I won't have time to describe these games in detail, and honestly, the names are hard to pronounce so I'm not even going to try, but we should try to play them.
HnefataflThis was probably the commonest of the board games played, and was almost certainly a Germanic development of the Roman game latrunculi (soldiers).
The game can be played on a board with 7x7, 9x9, 11x11, 13x13, 15x15 or a 19x19 squares. The centre often has special markings.
A beautiful carved board with 13x13 squares was found at Gokstad in Norway. This is a double sided board with a nine men's morris layout carved on the reverse side as with other less impressive examples. Many other wooden tafl boards have also been found throughout the Viking and Anglo-Saxon world, but some of the boards were much simpler affairs being only marked out with charcoal or scratched onto the surface of slices of rock.
The pieces for these games were usually hemispherical. For boards with 9 squares a side, 16 light and eight dark pieces were used, with an additional king. Boards with more squares used 24 light, 12 dark and a king ( hnefi or cyningstan).
The RulesThe 'king' moves first. He has half the number of pieces his opponent has (6/12 in the 7x7 version, 8/16 in the 9x9 version, 12/24 in the 11x11 and 13x13 version, 24/48 in the 19x19 version . He wins the game if he can manage to get his 'king' out into one of the corner squares (the large 19x19 version often allows the king to win if he can reach the edge of the board). His opponent can win by trapping the king.
A reconstructed Tabula board, styled on the example found in Gloucester.
All the pieces move in straight lines like the rook or castle in chess, and a piece may be moved any number of squares providing no other piece is standing in the way. It may not pass over another piece. A piece is taken by making a move which traps it between two of your pieces, but not on any diagonal; i.e the north and south, or the east and west positions around an enemy piece. It is possible to take two opposing pieces at the same time. A player is also permitted to move between two opposing pieces without being taken.
The king can normally only be trapped if he is surrounded by four pieces unless he is on the edge of the board where only three would be needed to 'surround' or two at a corner. The four corner squares (which are sometimes decorated) may only be occupied by the king, but if the king is under attack the corner square is regarded as being occupied by an opposing piece. The same goes for the centre square, so here the king can again be trapped by just three pieces.
Duodecim scripta (or Tabula or Kvatrutafl)This game is a development of the popular Roman game of duodecim scripta, also known as tabula or alea, which was also played in Germany and Scandinavia in the Roman Iron Age, where it appears to have been known as katrutafl. Several wooden boards for this type of game are known from the Saxons' Germanic homeland, and metal fittings for boards of this type have been found from the Viking Age in Germany and Denmark. The only known surviving British example of a tabula board was found in Gloucester; dating to the eleventh century. The decorated bone plates that once covered the now rotted wooden board and the playing pieces, beautifully carved from bone and antler, and were originally decorated with paint, can be seen in the Gloucester city museum. Playing pieces suitable for this game are a more common find.
RulesThe actual rules used at the time are not known but it may have been played like this:
15 white and 15 black (or red) pieces are used and three dice.
The pieces are set up as shown on the drawing and moved in the directions indicated by the arrows.
They are moved according to the number shown on the dice, each dice indicating a single turn. For instance if you throw a 5, a 4 and a 3 you can:
A Fivestones set made from 6 sheeps knuckles and a leather ball
move one piece 5+4+3 steps forward
move one piece 5+4 and another 3 forward
move three pieces one by 5 one by 4 and one by 3.
However, when the dice scores are combined you must be able to make each move separately, if you start to and find that you cannot because you are blocked by the other player's pieces the move is annulled and you loose that turn.
The aim of the game, as in modern backgammon, is to move all your pieces to your 'home ground' and then off the board before your opponent can do so with theirs.
If a piece is standing by itself it is unprotected and can be taken by the opposing piece. If two or more pieces are standing together the section is occupied, and the opponent can neither take a piece or place any of his own in that section. No more than 5 pieces may occupy the same section.
A piece that has been taken, is considered as being placed behind the opponent's home ground and is moved from there onto the board according to modern rules.
When a player has all his pieces placed on home ground he can start taking them off the board by one or more moves. To remove a piece from section three he must throw a three and so on but you may use a higher number to remove a piece if you have none of that number remaining on the board. The first to remove all remaining pieces is the winner.
In reality a very small King and board counter found at Hedeby made from antler
Merels or Nine Men's Morris
From the earliest times (it was played even in ancient Egypt!) This game has been known as 'the game on the other side of the board'. Several boards found in both Viking and Anglo-Saxon contexts have had hnefatafl on one side and nine men's morris on the other. However the game has also been found rather unexpected places - ship's timbers, loose boards, benches, lumps of rock and, later, even on church pews and tiles.
We do not know which of the 'tafl' names was used for this game, but the latin word merels is often used for this game just after Anglo-Saxon times. The name merels comes from the low latin word merrelus, meaning a 'token, counter or coin'.
Nine men's morris is a simple game. The board is quickly made, and pieces could be any set of black (or red) and white stones, bones, etc., which could also be used for any other game.
The game remains well known even today but we do not know the rules of the Viking or Anglo-Saxon version. It is indicated that a die may have been used. Perhaps only particular scores, for example - even numbers, gave the right to move. However the way it is played today is as follows:
RulesGlass playing pieces and two Kings found at Birka in Sweden
The nine mens morris board is made up of three concentric squares connected by intersecting lines in the centre of each of the square's sides. Players start with nine pieces off the board. Each player takes it in turn to place one of his pieces on one of the intersections. If a player forms a line of three, one of the opposing pieces is removed from play by taking it off the board. Wherever possible the piece taken should not be taken from an existing line of three.
When all pieces have been placed on the board, the players move the pieces around one intersection at a time. On completion of a line of three an opposing piece is taken as before. Forming a line of three is called forming a 'mill'. There is nothing to stop a player forming a mill, moving a piece away and then moving it back again in subsequent moves. The winner of the game is the player who removes all the opponent's pieces.
A simpler version of nine mens morris is the game of 'three mens morris' familiar to most people today, albeit in a modified form, as 'noughts and crosses'. It is played in the same way as nine mens morris, except the board is made up of three lines of three positions (or on the intersections of a 2x2 section of a larger squared board). The winner is the first person to form a mill. Pieces may not move diagonally, or jump over other pieces. This may be the game known as hræðtafl('quick-tafl').
A detail from the Ockelbo stone in Sweden showing a gaming board
HalataflAt Ballinderry in Ireland a little game board has been found with holes in place of squares and with the centre and corner positions clearly marked. Two notches on the board indicate a division between white and red pieces similar to modern solitaire. It is thought to be the halatafl known from the sagas. An alternative idea is that this could be used for a form of the game known as fox and geese or a 7x7 hnefatafl board or, indeed, all three.
The Ockelbo stone from Sweden shows a board with the same markings at the centre and the corners and with four oblique lines. The special markings at the centre and corners may suggest that these squares were clear at the beginning of the game.
Rules
A set of rules for halatafl is as follows: The initial set up as in the image below - white and red have 22 identical 'men' set up on the board with 49 holes marked. The centre and corner holes are left empty.
A Foxes and Geese board in plan
The pieces can be moved in two different ways; either they move one step at a time either forwards, sideways or diagonally along the marked lines, but never backward. Or they jump over a neighbouring piece to an empty hole behind it. They may proceed jumping as many times as possible in any direction or even backwards. The jump can be made over any piece - your own or your opponent's - and if you jump over one or more of your opponent's pieces they are taken and removed from the board.
White opens the game by moving a piece onto the centre hole; red takes it by jumping over it and the game proceeds until one of the players has fewer than five pieces left - and loses.
A jumping piece may make an intermediary landing at a corner hole. However no piece is allowed to stay there.
