Hobby Horsing Around

September 11, 2017 12:12 PM

Ten thousand Finns participate in the sport of hobby horsing
posted by starfishprime (15 comments total)

Looks like fun, but must involve a lot of tripping over your own horse.
posted by Dr Dracator at 12:22 PM on September 11, 2017

Between this and Quidditch the kids these days sure like having a stick between their nethers.
posted by leotrotsky at 12:32 PM on September 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

would be more interesting if they used coconuts
posted by shockingbluamp at 12:37 PM on September 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

I must be cold and dark through the winter ...
posted by mbo at 1:21 PM on September 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ha. Awesome. I was hoping someone would do a post on this. Metafilter's own Kattullus is an eyewitness to the phenomenon.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:43 PM on September 11, 2017

Here is the link Kattullus posted last time.
posted by starfishprime at 1:52 PM on September 11, 2017

This is one of the best things I have ever seen on the internet.

Go on girls! They are baby VIKINGS and not in the Ralph sense either.

Absolutely not joking.
posted by glasseyes at 2:15 PM on September 11, 2017

I guess I'm getting older and crankier by the minute, but I seem to be whining "but whyyyy?" more and more these days.
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 2:30 PM on September 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm willing to bet sisu is a big reason why the Finns do this.

To me, it looks like fun and one heckuva good workout.
posted by the matching mole at 3:04 PM on September 11, 2017

I'll admit that my first sight of a ten year old girl running with a hobby horse perplexed me. I was playing with my then one-year-old in a sandbox outside the apartment building where we live in Helsinki. A neighbor girl arrived with a hobby horse, piled up some of the communal toys into obstacles, and ran in circles for about an hour, hurdling the toys. She was clearly having lots of fun so after about a minute of culture shock it seemed perfectly normal. As that summer wore on I noticed many more girls running around on hobby horses, usually jumping over things, often in small groups.

They reminded me of myself running around with wooden sticks and swords at that age, playfighting with neighborhood boys. There was that same kind of intensity of play that older kids often have when all they've learned about playing gets refined to a point. Usually in one's teen years that kind of thing gets conditioned out. It's especially heartening to me, to the point where I well up a little bit, to see the hobby horse revolutionaries insist on playing seriously into their teen years. I hope they take it with them into their adult lives too.
posted by Kattullus at 4:54 PM on September 11, 2017 [3 favorites]

So... prancercise?
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:34 PM on September 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

This would have been a lot cheaper than what I spent on 8 years of real horse ownership for my daughter.
posted by COD at 5:48 PM on September 11, 2017

Here’s Tyler The Creator’s Zebra interpretation.
posted by migurski at 8:43 PM on September 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

When I was young, I didn't need no stinkin' stick.

I WAS the horse.

I am horse. Watch me gallop.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:18 PM on September 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

This horse, it vibrates?
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:42 PM on September 11, 2017