page_title: Lewis chessmen
section_title: Origin
hierarchical_section_title: Lewis chessmen / Origin
caption_attribution_description: English: The Lewis Chessmen in the British Museum were probably made in Norway, about AD 1150-1200 Found on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland The chess pieces consist of elaborately worked walrus ivory and whales' teeth in the forms of seated kings and queens, mitred bishops, knights on their mounts, standing warders and pawns in the shape of obelisks. Flickr data on 2011-07-22: Camera: Canon EOS Kiss Digital Tags: chess, chessmen, lewischessmen, britishmuseum, museum, artifact, antiquities, old License: CC BY 2.0 User: RobRoyAus Rob Roy
context_page_description: The Lewis chessmen or Uig chessmen, named after the island or the bay where they were found, are a group of distinctive 12th-century chess pieces, along with other game pieces, most of which are carved from walrus ivory. Discovered in 1831 on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, they may constitute some of the few complete, surviving medieval chess sets, although it is not clear if a set as originally made can be assembled from the pieces. When found, the hoard contained 93 artifacts: 78 chess pieces, 14 tablemen and one belt buckle. Today, 82 pieces are owned and usually exhibited by the British Museum in London, and the remaining 11 are at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
  Additionally, a newly identified piece, a "warder", the equivalent of a castle or rook, was sold for £735,000 in July 2019. Four other major pieces, and many pawns, remain missing from the chess sets.
context_section_description: Most accounts have said the pieces were found at Uig Bay (58°11′10″N 7°01′19″W) on the west coast of Lewis but Caldwell et al. of National Museums Scotland (NMS) consider that Mealista (58°06′14″N 7°06′29″W), also in the parish of Uig and some 6 miles (10 km) further south down the coast, is a more likely place for the hoard to have been discovered. The hoard was divided and sold in the 19th century – the British Museum (BM) holds eighty-two pieces and National Museums Scotland has the other eleven pieces. 
  At the British Museum it was Sir Frederic Madden, Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts, who persuaded the Trustees to purchase for 80 guineas (£84) the eighty-two pieces which he had been misled into believing was the entire hoard. Madden was a palaeographer, a scholar of early vernacular literature, but he was especially intrigued by these artifacts because he was a chess enthusiast. Madden immediately set about writing a monumental research paper about the collection, Madden (1832) – one that remains  informative and impressive today.
  The British Museum claims the chessmen were probably made in Trondheim, the medieval capital of Norway, in the 12th century, although some scholars have suggested other Nordic countries.
  During that period, the Outer Hebrides, along with other major groups of Scottish islands, were ruled by Norway.
  According to Alex Woolf, director of the University of St Andrews Institute for Medieval Studies, there are reasons for believing the pieces came from Trondheim:
  A broken queen piece in a similar style was found in an excavation of the archbishop's palace – it appeared the piece was broken as it was being made.
  The presence of wealthy people in Trondheim able to pay craftsmen for high-quality chess pieces.
  Similar carving in Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim.
  The excavation in Trondheim of a kite-shaped shield similar to shields on some of the pieces and a king piece of similar design found on Hitra Island, near the mouth of Trondheim Fjord. Woolf has said that the armour worn by the chess figures includes "perfect" reproductions of armour worn at the time in Norway.
  Icelanders Gudmundur Thorarinsson and Einar Einarsson have proposed that the chessmen originated in Iceland, since only in Iceland were the bishops called that at that time, while in other countries they used a name unassociated with the church, they claimed. However, this was disputed by Woolf, who stated that the use of bishops originated in England, and by Norwegian chess historian and member of Chess History & Literature Society, Morten Lilleøren.
  The text that the Icelanders refer to dates to the early 14th century, while two 13th-century Latin texts from other countries call the chess piece bishop, and the Lewis chessmen probably date to the 12th century. Moreover, there are many medieval chess bishops of various origins in different museums in Europe and USA. A bishop that probably predates the Lewis chessmen was in the collection of Jean-Joseph Marquet de Vasselot and was sold at Christie's in Paris in 2011 with a radiocarbon dating report stating that there is a 95% probability that the ivory dates between AD 790 and AD 990. It is thought to be English or German and carved in the 12th century. Stylistically it predates the Lewis chessmen, as its mitre is worn sideways. According to the lot essay with references, the presence of the bishop among the chess pieces was a twelfth-century European invention. The bishop's inclusion reflects his status in the social system of the period, especially in Scandinavia and in England where clerics played significant roles in battlefield conflicts.
  The Icelanders further claim that the pieces were carved by an artist known as Margret the Adroit.
  Some historians believe that the Lewis chessmen were hidden (or lost) after some mishap occurred during their carriage from Norway to wealthy Norse towns on the east coast of Ireland, such as Dublin. The large number of pieces and their lack of wear may suggest that they were the stock of a trader or dealer. Along with the chess pieces, there were 14 
caption: "Berserker" warder (rook), in the British Museum
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