But who'd have thought of Vikings
Playing chess?
The first time that I can actually remember seeing any of the Viking chess pieces discovered in the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides, was in the mid 1980s. I was at London University studying English, and Old Norse and Old English were two of my constituent courses. Those of us studying these courses took an afternoon to visit an exhibition in the South Bank devoted to art and culture immediately following the Norman Invasion. In the gift shop I bought a replica Knight and a replica rook, and had I had enough spare grant from my student grant ( if you're under 40, then ask your parents what they were) then I'd have bought the whole set. I thought they were amazing. I've seen the originals several times since in their home in the British Museum, and if you ever get the chance to do so, I highly recommend it.
Fast forward good ten years and I actually did buy a full set - although the pieces were approximately half the size of the originals. That went the way of all flesh some time in the last 18 years or so since we moved house. Nonetheless I retain a huge amount of affection for these remarkably dramatic and animated figures, and it's nice to think of hairy Scandinavian beserkers settling down for a nice game of chess after a hard day's pillage.
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