Viking Chess or Hnefatafl

Long before chess reached the North, Vikings were hunched over hnefatafl, “the king’s table.” (Hnefi, “fist,” was the name of the king piece.) It is a game of unequal armies. One player starts in the center with a king and a small band of defenders, trying to get the king to safety at the board’s edge or corners. The other commands a larger force spread around the edges and tries to surround and capture the king. Boards came in several sizes, including 7×7, 9×9, 11×11, and 13×13. No rulebook survives from the Viking Age, so modern rules are educated reconstructions.

Sámi Tablut

The Sámi, who lived alongside the Norse, played a close relative called tablut. The Sámi were still playing it in 1732, when the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus recorded its rules in his Lapland journal (published later as Lachesis Lapponica).

Modern Viking Chess Rules

Linnaeus wrote the rules in Latin, and translators rendered them incorrectly in English in the 1800s. The incorrect translation made the game much easier for the defending player. Modern players experimented with the rules to create a more balanced game, and a new translation helped clarify those rules in the 1900s.

Vikings and Viking Chess

It may be difficult to think of the Vikings as people who played games, but like any society, they had different forms of fun. The sagas record a ball game. The sagas mention dice games. Viking chess was popular enough that some burial sites held playing pieces and parts of boards. Mourners buried the warrior in Birka grave Bj 581, discussed in Viking Women Celebration, with a full gaming set.

Confusingly, sellers also market the lawn game kubb, where players throw sticks to topple their opponents’ wooden blocks, as “Viking chess.” Its Viking origin is a modern claim with no real evidence behind it. For more Viking Age pastimes, see a Viking Age toy discovery and Make It a Viking Summer.

Chess, itself, likely made its way to Scandinavia before the end of the Viking Age. Some scholars believe its arrival sounded the death knell for Viking Chess, or Hnefatafl.

Video: Jackson Crawford on Norse sports and games.