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Title details for Ivory Vikings by Nancy Marie Brown - Available

Ivory Vikings

The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them

by Nancy Marie Brown
Tony Ward
Audiobook
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In the early 1800's, on a Hebridean beach in Scotland, the sea exposed an ancient treasure cache: 93 chessmen carved from walrus ivory. Norse netsuke, each face individual, each full of quirks, the Lewis Chessmen are probably the most famous chess pieces in the world. Harry played Wizard's Chess with them in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Housed at the British Museum, they are among its most visited and beloved objects. Questions abounded: Who carved them? Where? Ivory Vikings explores these mysteries by connecting medieval Icelandic sagas with modern archaeology, art history, forensics, and the history of board games. In the process, Ivory Vikings presents a vivid history of the 400 years when the Vikings ruled the North Atlantic, and the sea-road connected countries and islands we think of as far apart and culturally distinct: Norway and Scotland, Ireland and Iceland, and Greenland and North America. The story of the Lewis chessmen explains the economic lure behind the Viking voyages to the west in the 800s and 900s. And finally, it brings from the shadows an extraordinarily talented woman artist of the twelfth century: Margret the Adroit of Iceland. NANCY MARIE BROWN is the author of highly praised books of nonfiction, including Song of the Vikings. She is fluent in Icelandic, and spends her summers in Iceland. She has deep ties to the Scandinavian cultural institutions in the U.S. Brown lives in East Burke,VT.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 15, 2015

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781490693699
      • File size: 313561 KB
      • Duration: 10:53:15

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      The Scandinavian vocabulary in this work might have intimidated many narrators, but Tony Ward appears to have been capably coached in its pronunciation. Still, Ward's narration is mostly workmanlike, adding little energy to this challenging text about the iconic Lewis Chessmen, carved from walrus ivory in the Middle Ages and discovered in 1831. The problem here is not a lack of research, or any shortcomings in the prose. On the contrary, Brown's knowledge of the Viking era is clearly extensive, and she writes with clarity and wit. However, the sagas and other historical sources ultimately tell us little about the chess pieces themselves and even less about the "woman who made them," and the promise of the subtitle is never really fulfilled. D.B. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 22, 2015
      Brown (Song of the Vikings) successfully crafts an Icelandic history of chess while tracing the possible movements of 92 remarkable carved figures found in the early 19th century on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. Drawing on the intertwined cultures, local artistic abilities, and close relationships among 12th-century Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Scotland, and England, Brown connects the threads between them with her own translations of Icelandic sagas and related archaeological research. She divides the tale into sections—Rooks, Bishops, Queens, Kings, and Knights—and inserts little-known historical tidbits about the game itself. Scandinavian history buffs and chess enthusiasts will revel in the power games between would-be kings and those already enthroned, some of whom, Brown posits, may have commissioned these walrus ivory chess sets
      as gifts for other kings. Other readers may find the mystery of the set’s hotly contested origins more enthralling. As for Margret the Adroit, the woman who
      supposedly made them, Brown makes
      the most of a saga’s sole mention of her artistic skill to support a recent and entirely plausible theory as to the pieces’ source. Though more full of conjecture than the assertive subtitle suggests, Brown’s account is nonetheless fascinating. Illus.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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