Early Tafl Games

Post Reply
Mark
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2022 4:52 pm

Early Tafl Games

Post by Mark » Sun Mar 20, 2022 9:09 pm

Wikipedia claims the Tafl games likely descended from Ludus latrunculorum, but no source is given, and the rules for Ludus seem rather different. Can anyone offer some insight about possible precursors to Tafl? And, are there any opinions about what the earliest Tafl game might have looked like?

I think there's reason to suspect the earliest Tafl games had small boards with few pieces, since those are simple to design. Even drawing a board on the ground becomes quite a production for a 13x13 game; 7x7 and 9x9 seem more likely. And although simpler rulesets may predate more complicated games, it's not much strain on the imagination to come up with special squares for corner escape, the way we see in Brandubh.

What's strange about this is that it's generally believed that the Scandinavians played the first Tafl games, and their boards were larger. How likely is it that they actually took Hnefatafl from the Celts or some other group who had the first Tafl games?

dashstofsk
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2021 9:00 pm
Location: Gloucester, Great Britain
Contact:

Re: Early Tafl Games

Post by dashstofsk » Tue Mar 29, 2022 3:37 pm

What you are suggesting might possibly be true. But my own reading of the available evidence doesn't give a clear picture how these games evolved. Few records were kept during the Dark Ages and so much of our knowledge can only be guessed. Almost every society in the ancient world had board games, and the number of such games appears to be very big, so it might well be that the king-in-the-centre games were a Scandinavian invention that perhaps borrowed the custodial capture mechanism from Roman games. I suspect also the smaller boards ( 7x7, 9x9 ) might have been the standard size, and that the larger and better crafted boards would have been owned by people with wealth and status in their community.
Last edited by dashstofsk on Mon Apr 11, 2022 6:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Mark
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2022 4:52 pm

Re: Early Tafl Games

Post by Mark » Sun Apr 10, 2022 8:39 pm

Perhaps the most important question to ask is, "How connected were the people of Northern Europe to the Old World culture-stream?" Clearly they were cut off from most of China, Sub Saharan Africa, and the New World. But did trade, migration, conquest, and general communication from one region to another permit collaboration between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean?

If the answer is "they were well connected," then maybe the wisest thing to say is that the Scandinavians took the inspiration for Tafl games from Mediterranean region in just the same way that they took the inspiration for their Runic script from Latin. Then, medium (and perhaps larger) boards in Scandinavia make sense as the origin. And really, I have admit that this does seem more likely. Greek black-figure pottery has been found in Halstatt graves dating from the 2nd Millennium BC; how hard would it be for a few game-boards on wood or sheepskin to make their way across Europe to serve as the basis for a family of Tafl games?

But if that's true, then there needs to be some Mediterranean game (or games) that functioned as a seed for the Tafl family. Interesting to ask whether this might someday be clearly identified. And if there isn't such a seed, then the game may still have been an indigenous invention, coming from no more than the near-universal sense that two people take turns moving pieces on a playing field. In this case, I think it would probably be a smaller board, more likely starting among the Celts.

dashstofsk
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2021 9:00 pm
Location: Gloucester, Great Britain
Contact:

Re: Early Tafl Games

Post by dashstofsk » Mon Apr 11, 2022 8:18 pm

History seems to show that Europe was more connected than is commonly imagined. The Wikipedia entry for King Alfred the Great ( 848(?)-899 ) tells that Alfred had embassies in Rome, to which he also made pilgrimages, enjoyed foreign relationships with Jerusalem and Ireland. For all that to happen there must have been trade routes across Europe along which ideas and goods travelled. Games could have migrated by the same routes, and possibly undergone a change at each migration. It seems unlikely that we will every find out who first thought to put the King in the centre.

One idea to ponder: the 7x7 Tafl board could possibly have evolved from the board for Merels ( Mill, Nine Men's Morris ) from Roman times. Perhaps someone somewhere decided to try something new, extended all the lines to the edges and found a new way to play Fox and Geese.

Post Reply