Walruses, Vikings and Chess

Three of the most popular exhibits at the British Museum in London are the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, and the Lewis Chessmen.

The Lewis chessmen?

Carved from the tusks of walruses, the Lewis chessmen were found in the 1830s on a beach on the island of Lewis in the Hebrides, off the Scottish coast. Some 92 pieces from four sets of chessmen were discovered, but exactly where they were found, and who found them, remains something of a mystery.

Where the pieces originated is also a mystery – and some controversy. Many experts say the most likely source was a workshop (or workshops) in Trondheim, Norway. Others argue for Iceland. It’s also possible that the pieces could have made in Scotland or England. Clearly, they reflect a Norse design influence and were created about 1200, give or take a few decades.  The official guidebooks on the chessmen published by the British Museum and the National Museums Scotland seem to accept the Trondheim argument.

In Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them, Nancy Marie Brown, who has written books about the Vikings and reads both Icelandic and Old Norse, argues for Iceland. Even more provocatively, she argues for a woman carver, Margret the Adroit, known for her work in carving walrus ivory about the time the Lewis chessmen were created.

But Brown does far more than that. She envelops the chessmen in the times they were created, exploring the influence of the Vikings and Norse kings over the North Sea, Scotland and its outer islands, Iceland and Greenland. She goes into detail about walrus ivory, and how the chessmen would have been carved. She describes the history of the period, bringing in the Caliphate in Baghdad, Charlemagne, the Vatican, Christian politics of the time, and the Norse sagas, which I was only vaguely familiar with from the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien.

And she uses a structure built around the pieces themselves, which keeps the story centered on the chessmen even as she ranges across a number of fields of study. Her story continually reminded me of how little I knew of Norse history (I also learned about the history of chess, and that it was with the Lewis chessmen that the bishop first appeared as one of the pieces).

Nancy Marie Brown

Brown is the author of Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist’s View of Genetically Modified Food (2004); The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman (2008); The Abacus and the Cross: The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages (2010); Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of the Norse Myths (2014); and The Saga of Gudrid the Far Traveler (2015). She blogs at God of Wednesday and lives in Vermont.

Whether you accept her argument for Iceland or not, Ivory Vikings is a fascinating tale of history, told through the means of these small figures. In their history context, the Lewis chessmen are about far more than a game and pastime that people enjoyed and occasionally fought over.

Additional reading on the Lewis chessmen:

The Lewis Chessmen Unmasked (2011) by David Caldwell, Mark Hall and Caroline Wilkinson (published by the National Museums Scotland).

The Lewis Chessmen by J. Robinson (published by the British Museum).

Photograph: The Lewis Chessmen at the British Museum.

Words and Images: A Poemcrazy Collage

Over at Tweetspeak Poetry, we’ve been reading poemcrazy: freeing your life with words by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge. The readings come with exercises. So far, I’ve made two stabs at communing with nature, one to name the plants and trees in our back yard and the other to have a conversation with a tree, but they didn’t work out so well. What worked better was to select a place of beauty or mystery and write about it.

This week, my choices for a practical exercise included listing where you need freedom in your life; seeking out children and jotting down what they say; interviewing a fellow discussion participant with questions like who were you in my dream (which sounds rather vaguely like a writing prompt for a poetry jam on Twitter); writing about the center of your childhood home; weeping in the grocery (the only thing that makes me weep in the grocery is the prices); assembling a collage of things around you; looking at what the “image angel” has placed in front of you; and making up a string of words because you like the sound of them (like “woozel” in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories; except A.A. Milne already made that up).

I decided to combine a couple (no, I did not go weep in the grocery). I looked at all of the words and images surrounding me in my office at work, and made a list.

Here are some of them: Emergency Procedures for the office; photo of a raindrop; a framed print of Stump Speaking by George Caleb Bingham; replicas of three “Lewis” chessmen found on an island off Scotland; the Gettysburg Address (framed); a replica of the Eiffel Tower made from chicken wire; a world atlas; An American Heritage Dictionary; a pen-and-pencil holder in the form of an LSU football helmet; red Arizona quartz stones two stone sculptures by Iowa artist Isabel Bloom; a Celtic cross; and pictures of grandchildren.

And books – some representative titles: 101 Things I Learned in Film School; Union of Words; Creating the Corporate Soul; Beyond Bullet Points; Writing Space; Electric Rhetoric; Lend Me Your Ears; First Break All the Rules; and Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement.

I saw the common themes almost immediately. I have surrounded myself in my office with words and memory, including books about words and even images about words.  

And while it looked simple at first glance, I wondered how I was going to distill a poem form all that – a poem that made sense. Or didn’t make sense in a sensical kind of way. I think I know what I mean.

Words and Images: Old and New

Words old and new swirl

with images old and new

surrounding my mind

old and new, words and

images of a hundred speeches

old and new, led in procession

by Lincoln at Gettysburg,

old yet still new, red rocks

old in age, new in possession,

my Lewis chessmen, old

in memory, new in replica,

dictionary and atlas new

at the end of old evolution,

a cross old and new each day,

words, always words,

surrounded with words,

always old, always new.

To see what others in the discussion are writing about, please visit Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: My three replicas of Lewis chessmen, purchased from the British Museum, September 2012.