The Lewis Chessmen or Scandinavian Barbies?

This week has been an interesting one for me in terms of historical findings. Firstly, Tuesday afternoon I attended a MARS guest lecture by Dr. Caldwell on the Lewis Chessmen. The talk was very informative and while he was speaking I could not help but to apply the things I had been learning in the Archaeological Ethics course.

The Lewis Chessmen were thought to be discovered by a farmer in the Town of Lewis in Scotland – and it has been argued that this is the largest and most important find to ever come out of Scottish soil. However, the pieces were not given to academics right away, but sold to a local museum which split the pieces up. As it stands today, 11 pieces are in Scotland and 82 are at the British Museum.

The first problem here is the provenance of these pieces. It seems all too often that one hears a story of a farmer making a discovery and passing it off for money. But this cannot be trusted – what if they were found far from a local farm, and in fact on the beaches of Lewis, washed up on shore? Historians argue many points, and it seems the most popular story given to the general public is that these pieces must have been dropped or forgotten by a passing merchant. What is not taken into account however, after careful study, is that these pieces are from different dates, which can be determined by the artwork, shape of the shields, facial structures and varying degrees of craftsmanship. These pieces, although in the same hoard, would be hard to argue that they were brand new and a merchant was sailing along the coast selling them.

Furthermore, after studying the pieces it has been concluded that they came from a church workshop in Northern Norway. They are also made from Walrus tusks and whale teeth – not the easiest materials to come by, and certainly not the cheapest. It is more likely that these “chess” pieces were commissioned by wealthy families of the day, which discounts the theory that it was a travelling merchant, and perhaps a family collection.

Gaming in the 11^th-13^th centuries was very popular, however, chess was only becoming popular in the north towards the end of the 13^th century. The fact that these are called the “Lewis Chessman” may also be a bit of a stretch as the pieces range in date from the 11^th to 13^th centuries. Is this a classic example of how an object becomes their name? Of the 93 pieces, 3 chess sets could be made, but there are also round disks which suggests another game popularized in Norse culture called Hnefatafl – a game in which the king is located in the centre of the board and the pieces must surround and protect. It seems likely that this collection of gaming pieces was somewhat of a collection of games, with pieces that could be used in 3-4 different scenarios.

Another thing that was useful in this talk was to see how much scholarship had been done on the pieces even though they were not found by archaeologists. It is amazing the amount of information that has been gained from their study, and it makes me sad to think that there are objects sitting unattended because of how they were discovered.

Finally, I would like to make a point about ownership. These pieces were found on the Scottish soil in the 19^th century, but they date back to a time when the coasts of Scotland were inhabited by Scandinavians. Are these a part of Scottish history or Scandinavian history? Perhaps their home is not in Edinburgh or London, but in the cities of Norway or Denmark.

On a side note, after this lecture we travelled up to the 10^th floor special collections to take a look at some of the medieval documents that have been acquired and the others that were discovered over the summer. They have one piece, dating from approximately 1241-3 which is a land transfer in England. This piece was discovered about a year ago while cleaning out a filing cabinet. After doing some research they discovered that it was donated to Brock University in 1974, by a local collector. I asked the archivist about the provenance, and while he could not provide much information he said something along the lines of “Well, he was a very established collector and I spoke to his daughter who works at the ROM and he never acquired things illegally”… I’m sure this is true, but after doing research for my presentation, I think it is a little naïve to believe that someone has a wide collection of things which they know for a fact are legitimate.