Hello,
I write you because you have published articles about the Lewis Chessmen Therefore I have taken the liberty to send you a recent article I have written about them
First some general remarks: The Lewis chessmen are in such a high esteem that during the years several diverging interests have made their claim. During the latter years I have to mention two in particular: The Scots and the Icelanders. I do not have to inform you about “the Scottish stand”, but as I have several Scottish corr.chess friends, they have on occasions notified me about the most common stand amongst Scots, something like “the only certain thing is that the chessmen were found at Isle of Lewis, which is Scottish land”. The problem with this position is of course that we know a lot more.
The second position is the Icelandic one: In order to reach a conclusion Gudmundur G. Thorarinsson (which you have refered/quoted) actually had to use methods which are scholarly unacceptable.
Both these postions are made possible by the state of knowledge about (the history of) the chessmen. There is a certain bias concerning all the material that has been published. This is probably caused by two facts: 1. The authors have been British, 2. Their scholarship have, as far as I know, either been as archaelogists or art historians. I am sorry to say so, but this means that knowledge about the rather massive body of Norse literature and the Norse history at large has been (too) scant.
Here’s the basic fact: In 1098 King Edgar of Scotland and Magnus III “Barelegs” of Norway signed a treaty where all the western isles were recognised as Norwegian , and the islands did not become a part of Scotland’s crown until 1266. These islands were colonised by the Norwegians from 800 and onwards, a fact that for instance the place-names of Lewis give an overwhelming evidence about. The “problems” occur because of two facts: 1. The pieces and their heritage are desireable, and 2. The Isle of Lewis later became a part of Scotland. If No.2 never had taken place, no one would ever have questioned if the pieces were Norwegian. As to No.1: Auschwitz is now in Poland, yet no one tries to tell us that it was a Polish camp. It is undesireable. On the other hand we have a parallell in the ancient greek cities along the coast of Asia Minor: One hundred years ago all Greeks were either driven out/escaped or killed, and the Turks took over the whole area. Last year I had an odd experience: I took part in the ICCF Congress in Turkey as the Norwegian delegate. One day we had a break, and participated on a guided tour to several ancient ruins. To my horror the guide over and over again tried to cover up or outright deny that these ruins were ancient greek cities. This was probably a calculated risk, he must have counted on our lack of knowledge. Here we clearly see the consequences of the national bias when the items in question are desireable. As this article contains a lot of (?) information about the Hebrides a long time ago, I hope you are interested in publishing it.
Merry Yule and a Happy New Year,
Morten Lilleõren
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