rest of Russia. The Sport is also classic in Finland and Norway, where might Oslo is the biggest Bandy Town in the whole world with over 20 artifical fields.
The Goal for the Sport is to Reach the Olympics – and Nordic Vikings has supported this by the creation of more nations playing Bandy – as China, Slovakia, India and Colombia. One of the most well known International Teams is actually the Somalian Team – and today more than 30 countries play the game and also in Bandy we see a shift to more Indoors coming now. Nordic Vikings is involved on the FIB Level for International Teams, with China and Colombia as two key countries, but is also involved in Slovakia and India.
Inline Hockey ( and Roller Hockey)
For long time Roller Hockey, or Quad, was the most popular sport in Spain, Portugal and also in Latin Amerika. The Roller hockey has many similarities with – Bandy. It has both a ball and a Bandystick to play with but it is played indoors with 4 players and a Goalie. In this countries also Leagues are well developed with professional players. However also Inline Hockey has started to grow quite rapidly also in the Spanish Talking Countries and are currently a bigger Sport than Roller Hockey, as both the Ice Hockey Nations and the Inline Hockey Nations coming to the World Championship – and now run by FIRS (Federation of Roller Sports, which also include Inline Sports). In many aspect the skating tradition in Spain is in full swing and in the center of the world and competition with – Ice Hockey, Roller Hockey and Inline Hockey developed in different Leagues.
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