Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

716 Wrestling and Grappling: Europe
The Italians, as well, developed wrestling styles and grappling systems
for combat. In one of the most famous treatises of the late Middle Ages, the
Italian master Pierre Monte describes wrestling as the foundation of all
fighting, and goes on to state that any form of weapons training must include
knowledge of how to disarm. Monte criticizes wrestling techniques of
other nations, most notably the Germans, in which he believed the practice
of fighting on the ground was dangerous. This evidence suggests that various
schools and theories of wrestling existed in Europe during this time.
In Scandinavia as early as A.D. 700–1100, wrestling called for competitors
to grasp their opponents by the waist of their pants and attempt to
throw them. The person who fell to the ground first would lose. This reflected
the idea that a person once thrown on a battlefield would be at the
mercy of an individual with a weapon. This wrestling tradition eventually
became extinct in the Scandinavian countries, but persisted in one of the
last outposts to be settled by the Vikings: Iceland. Today, this wrestling
variant still exists in the Icelandic sport of Glima, an Icelandic word meaning
“flash.” Instead of trousers, participants wear a special belt known as
a climubeltae, which simulates the wearing of trousers. A climubeltae consists
of a wide belt worn around the waist with two smaller belts worn
around the thighs. Competitors attempt to throw their opponents by grasping
the climubeltae, and as in the ancient art from which it descends, the
person who falls first or is thrown so as to touch the earth with any part
of his body above the knee loses. This art form has been revived in Scandinavia
and is practiced at festivals reenacting and celebrating Viking culture
around the region.
Farther east, in Russia, wrestling systems developed among indigenous
tribes that were later officially adopted as a part of its national culture. The
ancient chronicles of the country, most notably the Lay of Igor’s Campaign,
describe warriors using wrestling techniques as part of their training. This
would seem to indicate that Russian warriors developed wrestling as an unarmed
combat skill for use in battle. The Mongols invaded Russia in the
thirteenth century, and later the Russians reversed this by moving into former
Mongol-dominated regions as the Mongolian Empire began to fall
apart. This move brought the Russians into contact with many different
peoples, many with their own styles of wrestling. As a result, regional styles
evolved. For example, traditional Siberian wrestling resembles Japanese
sumô and Korean ssirŭm in many respects. Other regions of Russia developed
systems very similar to modern Greco-Roman and freestyle.
In the 1930s, after the overthrow of the Russian Empire and the building
of the Soviet Union, the Russians developed their own form of
wrestling for the entire nation: sambo. Sambo was intentionally created
from the native fighting and wrestling techniques of the Russians, those of