Stone Lifting

Long-standing folk tradition · Implement lifting

Stone lifting is far older than the Iron Game. Across northern Europe — Iceland, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, the Basque Country and elsewhere — heavy natural stones were kept as tests of strength, often as a mark of manhood or of fitness for work. The tradition ran alongside the music-hall era and has been taken up by modern strongman.

Description

Stone lifting is a family of feats rather than a single lift. Many stones are particular, named objects kept in one place — at a farm, a bridge or a hotel — and the challenge is set by local custom: to lift the stone clear of the ground, to raise it to the waist or onto a ledge, or to carry it a set distance. Others, as in the Basque tradition, are cut to standard shapes and weights for competition.

Principal traditions

Scotland

The Dinnie Stones at Potarch, Aberdeenshire, are a pair of granite stones with iron rings, weighing 414½ lb (188 kg) and 318½ lb (144.5 kg) — 733 lb (332.5 kg) together. Donald Dinnie is reported to have carried them across the width of the Potarch Bridge, 17 ft 1½ in, in 1860. The stones were later lost sight of and were rediscovered by David Webster in 1953. Scotland also has many "manhood stones" (clach cuid fir), lifted to the waist as a rite of passage, and the Inver Stone, an oval river stone of about 118 kg long kept at Inver, near Braemar.

Iceland

The Húsafell Stone, a slab of basalt of about 158 kg (348 lb), served as the gate stone of a sheep and goat pen built by the Reverend Snorri Björnsson around 1756. Icelandic custom grades strength by such stones: lifting the stone, lifting it and standing with it, and carrying it — at Húsafell, round the pen. The grades are named amlóði (weakling), hálfsterkur (half-strong) and fullsterkur (full-strong). At Djúpalónssandur on Snæfellsnes, a set of stones was traditionally used to test fishermen.

The Basque Country

Harri-jasotzea (stone lifting; the lifters are harri-jasotzaileak) is a Basque rural sport using stones cut to set shapes — cylinder, rectangle, cube and sphere — and traditionally weighed in arroba of 12.5 kg. The stone is lifted to the shoulder; contests are for the most lifts in a set time, or for the heaviest stone. Iñaki Perurena became the first to shoulder a 300 kg rectangular stone, in 1987.

Into modern strongman

Stone events have been part of televised strongman since its early years. The World's Strongest Man began in 1977; loading a series of round stones onto platforms, derived from the McGlashen stones and the Scottish tradition, appeared at the 1986 contest and became the familiar Atlas stones event. Historic stones such as the Húsafell and Dinnie Stones, and replicas of them, have also been used in competition.