The Wife Carrying World Championship is this weekend (Friday and Saturday) in Finland. In the contest male competitors race while each carrying a female teammate. The objective is for the male to carry the female through a special obstacle course in the fastest time. (LINK) Several types of carrying are allowed: classic piggyback; a fireman’s carry (over the shoulder); or Estonian-style (wife upside-down on his back with her legs over the neck and shoulders). Wife carrying — Eukonkanto as it’s called in Finland — has a few possible origins. Tales have been passed down of a man named Herkko Rosvo-Ronkainen, who was thought to be a robber in the late 1800s who lived in a forest. He supposedly ran around with his gang of thieves causing harm to villagers. From what has been found, there are three ideas as to why/how this sport was invented. Firstly, that Rosvo-Ronkainen and his thieves were accused of stealing food and abducting women from villages in the area he lived in, then carrying these women on their backs as they ran away (hence the “wife” or woman carrying). The second suggestion is that young men would go to neighboring villages and abduct women to forcibly marry, often women who were already married. These wives were also carried on the backs of the young men; this was referred to as “the practice of wife stealing”. Lastly, is the idea that Rosvo-Ronkainen trained his thieves to be “faster and stronger” by carrying big, heavy sacks on their backs, from which this sport evolved.