Ivory Kings/ Stern Beauty and a Rich History in Chess

When I ordered the erudite Nancy Marie Brown’s Ivory Vikings (St. Martins, 2015), I just meant to scratch little itch, satisfy a whimsical curiosity. Years ago when I was a dedicated chess stumblebum I learned about the Isle of Lewis chessmen and was enchanted by photos of them – severe, dignified, beautiful. When I had the opportunity, a decade ago in Cobh, I purchased a polymer replica of one of the kings from that bag of artifacts and placed it on the desk in my study, so when I recently saw that someone had written a new book about them, I thought it would be more about art and carving than anything else and that I’d get a full explanation of their origins, history and so on. No weighty cultural stuff, you understand. And, by the way, there are many books on these fascinating figures.

lewis piecesAfter all, what did I know of the far north beyond skalds, Danegold, Showtime’s Ragnar Lothbrok (who was a historical figure), Vineland, scenes from a Kirk Douglas film, bits of eddas, the Penguin version of the Laexdala Saga, broadswords and dragon ships, the majority of it remembered from my readings of Beowulf? I sought a taste and found a feast.

Half an hour into the book I was learning about the walrus ivory trade, amazing raids, Arabian silver, trade and migrations of the Vikings, the history of Scandinavian Christianity as reflected in the game’s evolution, conflicts between the sagas, the nature and legends of the berserkers and much more. Amid the unfamiliar place names, kings’ and saints’ names, multilingual references and etymologies, Brown has used the evolving history of the military, royal and ecclesiastical figures in the Lewis find as a portal to the history of chess and of northern Europe. And though she suggests the story’s big surprise early on, the author gives us plenty to think about before details of the big reveal: the likely carver of most of the pieces was, appropriately, Margret the Adroit. Yes, “Magret,” as in “Margaret.”

Whim is not enough to get one as innocent of Norse culture as I am through a book so dense with the names of fjords, stave churches, major figures like Sigurd Mouth and Gudmund the Good, but Brown’s energetic and precise writing, her own sense of whim and the growing implication of the importance of the details of Viking merchants and their pursuit of silk or the greed of archbishops or the grit of explorers seeking the next big walrus hunting ground . . . well, it’s a hard book to read but equally hard to close. Ivory Vikings sports forty pages of notes, but I could also have used a glossary, more images of the pieces, more extensive genealogies, more detailed maps and timelines to make me feel at home in the braided and jump-cut narrative, which is as clever as it is learned but so rife with the ancient (but to me “new”) information, that its pleasure and labor are seldom quite separate.

Thank goodness Brown writes with panache and a sense of humor about the high seriousness of her larger subject, which is the shaping of modern thought and human ambitions, but I felt a little ambushed near the end when her early assertions about the actual authorship of the late medieval carvings turns out to be just a viable theory. She occasionally winks and nods and hints, but otherwise treats the belief (or wish) that Margret the Adroit made the bishops, kings, queens and rooks as if there were some consensus. I know the mystery is intriguing, and saying we don’t really know the creator’s identity would likely dampen the allure, but though I won’t deny her gambits and tactics, I think her knights should move in conventional and uniform fashion throughout the book. She should say early on that Margret is primarily an appealing candidate whose presence allows for a compelling narrative..

lewis berserkIvory Vikings has, nonetheless, many wonders to reveal. How can a chess piece be berserk, go berserk, be a berserker? [Berserk is literally “bear shirt.”] Before the rooks were images of towers, they were shield-bearing warriors in byrnies and helms. Bearing their swords, eager for battle glory, many are portrayed as chewing on the rims of their shields. If this seems unlikely, watch football players on the sidelines in their pre-game rage wind-ups. But my description of the pieces is neither as accurate nor as deft as that of NMB the Adroit.

The queens – whether in dismay or despair, grief or calculation – are all portrayed with a hand on the cheek, as if mid-sigh. I think one look at the Lewis Chessmen entry on the images search of Google will send hordes to Amazon for this book, and Ms. Brown’s rigor and panache as a storyteller are up to the task of chronicling a voyage through the book. For accompanying images, however, Google will be useful as a prop.

Just a note on Brown’s style may be useful. She’s witty, fond of extended catalogues and embellishment. It’s tempting to say that her writing is as Romanesque as the ornaments on the Lewis royal pieces’ thrones, the clauses curling like vines and lush foliage, dragonish, elegant as competition knots. But it’s easy to fall into rhythm with them and just enjoy the language . . . until another of those paragraphs with (to the uninitiated) unpronounceable names and places rolls around.

Most people are familiar with Staunton style chess pieces, and quite a few with Renaissance sets reminiscent of Charlemagne’s court, Bergmanesque Gothic and even Civil War sets. Brown never points this out, but the Lewis set is so much richer a trove of historical and cultural implication that to play with such a set must be a different experience from what I’m accustomed to. The non-white pieces would likely have been (back when Bishop Pall commissioned Margret to fashion them, if that’s truly what happened) reddish, madder-stained, and since I’ve often held my polymer replica (similar in size and weight, as well as configuration) of a walrus ivory original king, I’m not sure playing with plastic would be bearable, though a nicely-turned Staunton set still works.

I’ve learned a little of what the pages of Ivory Vikings have to offer (say a shifty opening, a Sicilian defense, a fork) but I’m still playing in the dark, as I read the book only once and quickly. If I don’t find to correct that soon, I expect to be punished, perhaps with the shameful fretsterfermat, a kind of mate, but you’ll have to look that one up on your own.

lewis berserk


recent-meR. T. Smith has edited Shenandoah since 1995 and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Washington & Lee. His forthcoming books are Doves in Flight: 13 Fictions and Summoning Shades: New Poems, both due in 2017.