Lewis Chess Men

 

Splendid Lewis chess pieces from
the late 12th century.

Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit

The Queen's Gambit

was quite a sensation last year and apparently contributed strongly to a resurgence of interest in learning to play the game. By chance, a week ago, I watched another film from 1993 on Netflix, Innocent Moves, featuring an intuitively brilliant 7 year old chess prodigy, who worshipped Bobby Fischer and his success as world chess champion over Boris Spassky, I also noted a passing reference to the Lewis Chess men in an article in the New York Times. As a non-player who can applaud the passion for the game, I decided to unearth the history and possible provenance of the Lewis chess men. They are seriously antique but the current interest is contemporary and underlines the huge attraction this game has held for people over many centuries.

Innocent Moves

In fact chess originated in India as the ancient game of chaturanga; during the reign of King Khosrau of Persia, [531-579] a gift from an Indian Prince to his court included a chess game of 16 pieces of emerald and 16 pieces of ruby [green vs red].After the eventual Islamic conquest of Persia, the game of chess spread, via Andalusian Spain, to mediaeval Europe. It became an important part of elite mediaeval society, a way of practising and demonstrating skill and strategy in a war-like setting. Many of the mediaeval chess pieces are still familiar to those who play today. There were other contemporary games of skill, different from but similar to, chess such as tables and hnefatafl; tables is similar to today’s backgammon and hnefatafl used similar pieces to those in chess such as kings and pawns; a king, surrounded by guards has to reach a corner square before being captured by his opponent. A grid for playing hnefatafl scratched on a piece of stone was found in Inchmarnock in
Scotland, one of 35 playing boards discovered there.

Knights Templar playing chess.

Grid for playing hnefatafl found
in Inchmarnock

The Lewis Chess Men were found, buried on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides; the hoard contained 93 gaming pieces, from at least four chess sets as well as from other games. They were probably made in the late 12^th or early 13^th centuries and the style of the carving links the pieces to Trondheim in Norway; the Lewis figures’ thrones are particularly reminiscent of carving in mediaeval Norwegian churches. Most of the Lewis pieces are made from walrus ivory, probably obtained in Greenland and traded back to Norway but five of the pieces are carved from sperm-whale teeth. All the pieces belong to the Scandinavian world of which the Hebrides were then a part. Certainly at the time the sets were buried, Lewis belonged to the Kingdom of Norway and the culture was a mix of Gaelic and Scandinavian and even after the Isles were ceded to Scotland in 1266, ties to Norway remained close, with the local bishops still part of the bishopric of Trondheim.

The beach at Uig where the chess men were 
discovered.

There is no information as to who buried the chess sets and why. They may have been the valuable property of a merchant sailing from Scandinavia to Scotland, Ireland or the Isle of Man to sell these highly-prized sets. But given the close ties to Norway, Lewis would have been home to some powerful and rich people and the valuable chess men, a treasured possession of a local leader, prince or bishop. No ordinary family could have afforded to own them. But the mystery of their burial, no doubt to hide, keep safe and later retrieve, perhaps during a shipwreck, will never be solved.

The splendid treasure was discovered by Malcolm MacLeod from nearby Pennydonald, in a sand bank at the head of Camas Uig on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland in early 1831. He briefly exhibited them in his byre before selling it all to Captain Roderick Ririe in the same year. Ririe briefly showed the Chess Men on 11^th April 1831 with the Society of Antiquaries after which ten pieces were sold to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe while the other 67 chessmen and 14 table-men were bought by the British Museum. Somehow, eventually, Sharpe acquired an 11^th piece and sold all eleven fifty years later, in 1888, to Lord Londesborough who sold them on to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland from where they went, donated, to the Royal Scottish Museum of Edinburgh. A resting place in two parts following a chequered career over nine centuries, still magnificently intact. The Lewis Chess Men are a testimony first to supreme artistry; second to good fortune; third to the old urge to preserve evidence of mankind’s earlier days and last, to the strong desire to preserve continuity in our national story.

The beautiful but expensive Warder identified
and sold in July 2019.

Footnote.

After discovering, and writing, the above I stumbled upon the fact that as recently as July 2019 one of the four [always] missing Warders from the Lewis Chess Men, had been sold at Sotheby’s for the unbelievable sum of £735,000 to an anonymous buyer who purchased it from the deceased former owner’s family. It had been in the possession of this previous owner for 55 years after he had purchased it from a Scottish antiques dealer for £5 [1964] The former director of the British Museum, Neil McGregor, in his highly successful and influential History of the World in 100 Objects, included the Lewis Chess Set describing it as illustrating high status, wealth and power in its original owners, and also paying tribute to their knowledge, taste and intellect.