Editing Gnav (section)

== History ==
[[File:Hallwylska museet 2012 03.jpg|thumb|Swedish Kille deck from 1897.]]
The origins of Gnav lie in the French children's card game of [[Mécontent]] (''Malcontent'' i.e. "unhappy") whose first references date to the early 16th century.<ref name=Depaulis>Depaulis (1981), pp. 23–24.</ref>{{efn|The game was also known as [[Hère (card game)|Hère]] but eventually the name [[Coucou]] ("Cuckoo") prevailed. Coucou is still played in France today.}} This game had migrated to Italy by the mid-16th century where it was named "Malcontento" {{efn|"Capriccio in laude del Malcontento" by [[Luigi Tansillo]] of Naples.<ref name=Kuromiya>Kuromiya (2011), pp. 232–233.</ref>}} but it was in the early 18th century that the first [[Dedicated deck card game|dedicated decks]] for what became known as [[Cuccù]] (Cuckoo) appeared; the pack consisting of 38 cards.<ref>Smith (1991c), p. 22.</ref> As in the original game, [[Suit (cards)|suits]] were irrelevant but rank was important. The new pack consisted of two identical sequences of 19 cards each, including a Fool. The game was also known to be played with wooden pieces in Venice during the late 18th century, possibly as a way of avoiding the [[stamp duty|stamp tax]].<ref name=Pratesi>Pratesi (1990), pp. 75–76.</ref>

Since the game was popular among sailors and mercenaries in the eighteenth century, it spread rapidly to other parts of Europe, changing its name and generating local variations in the number of cards or images portrayed.<ref name=Muller>Muller (2008), p. 7.</ref> By the time it had reached [[Denmark]] as ''Gniao'' (Italian for [[miaow]]), it had 42 cards; the earliest packs being produced by [[Jacob Holmblad]] in the 1820s or 1830s.<ref name=Jensen/> The game became known as Gnav when the game was taken to [[Norway]] by Danish officials in the days when the two countries were united as [[Denmark-Norway]]. At that time it was played with both cards and men (playing pieces resembling [[chess pawn]]s). The latter probably originated under Christian VI (1730–1746), the Pietist king, during whose reign a ban on card games was introduced to lessen the misery of reckless gambling, but the game's popularity among commoners meant that it was given a new life as a game with pieces,<ref name=":0">{{cite web|author=Marthe Glad Munch-Møller |date=2015|publisher=Institutt for historiske studier, NTNU Trondheim|title=Gnavspill: Hvordan det hele begynte|url=https://landslaget.org/images/lhm/lm315.pdf|work=Lokalhistorisk magasin Nr. 03, 2015. Landslaget for lokalhistorie (LLH), Norsk lokalhistorisk institutt (NLI)}}<!-- auto-translated by Module:CS1 translator --></ref> the images being glued to the base so they could not be seen when stood up. The men were usually kept in a leather bag.<ref name=Jensen/> Since it was no longer a card game, it was even allowed to be played on Sundays and over Christmas. As a result, it changed from a [[gambling game]] to a [[children's game]] during the 19th century and it is still seen as a game for the Christmas season today.<ref name=Jensen/> In Norway, both the card game and variant using pieces are still played. Gnav was also taken to the Netherlands where it became known as ''Slabberjan''.<ref name="pagat"/>

The game is first mentioned in [[Sweden]] in 1741, as [[Cambio (card game)|Cambio]] (Italian for "[[Wiktionary:exchange|exchange]]"), also called Campio, Camphio, Camfio or Kamfio.  In 1833 this became [[Kille (card game)|Kille]] (probably a distortion of "[[Harlequin]]", given the special rules for that card in the Swedish version of the game), which became the common form of the game around 1850.<ref>Kastner & Folkvord (2005), p. 30.</ref>

In 1979, a new Gnav pack, designed by Astrid Pilegaard Larsen, was produced to coincide with a games exhibition, with the intention of rescuing the game from obscurity.<ref name=Jensen/> Gnav packs are still available in Norway today.