It’s that time of the year once again for the GF World Cup. This yearly handball tournament exclusively for women takes place at the Atletion in Aarhus, Denmark from September 22 to 27. Each year, eight of the world’s best women teams compete in this tournament. Some of these teams are among the best in Europe and the world including the Olympic champions every year.
This invitational all women sports event is organized by the Danish Handball Association and the GF Forsikring insurance company. Sweden and Denmark are the mainstays of this sport while other countries taking part are Hungary, France, Russia, Romania, Norway and Germany.
Handball is also known as team handball, Olympic handball or European handball. In this game, there are two teams each made up of seven players. What the players do is to pass and bounce the ball using their hands to their team mates and find a way to throw the ball into the goal of their opponents.
Each game is played indoors on a court and features two periods of 30 minutes with a 10-minute half time. The team that earns the most number of goals after the two sets wins. The ball used here is made of leather or synthetic material and is held only by one hand during the game.
In Denmark, handball was said to have started in the 19th century then known as handbold. At about the same time, a similar game developed in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Germany and Uruguay. The recent version of team handball began by the late 19th century in the northern part of Europe, specifically in Denmark as well as in Norway, Sweden and Germany.
A Danish gym teacher named Holger Nielsen was credited for creating the rules of the modern handball. Nielsen came up with the rules in 1898 and published them eight years later in 1906.
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