4 ms·
Don't know what drove them to say it is an early form of Hnefatafl, other than that both are games played on a board. Hnefatafl games (there are several [1])
by JoeDaDude 6y ago
Don't know what drove them to say it is an early form of Hnefatafl, other than that both are games played on a board. Hnefatafl games (there are several [1]) are pure strategy open information games using different pieces with different moves. This discovery is of a game played with dice and apparently identical pieces. There are no pictures of the board. so I can only speculate about it, but my guess would be this game is probably a race game, perhaps a distant relative of backgammon.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafl_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafl_games
- failrate 6y agoTafl games do include variants with dice for movement.
- scottlocklin 6y agoIt's actually not clear at all what the rules are for Tafl. Linnaeus instructions are suggestive, but certainly wrong/incomplete and people think stuff like Fetlar rules are probably close, but we really don't know.
- progre 6y agoThe article says (in an incredibly confusing way) that no game board was actually found here. What was found was dice and game chips. The dice is similar to those of another digging site "near" this one. On that site the board was recovered, but as you say, that board is not shown or discussed further. It then goes on to mention other board games that might have been played and by free association arrives at the 800 year younger Tafl find at Lindisfarne. I imagine that the goal of this was to put the word "Viking" in the headline and thereby generate clicks, but that some editor put a stop to it.