Harrijasotzaileak
Encyclopedia
Basque rural sports
Basque rural sports, known as Herri Kirolak in Basque, is the term used for a number of sports competitions rooted in the traditional lifestyles of the Basque people...
in the Basque Country in which stones or various shapes and sizes must be lifted off the ground and onto the shoulder.
The name is built on the Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
root
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
harri "stone", the verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
jaso "to lift", the agentive
Agent noun
In linguistics, an agent noun is a word that is derived from another word denoting an action, and that identifies an entity that does that action. For example, "driver" is an agent noun formed from the verb "drive". The endings "-er", "-or", and "-ist" are commonly used in English to form agent...
suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
-tzaile and the plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
ending -ak, so literally "stone lifters". It is also known as harri jasoketa "stone lifting". In Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
it is called levantamiento de piedra (stone lifting) and in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
the sport is called leveurs de pierres.
Rules
- the zilindroa (cylinderCylinder (geometry)A cylinder is one of the most basic curvilinear geometric shapes, the surface formed by the points at a fixed distance from a given line segment, the axis of the cylinder. The solid enclosed by this surface and by two planes perpendicular to the axis is also called a cylinder...
), usually weighing 8, 9 or 10 arroba (100, 112.5 or 125 kg) - the laukizuzena (rectangular), usually weighing between 10 and 17 arroba (125-212.5 kg)
- the kuboa (cubeCubeIn geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. The cube can also be called a regular hexahedron and is one of the five Platonic solids. It is a special kind of square prism, of rectangular parallelepiped and...
), usually weighing between 10 and 17 arroba (125-212.5 kg) - the biribila (round), usually weighing 9 or 10 arroba (112.5 or 125 kg)
On occasion natural stones are also still used. This can be problematic for lifters of a smaller stature who may not be able to handle the larger, irregular shapes stones.
The rules are fairly simple, the stone has to be handled so it ends up on the competitors shoulder, at which point it can be dropped onto the pad in front of the harrijasotzaile. They never lift simultaneously but in sequence and facing each other, not side by side. There are two judges next to him, one to mark the time limit and another to ensure that the stone has been properly lifted. The crowd normally shouts out the number of times the stone has been lifted and the person who lifts the stone most often in the allocated time wins.
Alternatively, the competition may involving trying to lift a heavier stone that your opponents or to break a record.
The preferred material for the stones is the so-called harri beltza or black stone, a dark granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
quarried near the towns of Zumarraga and Lastur in Gipuzkoa.
Famous events
Several lifting events are remembered widely:- Miel Saralegi for lifting the heaviest stone to date, weighing 329 kg.
- Iñaki Perurena who held the record before Saralegi for lifting a 322 kg stone, being a popular figure in the Basque soapSoap operaA soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
GoenkaleGoenkaleGoenkale is a Basque soap-opera, produced by Pausoka Entertainment and ETB, which is broadcast every Monday and Tuesday on Basque Radio-television's first channel, ETB 1. Set up in an imaginary Basque seaside town, the title of the serial is the name of the main street in that town...
and a bertsolari.
It is not uncommon for stone lifters to lift into considerably high age. In 1960 for example Justo Gallastegi lifted a 150 kg stone 5 times in 5 minutes in Tolosa
Tolosa, Spain
Tolosa is a town and municipality to the south of Donostia-San Sebastián in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa, Spain. It is located in a valley of the river Oria and overlooked by Uzturre, a white cross-topped mountain.-Famous people from Tolosa:...
.
Memorable competitions or competitors often lead to the composition of bertsos.
History
Although it is likely that this is an old sport, closely linked to rural farming activities, there are no documents of any significant age which mention this either as a sport or an activity. This has led to the wry saying that harri-jasoketa is "the oldest sport with the shortest history".In the early days of harri-jasoketa every lifter was able to choose their own stone. This lasted well into the 20th century until Bittor Zabala, more commonly known as Arteondo, whose own career as a stone lifter lasted from 1910 to 1945, initiated the process of standardising the shapes and weights of the stones. He was also instrumental in popularising the sport from an activity practised at the family farm into a sport practised in public.
Women and harri-jasoketa
Although a male dominated sport, women have taken - and are taking - part in stone lifting competitions, as they have in other traditional Basque sports.Similar traditions
Very similar sports or challenges like this occur in a number of cultures:- the clachan-ultaich of the Scottish GaelGaëlGaël is a commune in the Ille-et-Vilaine department of Brittany in north-western France.It lies southwest of Rennes between Saint-Méen-le-Grand and Mauron...
- the lifting of stones such as the Hálfdrættingur in IcelandIcelandIceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
- the BavarianBavariaBavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
Stoalupfn - the Gŵyl MabsantGwyl MabsantTraditionally in Wales, every parish would celebrate a Gŵyl Mabsant in commemoration of its native saint. This annual celebration developed from a dedication through prayer to a programme of recreational activities. Owing to the combination of betting, feasting and alcohol consumption, parish...
(Saint's Day) tradition of Y Garreg Orchest in WalesWalesWales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...