Winter Games

The Winter Games of the Olympic World

The ancient Olympic Games ended in the fourth century, casualties of Christianization and the outlawing of pagan festivals. Though the modern Olympics were nominally secular, they too faded—less from theology than from logistics. Globalism died, long-distance travel became impractical, and the number of sovereign states multiplied beyond any hope of coordination.

Yet the spirit of the Games endured.

Italy, China, Russia, and the United States are the cultures most often said to have kept the literal flame alive. Their successors independently arrived at similar conclusions about what was required to sustain such Games:

1. Large, dense urban populations

2. Republican or highly bureaucratic systems (as opposed to feudal ones, which favor tourneys)

3. A historical memory of Olympic success, producing nostalgia and a desire to remake the Games in one’s own image

Not coincidentally, all of these regions experience harsh winters or lie close to alpine terrain. Their cities and infrastructure exist because of the cold, not in spite of it. Frozen rivers, snowbound roads, and long idle seasons demanded planning, discipline, and public works. These same conditions gave rise to athletic traditions the ancient Greeks never imagined.

In many ways, the Chinese Bingxi serves as the organizational model for these Winter Games—even where the individual events themselves draw more heavily from Scandinavian precedent.

---

Major Winter Events

Speed Skating
The most prestigious of all winter events, and often the most dangerous. In rougher cultures, physical contact is permitted; in more restrained republics, balance and endurance are emphasized instead.

Skiing
Primarily cross-country, reflecting its origins in transport and messaging. Downhill racing exists, but is usually confined to mountainous regions and regarded as somewhat reckless.

Sledding
A hill-based sport emphasizing control and nerve. In flatter regions, it is sometimes adapted for draft animals or heavy cargo, blurring the line between labor and competition.

Curling
A contest of strength, precision, and teamwork. Often favored by more bureaucratic societies, where its measured, rule-bound nature is appreciated.

Tilly / Jersey
The combat sport of the Winter Games.

• Tilly allows strikes and is popular in harsher cultures.

• Jersey forbids punching, instead permitting grappling by straps or harnesses.
  Either way, the ice punishes mistakes severely.

Figure Skating
The only major Winter Games discipline in which women routinely compete. Even here, “competition” is considered a vulgar term. The emphasis is on grace, control, and expression rather than quantification.
Some regions award personalized honors (“Most Fluid,” “Most Inspiring”); others let the audience decide through gifts, patronage, or even marriage proposals. Prestige accrues regardless. Notably, Japan—despite its otherwise insular sports culture—retained figure skating almost intact.

---

The Vikings will sometimes travel across the world to compete in these Winter Games. After all, their ancestors invented many of them. Some are required to convert to the local faith in order to participate.

They do so anyway.

Free drinks for life. Thor would understand.

World Tour: The Pharaonic Revival

America is a very large place, and so in the New Middle Ages, the collapse saw its subregions lean into their more distinc idenities. In the Old World, reliving its old Middle Ages, the borders weren't always particularly big, so they embraced national identities that already existed. You also see this trend throughout Muslim countries who have largely drifted away from any dream of a Pan-Arabic Caliphate, at this point too many centuries of conflicting doctrine, too many cultures under the fold of Islan.

The New Kingdom did not occupy the minds of Medieval Egyptians. Why would it have? They were a conquered power under just like they were under the Roman, the Greeks, the Persians, and would be under the Ottomans and the Brits. But the dawn of the 20th century saw three major events: Dependence and self-governance, the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, and relatedly, aforementioned Europeans digging up their stuff and putting it in their own museums. This led to a movement known as Pharaonism, a sense of national identity, and continuity with one of the oldest civilizations on the planet. Over the next century there been tension between this nationalism and being part of the greater Muslim society. However, Egypt being ruled by Egyptians after so long was just not something they were going to let get away from them. Time had taught them, like a lead in a romantic comedy, if they didn’t claim Ancient Egypt, somebody else would.  

 Also, the collapse of industrialization saw a real back to basics approach to infrastructure, agriculture and healthcare. And you can’t go much further back than Ancient Egypt. Shadufs and saqiyas were low tech answers to harnessing the Nile River, and even ancient herbal remedies and dental practices that were advanced for the time but could do in a pinch instilled a reverence for this ancient civilization.

There are no Pharaohs, nobody worships Anubis. In fact, something like the Golden Parade in 2021 would be out of the question. But Pharonic motifs abound throughout the cities. Lotus columns and Obelisks surround libraries, market plazas, various “tourist destinations”. The silhouettes are firmly halal, but do evoke the kings and queens of old. Hieroglyphs surround wrap around clothing an architecture, Repoussé  jewelry, sometimes depicting animal heads (abstract enough to not to be controversial, and positioned as the clasp to be functional), as well as scarabs and wings are very common.

Perhaps the greatest outlet for New Kingdom romanticism is in their games and sport—real state sanctioned frivolity. Children are taught to play Senet, and wrestling (itself encouraged by the Prophet Mohammad, within reason), and of course, chariots, both racing and archery. Though more popular in Roman times, the arenas, the uniforms, and the chariots themselves really allow them to fully embrace the pomp of Ancient Egypt, and well as serve as a unifying space for the citizens, from all backgrounds.
 It’s very important for everyone to be on team Egypt, so the regimes try to take a page from an-Andulis, allowing for a certain degree of protection from institutionalized persecution upon its Coptic population. These People of the Book are themselves part of Egypt’s long history, and it’s important all Egyptians put up a united front, especially the tax paying ones.