Nascar's Roots May Go Back to Medieval Tournaments
Deep-fried Twinkies, jars of moonshine and kegerators set up in the backs of recreational vehicles at Alabama's Talladega Superspeedway. To one scholar, these aren't just the trappings of a modern-day Nascar race weekend -- they're evidence of a hidden past.
"It's almost a direct carryover from the Middle Ages," says Karyn Rybacki, a professor of communication studies and public relations at Northern Michigan University. Ms. Rybacki, who studies stock-car racing, says the cultural elements of Nascar races -- where fans travel many miles to attend, wear the colors of their favorite teams and virtually knight popular drivers -- may be directly descended from medieval times, when people came in droves to make merry before another fast and dangerous form of competition, the joust.
"The more I dug into the history, the more I saw the parallels," says Ms. Rybacki, who has presented papers on the topic and wrote about it in a recent anthology "The Sporting World of the Modern South." She notes that the late Nascar hero Dale Earnhardt carried the moniker "The Black Knight."
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"It's almost a direct carryover from the Middle Ages," says Karyn Rybacki, a professor of communication studies and public relations at Northern Michigan University. Ms. Rybacki, who studies stock-car racing, says the cultural elements of Nascar races -- where fans travel many miles to attend, wear the colors of their favorite teams and virtually knight popular drivers -- may be directly descended from medieval times, when people came in droves to make merry before another fast and dangerous form of competition, the joust.
"The more I dug into the history, the more I saw the parallels," says Ms. Rybacki, who has presented papers on the topic and wrote about it in a recent anthology "The Sporting World of the Modern South." She notes that the late Nascar hero Dale Earnhardt carried the moniker "The Black Knight."