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Curator Irving Finkel recounts a magical adventure with The Lewis Chessmen. Content warning: wizard's chess.Irving Finkel and the Chamber of Lewis Chessmen | Curator's Corner | S 2 Ep9September 24, 2017 | The British Museum<

Saturday, 27 July, 2002, 16:22 GMT 17:22 UK Ancient chess history unearthed The chess piece was found in the ancient city of Butrint A team of British archaeologists have unearthed evidence suggesting that Europeans were playing chess as early as the sixth century. An ivory chess piece, excavated at a Byzantine palace in what is now southern Albania, is more than 500 years older than any previously discovered. Leaders of the University of Anglia expedition said it proves the game has a much longer history in Europe than was previously thought. Until now chess historians had agreed that the game...

Carbon dating of walrus bones found in Snæfellsnes peninsula indicates that the bones are at least 2000 years old. A large number of walrus skulls and walrus tusks have been found around Garðafjara beach on the south coast Snæfellsnes. The first skull was discovered 1884. All in all the bones of 50 walruses have been found, most in the past 50 years. Biologists argue this indicates Snæfellsnes was the home of a sizable walrus colony prior to the settlement of Iceland. Large pre-settlement colonies of walruses in Iceland A previous theory, explaining the concentration of bone discoveries, speculated they came...

Some have suggested that trading commodities – most notably walrus tusks – with Europe may have been vital to sustaining the Greenlanders. Ornate items including crucifixes and chess pieces were fashioned from walrus ivory by craftsmen of the age. However, the source of this ivory has never been empirically established. Now, researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Oslo have studied ancient DNA from offcuts of tusks and skulls, most found on the sites of former ivory workshops across Europe, in order to trace the origin of the animals used in the medieval trade. In doing so they have discovered...

An ivory chess piece purchased for less than $10 was recently identified as one of the missing Lewis Chessman, 900-year-old artifacts dating back to the Viking era, which could be worth over $1 million dollars. The medieval chess piece was originally purchased for $7.50 by an antique dealer in Scotland in 1964. It was passed down through his family, but they never realized its significance. “For many years it resided in a drawer in [my mother’s] home where it had been carefully wrapped in a small bag,” the family, who wished to remain anonymous, said in a statement obtained by the...