The Lewis Chessmen Read Online Free PDF Page A

cathedral.
    The limited evidence favours Trondheim over Bergen as the likely centre of manufacture of ivory chessmen. Apart from theivory queen already mentioned, excavations in the town have led to the recovery of a wooden king of similar form to the Lewis pieces. It is thought to date to the early thirteenth century. There is a piece of twelfth-century walrus-ivory carving, perhaps the head of a staff, from the island of Munkholmen, near Trondheim. Its scrollwork decoration is comparable to that on some of the Lewis chessmen. It is known that by the early fourteenth century, and possibly much earlier, the Norse settlers in Greenland paid the archbishops large quantities of walrus tusks as tithes (taxes). A king, made from a whale’s tooth, has recently been found on the island of Hitra to the west of Trondheim. It is in the same tradition as the Lewis kings, but is clearly later, perhaps late thirteenth or fourteenth century in date.
    The Lewis chessmen bishops are the earliest chess bishops known. In earlier versions of the game, the positions occupied by bishops were taken by elephants. Could it be that this substitution reflects the interest and patronage of a senior cleric like an archbishop of Trondheim? None of this makes it certain that Trondheim was the place many or all of the Lewis chessmen were made, but it is at least a strong probability.

Playing Games
    C HESS may have been relatively new to Lewis in the late twelfth century. The origins of the game probably lie in India in, or prior to, the sixth century AD. From there it spread westwards and was widely known in Europe by the eleventh century. The earliest European chessmen copy Islamic models, being non-figurative or abstract. The Lewis chessmen are among the earliest that are shaped as recognisable figures. They are also among the earliest chessmen from the area that is now Scotland.

    21. JARLSHOF GAMING-BOARD Fragment of a double-sided slate game-board (X.HSA 801 and 778) from the Viking age settlement at Jarlshof, Shetland. One side appears to have been for playing hnefatafl .
    The game of chess has also evolved considerably over the centuries. Earlier versions had ministers or vizirs instead of queens, war elephants instead of bishops, and chariots instead of rooks. The composition of the Lewis chess sets – with a king and queen, bishops, knights, warders and pawns – is clearly much more relevant to the make-up of Scandinavian society in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The pawns represent the common folk, or at least those men who were obliged to do military service. The warders – the term for these pieces coined in 1832 by Frederic Madden, Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts in the British Museum – represented a more élite group of warriors, but ones not of the same high status as knights or nobles. These were (royal) retainers or mercenaries.
    Chess was not the only board game that required kings andpawns. There was another game called hnefatafl , in which one player had a group of attackers arranged around the edge of the board and attempted to capture a centrally-placed king defended by his guards. The player with the king could win if he could get his king to one of the four corner squares.
    Hnefatafl was already popular in the Scandinavian world prior to the advent of chess, and, as time went on, more and more turned to playing chess and hnefatafl became a minority interest or disappeared altogether. There is evidence of hnefatafl having been played in Orkney in the Viking age, in the form of game-boards, and there is one from the Viking settlement at Jarlshof in Shetland [ Fig. 21 ]. It is crudely carved on a piece of slate. Both sides are chequered, one side with the central area in a circle and five of its squares marked with a cross. This would have been for positioning the king and four men to guard him. A hnefatafl board, incised in stone, from a thirteenth-century context at Whithorn Priory (Dumfries and