The Story of The Lewis Chessmen

The 12th century Lewis Chessmen are one of Britain’s finest and most valuable heritage treasures. They represent the largest single surviving collection of objects made purely for the purposes of recreation in the medieval period, at a time when chess was becoming hugely popular among the aristocracy. They may also be some of the only medieval chess sets still in existence today.

The 93 tiny ivory-carved seated kings, obelisk pawns and knights poised on their mounts are also a subject of some controversy. Although discovered in Scotland – on the Isle of Lewis, in 1831 – only 11 pieces reside there, in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. The other 82 artefacts are held by the British Museum in London. A loan agreement has recently been reached that will see the Lewis Chessmen reunited temporarily in Scotland throughout 2010 and 2011. But the Scots want them back for good.

Origins

Carved ornately and individually from walrus tusks and whale teeth, with beautifully detailed clothing and crowns and wide-eyed, piercing and melancholic gazes, the Lewis Chessmen were probably the painstaking work of Norwegian craftsmen in Trondheim, which was the capital of Norway until 1217. They comprise eight kings, eight queens, 16 bishops, 15 knights, 12 rooks, and 19 pawns.

The Outer Hebrides – the chain of islands off the north-west coast of modern day Scotland – were at that time under the control of the Norwegians. No one can be certain how the Chessmen – who appear to derive from four or five distinct sets – ended up on the island. But the best possible guess is that they were left or lost there by a Norwegian merchant, en route to Ireland (which was a large Viking centre at the time). Most of the pieces are in excellent condition, which suggests they were hardly used, if used at all.

A board for a game by modern rules using one set of the Lewis Chessmen would have needed to measure about 82 centimetres wide. Since a few of the pieces are said to have been stained red when they were found, it’s thought that Norwegian chessboards may have had red and white squares, instead of the black and white.

Discovery

Various local myths surround the discovery of the Lewis Chessmen, which were found buried in a sandbank at the head of the Bay of Uig, on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, by crofter Malcolm “Sprot” Macleod from nearby Pennydonald in 1831.

One popular story reports that they were stolen from an unknown ship sheltering in the bay by an escaping cabin boy, who swam ashore, before being murdered by an onlooker and concealed in the sand bank. Another has it that Macleod was led to the spot by an escaping cow he was chasing across the beach.

What we do know for certain is that the Chessmen were quickly transported on – apparently by a Captain Ryrie (or Pirie) – to a disreputable antiques dealer in Edinburgh called TA Forrest. The £30 Macleod received for his remarkable find evidently didn’t stretch very far – he and his family were evicted a few years later to make way for a farm.

Current Whereabouts

What happened next is slightly confusing. The set was split up by Forrest, into one large collection of 82 pieces – which he sold, after much haggling, to the British Museum for a sum of 80 guineas – and another set of 10 pieces, which he secretly kept in reserve.

Those 10 were then bought by Scottish genealogist and artist Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, who somehow managed to mysteriously acquire – direct from Lewis – a single additional piece (a bishop). After Sharpe’s death, all 11 pieces were bought by diplomat and politician Lord Londesborough, who sold them on at a Christie’s auction in 1888 to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland had actually tried and failed to raise enough money to buy some of the set directly from Forrest before it was sold to the British Museum. They had a few pieces at last, and proceeded to donate them all to the Royal Museum of Scotland – the modern National Museum of Scotland. The Lewis Chessmen were now all on public display, but at two different sites.

Controversy

The British Museum today counts the Lewis Chessmen among the most valued and popular artefacts in their collection. In a 2003 BBC TV documentary, Our Top Ten Treasures, experts ranked them fifth in a list of the museum’s most-impressive and important sets of archaeological artefacts.

The ethics and legitimacy of the British Museum’s ownership of the artefacts has been called into question, however, by voices north of the border. The SNP Government of Scotland – which came to power in 2007, with a nationalist agenda and the ultimate goal of independence from the rest of the UK – chose to make a political issue of the Lewis Chessmen, and their uneven divide between two museums and two countries. Linda Fabiani, then the Scottish Minister for Culture, called the situation “unacceptable” and led calls for the collection's return to Scotland and to Lewis.

Small sets of the British Museum Chessmen had been loaned to Scottish museums in the past (in the early 1990s they visited Lewis, travelling in a locked briefcase under police escort). An announcement was made in October 2009 – possibly in a spirit of compromise – that a proportion of the London collection (25 pieces or more) would be loaned to the Scots as part of a touring exhibition running from 2010 until 2011. The Lewis Chessmen are set to be reunited as a result for the first time in over 150 years. “I am delighted that they will be making a return, a Homecoming,” beamed Scottish Culture Minister Mike Russell in a statement.

The Future of the Lewis Chessmen

The British Museum was never likely to relinquish the Lewis Chessmen to the Scots altogether, not only because they prize the collection, but also because of the dangerous precedent repatriation would have set in relation to other controversial items in their collection, such as the Elgin Marbles. Yet, the Scottish Government doesn’t look like giving up their claim for permanent ownership of the full set completely. The debate over the Lewis Chessmen’s long-term future looks likely to run on much further still.

It’s worth bearing in mind that not all of the pieces have yet been discovered. If the total collection represents – as is believed – four or five distinctive sets, that means as many as 35 or 67 other pieces may be out there somewhere – buried in a Lewis sand dune, lying at the bottom of the sea or hidden somewhere in or near Trondheim (where similar pieces have been found in the recent past).

If or when those other pawns, bishops, kings and queens surface, it’ll take strategy, patience and maneuvering – all the skills required of a great chess player – to bring the increasingly complex quarrel over ownership of the Lewis Chessmen to checkmate.

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