Sports historians have argued that the type of ball games commonin the British Isles, which were practiced by two teams andin which the ball was driven with sticks towards predeterminedgoals – i.e., hurling, shinty, bandy and hockey – were never playedin early modern Sweden. By highlighting descriptions of ballgames in Johannes Schefferus’s The History of Lapland (1674), asource previously ignored by sports historians, this article challengessuch a claim. One of the games described by Schefferus hassome similarities with the violent stick-and-ball game known inIcelandic sagas as knattleikr. Even greater similarities (such as thestart of the game with a face-off and the goals consisting of lineson the short edges) emerge when the game is compared with theScottish game of shinty. Thus, pre-modern Scandinavia does notappear to have been as isolated in terms of sports and games ashas been suggested by Swedish sports historians.