Hnefatafl likely died out as a certain game from the orient called Chess gained more popularity during the Middle Ages. The other side simply had to defend the corners and capture the King. On one side, the aim was to defend the King and advance it to the corner of the board. It was an ‘uneven’ game in that the two sides had different numbers of pieces. We don’t know the exact rules – more on this shortly – but the game would have been played on a board of 11×11 or 13×13. From this we can see that it would have been played throughout the Viking empire and pretty much everyone would have known about it. Hnefatafl – Hnef meaning ‘fist’ – is mentioned in several of the sagas including Orkneyinga saga, Friðþjófs saga and Hervarar saga. Hnefatafl was the variant that was played most widely in Scandinavia during the Viking Age and it’s likely this is the game they played with the piece found on Lindisfarne. They all would have had slightly different boards and rules, but the main concept was the same. Names of different Tafl variants include Hnefatafl, Tablut, Tawlbwrdd, Brandubh, Ard Rí, and Alea Evangelii. Tafl games, literally meaning table games, are a family of ancient tabletop strategy games played by Norse and Celtic people.

And the other thing we’re pretty sure of is the game, or at least the type of game, it was used for.

What we do know, however, is that the piece is of such quality that it must have been used, at least originally, by someone wealthy. We don’t know whether it was dropped by a Viking raider or was used by the locals on the island to imitate the raiders’ game after they’d left. The trench where it was found has been dated to the 8th or 9th century.

The small glass piece, about the size of a coin, is made from swirled blue and white glass with a ring of white glass droplets to represent a crown. Recently, archaeologists working on the island, trying to find the exact location of the original wooden monastery, uncovered a number of Viking items including tools, coins and a very rare game piece. You might remember that the brutal raid on Lindisfarne pretty much started the whole Viking thing. Thankfully there’s evidence from both sources that the Vikings loved a good board game. So, what we know about the Vikings generally comes either from sagas written long after the fact or from the things we dig up from the ground.

Wooden catan board