The Lewis Chessmen Read Online Free PDF Page B

It was only later that it was realised that this was in fact a very fine chessman (rook?) of walrus ivory, dating to the mid-thirteenth century, with two warriors, back to back in a framework of foliage scrollwork. Both are clad in mail hauberks and have drawn swords and shields [ Fig. 25 ]. Its place of manufacture is unknown – possibly in Scandinavia or Britain. And it may have been recovered from Loch St Columba in Skye, which contained an island residence of the Kings of the Isles.
    Not from the Isles themselves, but from the castle of Dunstaffnage on the west coast of Argyll near Oban, is a chess king made from a sperm whale’s tooth [ Fig. 26 ]. The present whereabouts of this piece are unknown, but on the basis of an early nineteenth-century drawing, it can on stylistic grounds be dated to the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. It is, however, very much still in the same tradition as the Lewis chessmen.

    23 AND24. TABLES-MEN Bone tables-man (23) (NMS H.NS 99) from the Isle of Rum, c .1500, and (24) (NMS H.NS 92) of 15th-century date from Iona abbey .

    25. CHESS KNIGHT Made of walrus ivory, mid-13th century, possibly from Isle of Skye (NMS, H.NS 15) .

    26. CHESS KING Made from the tooth of a sperm whale in the late 15th or early 16th century, this piece was discovered at Dunstaffnage Castle near Oban, Argyll. From an early 19th-century drawing .
    All this reinforces our contention that the presence of the Lewis chessmen on Lewis should not be seen as some aberration, resulting from their loss in transit elsewhere.
    Their loss must be viewed as accidental, but not unreasonably a matter involving an owner who lived on or frequented Lewis, failing to recover this treasure which he had temporarily hidden for safekeeping.

The Legacy
    A S works of art, the Lewis chessmen tell us a great deal about the Scandinavian world in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, what people valued and the quality of life. They are a useful source of information on how royalty, clerics, knights and warriors dressed. They have fascinated hundreds of thousands of people worldwide since their discovery and their popularity appears to be going from strength to strength. The replica chessmen and images of them that are widely available are a testimony to this, as is their use in advertising. Indeed, they often crop up in the most surprising and unusual situations. Here we draw attention to some of their appearances in literature, films and on televisions.
    Two films set in the twelfth century – ‘Becket’ (United Kingdom 1964) and ‘The Lion in Winter’ (UK 1968) – feature Lewis-style chess sets being played, in the former by King Louis of France and one of his noblemen, and in the latter by King Philip II of France and Geoffrey, the son of King Henry II of England. More recently they are the inspiration for the chessmen in the film of J. K. Rowling ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ (United States 2001).
    That doyen of children’s literature, Rosemary Sutcliff, wrote her Chess-Dream in a Garden around the Lewis chessmen, andon television, and subsequently in book form, they inspired the classic children’s animation, ‘The Saga of Noggin the Nog’, as described by one of its creators, Oliver Postgate: *
    At different times both Peter Firmin and I had visited the … Museum, where we had both noticed a set of Norse chessmen from the island of Lewis. What had impressed us was that, far from being fierce and warlike, it was clear that these were essentially kindly, non-belligerent characters, who were thoroughly dismayed by the prospect of contest. … it occurred to Peter that the chessmen … could well have been called Nogs, that their prince was a Noggin and that the wicked baron … could be their … uncle, perhaps a Nogbad.
    The creators of Noggin the Nog realised that there was a lot to be made of the faces of the Lewis chessmen, that children as