The Lewis Chessmen
About 1150 to 1200
In front of you are eleven small figures carved from walrus ivory, each one with a face that seems to be worrying about something. A king sits with his sword across his knees, a queen rests her cheek on her hand in what looks like weary despair, bishops clutch their croziers, and a warder, the piece we would now call a rook, bites the top of his shield in a berserker rage. They belong to a hoard of ninety three gaming pieces found on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in 1831. Eighty two of the pieces went to the British Museum in London, and these eleven came to Edinburgh, so the two museums between them hold what may be four incomplete chess sets.
Look closely at the carving. The pieces are only a few centimetres tall, yet every fold of drapery, every curl of hair and every strand of the queen's plaited braid is cut with confidence. The style of the thrones, decorated with interlace and animal ornament, points to a workshop in Trondheim in Norway, made at a time when Lewis was part of a Norse kingdom that stretched across the northern seas. Some pieces show traces of red staining, which suggests that the two sides were once distinguished by colour rather than by the dark and light we use today. Notice how different the expressions are. No two faces are quite alike.
How the hoard came to be buried in a sand dune at Uig is still a mystery. One story says a merchant hid it on his way to sell the pieces in Ireland and never came back. Another says a cow uncovered the stone cist in which they lay. The pieces were bought by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1888 and have been among the museum's best loved objects ever since. They matter because they show the wealth and reach of the Norse world, and because they are simply wonderful little sculptures. The anxious queen, in particular, has become a favourite with visitors of every age.
Did You Know? The pieces became famous to a new generation when they appeared as Wizard's Chess in the first Harry Potter film.
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