Editing Bandy (section)

==History==
[[File:Menschen am Eis (Bruegel).jpg|thumb|Detail from [[Pieter Bruegel the Elder|Brueghel]]'s 1565 ''[[The Hunters in the Snow]]'' ]]
[[File:Charles Goodman Tebbutt (0401-02823).png|thumb|[[Charles Goodman Tebbutt]] with a bandy stick in 1889]]

===Background===
The earliest origin of the sport is debated. Though many Russians see their old countrymen as the creators of the sport – reflected by the unofficial title for bandy, "Russian hockey" (русский хоккей) – Russia,<ref>Bandyns historia http://www.skiro-navelsjo.se/ (in Swedish; read on 2 December 2017)</ref> Sweden, medieval Iceland,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Molzberger |first=Ansgar |date=20 September 2024 |title=A special issue presenting a thematically wide-ranging interim status of research on Sámi sport |url=https://idrottsforum.org/molans_lidstrom-pedersen240920/ |website=idrottsforum.org |publisher=Malmö University}}</ref> the Netherlands, England, and Wales each had pastimes, such as [[bando (sport)|bando]], which can be seen as forerunners of bandy.<ref name="tebbutt">{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/skatings00heatrich|title=Skating|first1=John Moyer|last1=Heathcote|first2=C. G.|last2=Tebbutt|first3=Henry A.|last3=Buck|first4=John|last4=Kerr|first5=Ormond|last5=Hake|first6=T. Maxwell|last6=Witham|date=9 January 1892|publisher=London : Longmans, Green and Co.|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> The mid-eighteenth-century ''[[Devonshire Dialogue]]'' collection lists Bandy as "a game, like that of Golf, in which the adverse parties endeavour to beat a ball (generally a knob or gnarl from the trunk of a tree,) opposite ways... the stick with which the game is played is crook'd at the end".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Palmer |first1=Mary (Reynolds) |last2=Palmer |first2=James Frederick |title=A dialogue in the Devonshire dialect |date=1837 |publisher=London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman |url=https://archive.org/details/adialogueindevo00palmgoog/page/n40}}</ref>

The sport's first published set of organized rules was codified in 1882 by [[Charles Goodman Tebbutt]] of the [[Bury Fen Bandy Club]]. When the international federation was founded in 1955, it came about after a compromise between Russian and English rules, in which more of the English rules prevailed.

Since association football was already popular in England, the codified bandy rules took after much of the football rules. Like association football, games are normally two 45 minute halves and there are 11 players per side. Players sticks are curved like large field hockey sticks and the [[bandy ball]] is roughly the size of a tennis ball with a cork core and hard plastic coating. Bandy balls were originally usually red but are now either orange or more commonly [[cerise (color)|cerise]].

===Early days===
Bandy as an ice skating sport first developed in Britain. It developed as a winter sport in [[the Fens]] of [[East Anglia]]. Large expanses of ice would form on the flooded meadows or shallow washes in cold winters where [[fen skating]], which has been a tradition dating back to at least medieval times, took place.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art561911-delivering-past-archaeology-london-museum-skull|title=Bone skate|website=www.culture24.org.uk|access-date=9 September 2019|archive-date=11 September 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180911015808/http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art561911-delivering-past-archaeology-london-museum-skull|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.le.ac.uk/ebulletin-archive/ebulletin/features/2000-2009/2005/06/nparticle-bvm-yj8-89c.html|title=University of Leicester - Thorney Abbey, Cambridgeshire – a Rare View of Medieval Life in the Fens|date=18 March 2024 }}</ref> Bandy's early recorded modernization period can be traced back to 1813.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/cambridgeshire/content/articles/2006/02/15/bandy_sport_feature.shtml |title=A handy Bandy guide... |author=Helen Burchell|date=21 February 2006|website=BBC |access-date=12 January 2022 |publisher=[[BBC]] |language=en}}</ref>

[[Image:Bandybollar.jpg|thumb|right|Making of a historic bandy ball in stages, from the original cork on the left to the final ball painted red, with a modern [[bandy ball]] to far right]]
Members of the [[Bury Fen Bandy Club]]<ref>{{cite web|url= http://geocities.com/Colosseum/Track/2049/English/Buryfen.gif |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20091028160235/http://geocities.com/Colosseum/Track/2049/English/Buryfen.gif |archive-date= 28 October 2009 |title=Photo of Bury Fen Bandy Club |date=28 October 2009 |access-date=3 March 2012}}</ref> published rules of the game in 1882, and introduced it into other European countries. A variety of stick and ball games involving ice skating were introduced to North America by the 1800s but failed to organize and develop popular rules codes. However, these stick and ball games became one of the eventual antecedents of the modern sport of [[ice hockey]], whose first rules were codified in Canada in 1875, almost a decade before the rules of modern bandy were established in Britain.

The first international bandy match took place in 1891 between Bury Fen and the Haarlemsche Hockey & Bandy Club from the Netherlands (a club which after a couple of club fusions now is named [[HC Bloemendaal]]). The same year, the [[National Bandy Association]] was established as a governing body for the sport in England.<ref name=SBF/> National governing federations for bandy were also founded in the 1890s in the Netherlands and Russia and in the following decade in Finland (then part of the Russian Empire), Sweden, and Norway.

The match later dubbed "the original bandy match", was actually held in 1875 at [[The Crystal Palace]] in London. However, at the time, the game was called "hockey on the ice",<ref name=SBF>{{cite web|url=http://iof1.idrottonline.se/SvenskaBandyforbundet/Bandy-Sverige/SvenskaBandyforbundet/Historikochstatistik/Historiskamilstolpar/Bandyhistoria1875-1919/ |title=Svenska Bandyförbundet, bandyhistoria 1875–1919 |publisher=Iof1.idrottonline.se |date=1 February 2013 |access-date=9 April 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131019151140/http://iof1.idrottonline.se/SvenskaBandyforbundet/Bandy-Sverige/SvenskaBandyforbundet/Historikochstatistik/Historiskamilstolpar/Bandyhistoria1875-1919/ |archive-date=19 October 2013}}</ref> probably as it was considered an ice variant of [[field hockey]].

An early maker of bandy sticks was the firm of Gray's, Cambridge. One such stick, now in the collections of the [[Museum of Cambridge]], has a length of rope twisted round the handle to rescue any player who might fall through the ice, as the game was played on frozen lakes back then. An 1899 photo of two players demonstrating the game shows the sticks being held single-handed.<ref>{{cite book|title= Cambridge Customs & Folklore|author= Enid Porter|publisher= Routledge & Kegan Paul|year= 1969}}</ref>

Historically, bandy was a popular sport in some central and western European countries until the [[First World War]], and from 1901 to 1926 it was played in the Scandinavian [[Nordic Games]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.geocities.com/bandytips/Kalenderbiteri/Svetab/NS.html |title=Nordiska Spelen. |website= |access-date=22 April 2022 |publisher= |language=sv |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091028095528/http://www.geocities.com/bandytips/Kalenderbiteri/Svetab/NS.html |archive-date=28 October 2009 |url-status=dead}}</ref> the first international [[multi-sport event]] focused on [[winter sports]].

===Etymology===
[[File:Stamps of Kazakhstan, 2014-043.jpg|right|thumb|upright=0.7|Kazakh [[Postage stamp|stamp]] featuring bandy ({{lang|kk|допты хоккей}} {{transliteration|kk|dopty khokkey}}, "ball hockey")]]
The sport's English name comes from the verb "to bandy", from the [[Middle French]] {{lang|frm|bander}} ("to strike back and forth"), and originally referred to a seventeenth-century Irish game similar to field hockey.{{citation needed|date=August 2022}} The curved stick was also called a "bandy".<ref name="etymo">{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=bandy&searchmode=none|title=Online Etymology Dictionary, "bandy"|year=2011|dictionary=Online Etymology Dictionary|access-date=4 January 2012}}</ref> The etymological connection to the similarly named Welsh hockey game of [[Bando (sport)|bando]] is not clear.

An old name for bandy is ''hockey on the ice''; in the first rule books from England at the turn of the century 1900, the sport is literally called "bandy or hockey on the ice".<ref>Arne Argus: "Bandy i 100 år", 2002, {{ISBN|91-631-3005-X}}, p. 36 (in Swedish)</ref> Since the early 20th century, the term bandy is usually preferred to prevent confusion with [[ice hockey]].

The sport is known as bandy in many languages, with a few exceptions. In Russia, bandy is called "Russian hockey" ({{lang|ru|русский хоккей}}) or more frequently, and officially, "hockey with a ball" ({{lang|ru|хоккей с мячом}}) while ice hockey is called "hockey with a puck" ({{lang|ru|хоккей с шайбой}}) or more frequently just "hockey". If the context makes it clear that bandy is the subject, it as well can be called just "hockey". In Belarusian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian it is also called "hockey with a ball" ({{lang|be|хакей з мячoм}}, {{lang|uk|хокей з м'ячем}} and {{lang|bg|хокей с топка}} respectively). In Slovak "bandy hockey" ({{lang|sk|bandyhokej}}) is the name. In Armenian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Mongol and Uzbek, bandy is known as "ball hockey" ({{lang|hy|գնդակով հոկեյ}}, {{lang|kk|допты хоккей}}, {{lang|ky|топтуу хоккей}}, {{lang|mn|бөмбөгтэй хоккей}} and {{lang|uz|koptokli xokkey}} respectively). In Finnish the two sports are distinguished as "ice ball" ({{lang|fi|jääpallo}}) and "ice puck" ({{lang|fi|jääkiekko}}), as well as in Hungarian ({{lang|hu|jéglabda; jégkorong}}), although in Hungarian it is more often called "bandy" nowadays. In Estonian and Lithuanian bandy is also called "ice ball" ({{lang|et|jääpall}}; {{lang|lt|ledo riedulys}}<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.vle.lt/straipsnis/ledo-riedulys/|title=VISUOTINĖ LIETUVIŲ ENCIKLOPEDIJA|website=www.lietuviuzodynas.lt}}</ref>). In Mandarin Chinese it is "bandy ball" ({{lang|cmn|班迪球}}). In [[Scottish Gaelic]] the name is "ice shinty" ({{lang|gd|camanachd-deighe}}).<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.faclair.com/?txtSearch=camanachd-deighe|title=Am Faclair Beag – Scottish Gaelic Dictionary|website=www.faclair.com}}</ref> In old times [[shinty]] or shinney were also sometimes used in English for bandy.<ref name="tebbutt"/>

Because of its similarities with association football, bandy is also nicknamed "winter football" ({{langx|sv|Vinterns fotboll}}).<ref name=Oxford/><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ne.se/uppslagsverk/encyklopedi/l%C3%A5ng/bandy|title=Bandy|publisher=Nationalencyklopedin|language=English|access-date=28 July 2021}}</ref>

===Historical relationship with other sports===
====Bandy and association football====
With [[association football]] and ''hockey on ice'' or bandy both being popular sports in parts of Europe around 1900, bandy was highly influenced by football and taking after [[Laws of the Game (association football)|its main rules]]: having a field approximately the same size, having the same number of players on each team and having the same game time (2×45 minutes).<ref>[https://runeberg.org/nfbc/0554.html "Nordisk familjebok (Uggleupplagan)", vol. 3. Bergsvalan - Branstad, 1905, p. 1027 (in Swedish)], accessed 7 September 2022</ref> It is natural that bandy got the nickname 'winter football'.<ref name="Oxford"/>

It was common for sports clubs to have both a bandy and a football section, with athletes playing both sports but at different times of the year. Some examples are ''Nottingham Forest Football and Bandy Club'' in England (today known just as [[Nottingham Forest F.C.]]) and Norwegian [[Strømsgodset IF]] and [[Mjøndalen IF]], with both having an active bandy section.

In Sweden, most football clubs that were active during the first half of the 20th century also played bandy. Swedish player [[Orvar Bergmark]] earned silver medals in the world championships of both sports in the 1950s. Later, as the season for each sport increased in time, it was not as easy for the players to engage in both sports, so some clubs came to concentrate on one or the other. Many old clubs still have both sports on their program. [[Sten-Ove Ramberg]] is the last Swedish male player in both national teams (1978 in bandy, 1979&ndash;1984 in football).

====Bandy and ice hockey====
No clear distinction between bandy and ice hockey was made before the 1920s.<ref name=nlm2023>{{cite journal| publisher= National Library of Medicine, Frontiers in Physiology | title= "Sprint skating profile of competitive male bandy players: determination of positional differences and playing level" | first1=Roland | last1= van den Tillaar | first2= Haris | last2= Pojskic | first3= Håkan | last3 = Andersson | journal= Frontiers in Physiology | date = 2023 | volume= 14 | doi= 10.3389/fphys.2023.1055863 | doi-access= free | pmid= 37304822 | pmc= 10250590 }}</ref> As bandy in a way can be seen as a precursor to [[ice hockey]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/scripts/explore.php?Lang=1&tableid=11&tablename=theme&elementid=60__true&contentlong |title=Hockey in Montreal since the 19th Century &#124; Thematic Tours &#124; Musée McCord Museum |publisher=Mccord-museum.qc.ca |access-date=7 February 2014}}</ref> bandy has influenced the development and history of ice hockey, mainly in European and former Soviet countries. While modern ice hockey was created in Canada, a variety of games which bore a closer resemblance to bandy were initially played there after British soldiers introduced the game of bandy in the late 19th century. At the same time as modern ice hockey rules were formalized in [[British North America]] (present-day Canada), bandy rules were decided upon in Europe. A cross between English and Russian bandy rules eventually developed with the football-inspired English rules (''cf'' the passage above about bandy and Association football) becoming dominant, together with the Russian low-border along most of the two sidelines, an addition to the sport which has maintained its presence since the 1950s.

Before Canadians introduced ice hockey into Europe in the early 20th century, "[[hockey]]" was another name for bandy,<ref>Nordisk Familjebok 10 Hassle-Infektera, Förlagshuset Norden AB, Malmö 1952, "Hockey", column 386</ref> and still is in parts of Russia and Kazakhstan.

Both bandy and ice hockey were played in Europe during the 20th century, especially in Sweden, Finland, and Norway.<ref>Nordisk Familjebok 2 Asura-Bidz, Förlagshuset Norden AB, Malmö 1951, "Bandy", columns 324–326</ref> Ice hockey became more popular than bandy in most of Europe, mostly because it had become an Olympic sport, while bandy had not. Athletes in Europe who had played bandy switched to ice hockey in the 1920s to compete in the Olympics.<ref name=Converse>{{cite web|url=http://thehockeywriters.com/bandy-the-other-ice-hockey/|author=Eric Converse|title=Bandy: The Other Ice Hockey|publisher=The Hockey Writers|date=17 May 2013|access-date=6 May 2014}}</ref><ref>E.g. in the Netherlands, see {{cite web|url=http://www.bandybond.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/120-jaar-bandygeschiedenis-in-Nederland.pdf|title=120 jaar bandygeschiedenis in Nederland (1891–2011)|author=Arnout Janmaat|date=7 March 2013|page=10|access-date=13 February 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140222035707/http://www.bandybond.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/120-jaar-bandygeschiedenis-in-Nederland.pdf|archive-date=22 February 2014|url-status=live}}</ref> The smaller ice fields needed for ice hockey also made its rinks easier to maintain, especially in countries with short winters.<ref name=Converse/><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cafebabel.co.uk/lifestyle/article/bandy-ice-hockey-in-sweden-goes-big-in-europe.html|author=Waldemar Ingdahl|title=Bandy – ice hockey in Sweden goes big in Europe|publisher=Café Babel|date=12 November 2008|access-date=6 May 2014}}</ref> On the other hand, ice hockey was not played in the Soviet Union until the 1950s, when the [[USSR]] wanted to compete internationally. The typical European style of ice hockey, with flowing, less physical play, represents a heritage of bandy.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://prohockeytalk.nbcsports.com/2014/02/14/russians-no-longer-mesmerize-with-brilliant-hockey-but-golden-feeling-is-there/|title=Russians no longer mesmerize with brilliant hockey but golden feeling is there|author=Joe Posnanski|publisher=NBC Sports Pro Hockey Talk|date=14 February 2014|access-date=21 February 2014}}</ref>

===Modern development===
[[File:Hammarby vs GAIS 2012-02-11 (4).jpg|thumb|The Bandy team GAIS preparing to defend their goal against a corner stroke in 2012]]

====First national bandy league====
The first national bandy league in modern history was started in Sweden in 1902.<ref name=SBF/>

====Bandy in the Nordic Games====
Bandy was played at the [[Nordic Games]] in both [[Stockholm]] and [[Oslo|Kristiania]] (present day [[Oslo]]) in 1901, 1903, 1905, 1909, [[1913 Nordic Games|1913]], 1917, 1922 and 1926, and between Swedish, Finnish and Russian teams at similar games in [[Helsinki]] in 1907.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.finbandy.fi/fi/?page_id=2002|publisher=Finnish Bandy Association|title=The Finnish Bandy Federation, in English|access-date=20 April 2014}}</ref> [[Nordic Games#Bandy results|Bandy appeared as a sport in all eight editions of the Nordic Games]] from 1901 to 1926.

====European Bandy Championships====
{{Unreferenced section|date=May 2024}}
Some sources describe a [[1913 European Bandy Championships]] as having been held in February 1913, in [[St. Moritz, Switzerland]], at the same time as the bandy tournament at the [[1913 Nordic Games]]. However, this European Championship tournament likely never happened, or is a conflation of titles, since no contemporary sources have been found. Still, in 2014, a [[four nation bandy tournament in 2014|Four Nation Bandy tournament]] was held in [[Davos|Davos, Switzerland]], as a centenary celebration of the alleged 1913 European Bandy Championships.

====Highest altitude====
The highest altitude where bandy has been played is in [[Khorugh]], the capital of the [[Tajikistan|Tajik]] autonomous province of [[Gorno-Badakhshan]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://bandynet.ru/v1/node/14931|title="Опубликован календарь матчей турнира по хоккею с мячом Азиады-2011"|publisher=bandynet.ru|author=Boris Fominykh|date=15 January 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150221111439/https://bandynet.ru/v1/node/14931 |archive-date=21 February 2015 }}</ref> Khorugh is situated {{convert|2,200|m|ft|abbr=off}} above sea level in the Pamir Mountains.

====World Championships and Russian performance====
[[File:Bandy pictogram.svg|thumb|A bandy pictogram]]
Since the 1950s, when the Soviet Union ended its isolation and started to take part in international sports events, there has been a reason to play [[Bandy World Championship|world championships]]. The International Bandy Federation was founded in 1955 and the first world championships were played in 1957 with the Soviet Union and then Russia (as its successor country in 1993) almost consistently in a top position in the sport of bandy alongside Sweden. Finland has won once, in 2004.

In a similar fashion, Russia, along with Sweden, has emerged as one of the two dominant women's bandy nations internationally in the [[Women's Bandy World Championship]].

====Women's bandy====
Women's bandy uses the exact same rules as men,{{citation needed|date=November 2022}} but the women's game is played separately. Women have been playing bandy since the sport was originally developed.{{citation needed|date=November 2022}} Although there were several attempts in the early part of the 19th century to organize bandy leagues for women's teams,{{where|date=November 2022}} regular leagues only started in the 1970s in Sweden and Finland and then later in the 1980s in Norway and the Soviet Union.

====Bandy moving indoors====
Starting in the 1980s and increasingly since the turn of the millennium, more and more indoor arenas for bandy have been built (often as joint arenas to be used also for football or speed skating). The use of indoor arenas makes the [[Effects of weather on sport|effects of the weather on a game]] virtually insignificant, something which earlier always have been a factor to consider for the teams and the audiences. However, unlike some other sports, bandy is still the same game with the same rules indoors or outdoors and no changes are made to the rules depending on whether there's a roof overhead or not. Many games, even in the highest leagues, are still played outdoors. In Sweden there are more indoor arenas than in all other countries combined.