http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/LcdERPxmQ_a2npYstOwVkA
Let's begin with the pawns. One of the puzzles of the Lewis Chessmen
is that there are lots of major pieces and very few pawns. What we've
got are pieces from a number of different incomplete sets - 78 pieces in
all - but only 19 pawns among them. The pawns are the only pieces that
aren't human; they're simply small ivory slabs that stand upright like
gravestones. In medieval society, these are the peasants, brutally
conscripted on to the battle-field. All societies tend to think of the
people at the bottom of the heap as interchangeably identical, and the
foot-soldiers here are shown with no individuality at all.
The main pieces, on the other hand, are full of personality. Elite
guards, knights on horseback, commanding kings and meditative queens.
Pride of place goes of course to the ultimate source of legitimate power
- the king. Capture him, and all fighting stops. All the Lewis kings
sit on ornate thrones, a sword across their knees. Guarding the kings
are two kinds of specialist warriors. One is immediately familiar to us
- he is the knight, fast-moving, versatile and mounted on horseback.
From the very beginnings of chess in India, the mounted warrior is a
constant - he's in every age and in every country and he's pretty well
unchanged today. But these familiar knights are flanked by something
much more sinister. At the edges of the board, where we now have
castles, are the ultimate shock troops of the Scandinavian world. They
stand menacingly, some of them working themselves into a frenzy of
bloodlust by chewing the tops of their shields.
I've got one in my hands now, and they are pretty terrifying - these
are the fighters called "berserkers". It's an Icelandic word for a
soldier wearing a shirt made of bear skin and the word "berserk" even
today is synonymous with wild, destructive violence. More than any
other piece on this board, the berserkers take us to the terrifying
world of Norse warfare.
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