Murder on the Ballarat Train - TV vs Book

Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis)

Where to start with this one? There are actually some major differences between the book and the film adaptation here. There are some new characters like Mr Tobias Butler (Richard Bligh), Jane (Ruby Rees-Wemyss) and, because they play such a big part in the story: Phryne's house Wardlow and her Hispano Suiza car probably should be mentioned in there as well. They are important parts of the show and nearly characters in their own right.

Two characters from the books are left out, or does not play such a big part in the show as in the books. Mrs Butler is the wife of Mr Butler. Both of them, together with Wardlow are introduced already in Flying too High and Ruth (Lara Robinson) plays a much greater part in the book than in the TV episode. Phryne (Essie Davis) even adopts her together with Jane and she is the one with no family, where in the TV version, she has a grandma, who Jack later on finds. I can understand the need to simplify it to just one girl, but I still thought it strange that we do not see or hear more of Ruth in the show's later episodes. She and Jane seem just as close as they are described to be in the book, but after this episode, she just vanish all together from their lives.


It is in this episode that Bert (Travis McMahon) and Cec (Anthony Sharpe) also come to work for Phryne for real if a little reluctantly in the beginning. She also gives them a new taxi, which they buy by themselves in Flying too High.

"I didn't invite you along to be useful Dot. I invited you so we could have some fun!"

~ Phryne Fisher, Murder on the Ballarat Train (TV)

Phryne Fisher & Jack Robinson (Nathan Page)

The premise of the plot is the same in both book and TV-series: Phryne and Dot (Ashleigh Cummings) are taking the train to Ballarat. In the book, she and Dot are going to there to visit some of her relatives, while in the TV episode, they are going to pick up the Hispano Suiza. The narratives in the different mediums are different as well. In the TV episode it is straight forward: First we see Phryne and Dot at the station, boarding the train and then we follow them throughtout the train ride. In the book, on the other hand, we only get to experience the train ride first hand while Phryne, Dot and some of the other passangers are being chloroformed. The rest of the journey is retold to us as the victims of the chloroform incident, which has afflicted more people in the book than on TV, (mainly Phryne herself) are interviewed by the police. The investigation is also to a larger extent accompliched on the train itself and Phryne takes part in the search for the murdered victim. The scene when she, dressed in high heels (!), more or less runs away from the police men along the train tracks is hilarious. I also cannot help but laugh when Detective Inspector Jack Robinson (Nathan Page) sees through Phryne's small lie about opening the compartment of Mrs Henderson (Abbe Holmes) and her daughter Eunice (Maeve Dermody) with her golden pistol.

Dorothy "Dot" Williams (Ashleigh Cummings)
and Hugh Collins (Hugo Johnstone-Burt)

Aboard the train, we also get our first indications of both Hottie and Phrack. The former is the name for the pairing Dot Williams with Constaple Hugh Collins (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) (Sadly, the latter is not in the book.) and the latter is the pairing of Phryne and Jack. Both names were made up by the fandom of the show and I love how both Phryne and Jack seem to ship Dot and Hugh just as much as the fans of the show do.

I have not talked so much about Hottie (nor Dot or Hugh as characters) on here and it will for certain be more in the future, but I just have to say that they are among the cutest couples I have seen on TV.

When you have watched all the existing three seasons of the show and you go back to these first few episodes, you really realise how much Dot's character evolves throughout the show. I will probably write an entire post about her at some point, because I love her. I have talked about this topic in many other entries to this blog (Not least in the one about Phryne in my My Heroines series, but mostly in my entry about Johanne Hildebrandt's book Idun. Sagan om Valhalla.), but I think it is so wonderful that neither Phryne nor the show judge Dot because of her conservatism and the fact that she shows characteristics traditionally ascribed to women. Instead, Phryne actually encourage her to find her confidence no matter what her beliefs are.

Jane (Ruby Rees-Wemyss) and Phryne Fisher.

Phrack is a different love story that I will most definitely come back to in later entries since it is just a small embryo in this episode. In fact, Jack seems very firm to not let Phryne in on the investigation at first and she is also thwarted by the other police men that first arrived at the train. (Hugh seems to like her, even though he, just like in the TV version of Cocaine Blues, he has no idea how to handle her.) However, this is also the episode where Jack and Phryne really start to cooperate on the case. At the end of the episode he, however, comes over and the routine of the nightcap is put in place.

Jack plays a bigger part in both the TV episode and the book. His character is quite different between both mediums. Even though there is nothing wrong with him in the books, I cannot help but miss the TV-version while reading.

In the beginning of the episode a little boy runs around on the platform and Phryne tells Dot that she cannot stand children. When the police later on catches a teenage girl with the murdered Mrs Henderson's missing jewelry, she is very reluctant to help out at first. Jane's story is quite different in the TV series to the one in the book, where she has lost her memory and it turns out later that she is hypnotized by Mr Merton (Jacek Koman). In the book he, and who I think is Jane's real aunt, Miss Gay are more or less exploiting teenage girls (and young women?), molesting them and/or sending them off to brothels, which is where Jane is going on the train. In the TV episode, Jane comes from a situation much similar to Oliver Twist, where Mr Merton is a Fagin-type of character, collecting what the girls have managed to steal.

Phryne: "Sorry I forgot to telephone ahead about my extra guests. We've all been somewhat distracted by Eunice's mother's murder."
Mr Butler: "A murder miss?"
Phryne: "I do hope they chloroformed her first, but hanging is never pleasant. Keep your eye on this one. She's a stowaway, a thief and probably needs delousing. I expect the police will come looking for her, but you can just refer them to me. Oh, and while I remember; careful with the hand luggage. My pistol's in there somewhere, and it may still be loaded."

Another character that is different between book and TV episode is Eunice Henderson. Not least regarding her involvement in the plot. In both she has a boyfriend called Alastair (David Berry), but whereas Lindsay (Dale March) is just his friend in the book, he is Eunice's cousin in the TV episode. The plot kind of differs more when it comes to her. In the TV episode, she plots together with Alastair to steal her mother's jewlery on the train, while in the book, he works totally on his own. In neither plot line is she the one who kills her mother, but she sort of lets it happen in the TV episode. Alastair's motive of the murder is also somewhat different. In the TV series, he seems to just wants Lindsay's inheritance, while in the book he thinks he is a superman, getting rid of unwanting people (and getting rich at the same time). I find the latter plotline much more thrilling, while I like Eunice better in the book. In the book, she becomes a writer to support her mother, who has lost all her money in a scam. This gives her a similarity to Lydia Andrews in Cocaine Blues and I find the idea of women having to provide for other family members lack of economical sense intriguing. It makes up for an interesting plotpoint and shows something about upper class women too. (Women of the lower classes ha always had to work.)

On the train, Phryne is reading a book. And not just any book, but Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence. The book most have been very new at the time , because it was published in 1928 and has a rather interesting story, especially in Australia according to Wikipedia. It was banned from many countries and was subject of a trial in the United Kingdom in 1960 and a book describing this trial was also banned in Australia. However, in both cases it, by extention, led to the censorship actually being loosen. The book is a perfect fit for Phryne, but I cannot help thinking about the creator of the show giving the audience something to look up.

The pictures and gifs in this entry were found on Tumblr except the last one of Jack, which is a screen cap I made, because he was set so beautifully. (And before you ask, I do have a "small" collection of pictures from the show on my computer. I am totally nerdy about this show if you have not noticed it before.)

Pettson and Findus

Covers of Pannkakstårtan, Rävjakten, Stackars Pettson,
Pettson får julbesök and Kackel i Grönsakslandet.

Facebook reminded me that I met Swedish children's author Sven Nordqvist at the Göteborg Book Fair this day in 2009. Therefore I thought I would write about his books about Pettson and Findus. I absolutely love those books! Yes, I still love them as an adult. There is nothing wrong with enjoying good children's books as adult and the books about Pettson and Findus belong to the best.

"Du ska inte vara rädd för hönsen Pettson. De är inte så farliga som de ser ut." (Pettson, you don't have to be scared of the hens. They aren't as dangerous as they look.)

~ Gumman Andersson, Pettson tältar

The books (generally picture books, but there are some exceptions) tell shorter tales about Pettson. He lives alone with his cat Findus and a couple of hens. There are also some mucklor that live underneath the floor and only Findus can see, but they steal things from Pettson.

Covers of Tomtemaskinen, Pettson tältar, Tuppens minut,
När Findus var liten och försvann and Findus flyttar ut.

The books are beautifully illustrated and there are so much details in every picture that you can look at them all the time and still find new things you have never seen before. The first book Pannkakstårtan (Translated as Birthday Cake in English apparently.) was published in 1984 and the latest picture book, Findus flyttar ut (Findus moves out) in 2012. There have been some other picture books for younger children published later: Känner du Pettson och Findus? (Do you know Pettson and Findus?) from 2014 and Var är Pettson? (Where is Pettson?) from 2015. In later years, there has also been some cartoons made of the stories. This might be a little because I do not belong to the intended audience (being an adult when they were made), but I do not think they are as good. Not least since the drawings are not as detailed as the ones in the books. The only screen adaptation of any of the books I do like is the Christmas calender, Tomtemaskinen (The mechanical Santa) from 1993 made by SVT.

"Pettson, du säger så konstiga saker. Har du inte fått i dig något kaffe idag?" (Pettson, you say such weird things. Haven't you drank any coffee today?)

~ Findus, Tomtemaskinen

Ingvar Hirdwall played Pettson and Ika Nord played Findus. I thought I should save talking about my favourite Christmas calenders until December, but I might as well tell you about it now. I think it is one of the more underrated and forgotten about SVT:s christmas calenders I think. Mostly since Mysteriet på Greveholm was shown only a couple of years later (1996). That calender is generally the one people remember from "the era", but there were some other great ones made during the 1990's.

Tomtemaskinen tells the story of how Pettson promises Findus that Santa Claus will come to them this year, so he starts building a mechanical Santa in secret.

The book was published at about the same time as the christmas calender was shown on TV and is the only multi-chapter books in the series. There is no real action in it, but it is still very funny and imaginative and both Hirdwall and Nord are doing a really good job. I still think it holds up, over twenty years later.

Sven Nordqvist's signature in one of my books

Pictures were borrowed from Opal Bokförlag and from here.

Kerry Greenwood - Murder on the Ballarat Train

This, the third book about the Honourable Phryne Fisher (and the last of the three books in my omnibus volume). She and Dot takes a train ride to Ballarat. However, they never reaches their destination. Chloroform are leaking into the wagon making everyone drowsy and an older, wealthy woman is kidnapped and later found dead. Then a teenage girl turns up. She has lost her memory, but Phryne takes her in, calls her Jane and tries to find out what has happened to her. There are some differences to the TV episodes, but I do not want to dwell on those topics here. I save them for a later entry.
The three first of the the Phryne Fisher books worked great, combined into one volume. There are some over-arching themes in them that makes them fit together. There are some overlapping themes in two or all of the books. For example, the pedophilia theme that was introduced in Flying too High is sort of eplored further in the third book. To be fair I have no idea what age it is legal to have sex in Australia either today or during the 1920's, but some of the girls involved seem to be barely teenagers and therefore probably considered too young. That subplot actually also bring me to the second of the recurrent themes from the first three of the books about Phryne Fisher: all three of them somewhat involve women in different types of destructive sexual relationships and how they are affected by them.

In Cocaine Blues there is Lydia Andrews who's sexuality is really destroyed by her husband (probably) forcing himself on her. Amelia McNaughton in Flying too High is molested by her own father (who also seem to have raped her mother from time to time) and her fiancé Paolo says he has sort of drawn her sexuality out of her again. In the same book, there is also an indication to Phryne herself having had bad experiences with sexual relationship and if the books are anything like the TV series, this will be furthered discussed in later ones. In Murder on the Ballarat Train, this theme is very prominent in the subplot with Jane and later on also Gabrielle Hart who has been lured and hypnotized into prostitution (by Henry Burton and Miss Gay?).

All of these female characters react to it somewhat differently. Paolo's comment about how careful and tender he had to be with Amelia, indicates that she too was scared at first. Being treated tenderly by Paolo probably encouraged her to explore her sexuality. Likewise Gabrielle Hart and Jane are sort of hypnotized during the whole thing, but still, they are scared as they wake up from the trance. However, Jane finds Phryne. Dot and the Butlers and Gabrielle Hart has (at least) her father who are there for them. Lydia Andrews is in this sense probably worse off. She seems to have no one there to catch her as she falls. Her parents are on the other side of the world and even though they are apparently worried, they are not there for her in the same sense and she does not seem to confide in them in the same way. It is pretty sad actually when you think about it and might be her motivator for turning "bad".

The first picture are my own, but the other book covers borrowed from here and here. 

Ötzi, the Iceman

Ötzi

25 years ago today (19 September 1991) the body of a man turned up in the Alps. He was dated to c. 3 300 BC (The Chalcolithic period) and had been mummified in the ice of a glacier. Today he can be seen at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Italy.

This find was actually one of the reasons for why I chose my profession. I was seven at the time they found him and he was one of my first real nerdy subjects. The finding of him was led to a massive interest from the media and one of my school teacher brought lots of them with her and we looked at the pictures and read all about him and talked about him and the Stone Age. He really made history come to life from me.

He seemed to have had a hard life, his body having many healed fractures. Isotope analysis of his tooth showed that he came from there area of either Eisacktal or Pustertal. Among other things he carried a copper axe and an unfinished bow. His tattoos have been discussed a lot. I, myself wait for the day someone comes up with the idea that he made them while he was drunk...


Picture from Wikipedia.

The Ark

And that's just how it is

And how it's always been

It's where my reason stops

And something else comes in

I know it doesn't make sense, but still...

~ Calleth you, Cometh I; the Ark

Five years ago today, I took farewell of my favourite music band ever. It was really a magical night. I still love them just much as I did back then. They have been in my life since I was 16 and I miss them. Of course I listen to their music a lot still, but I really wish for a reunion.

Picture from here

Some thoughts about Cultural Heritage

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.

~ George Orwell, 1984

Monument of the Vendel Age boat burials in
Vendel, Uppland

This blog post might be containing quite a lot of rambling. I read an interview with the Swedish riksantikvarie (National Antiquarian) Lars Amréus, about the usage of the Cultural Heritage in Sweden. It is a topic I think about daily in my work. Therefore I thought I should shared with you some of my thoughts on the matter. The interview is in Swedish, but I intend to write this post in English as always. The focus will be mainly on Sweden though, since that is the cultural heritage I have most of my experiences from both as a professional archaeologist and as a visitor to different cultural heritage sites throughout my home country. All the photos except the last one in this entry are taken by me on trips to more or less famous cultural heritage sites throughout Sweden.

Gamla Uppsala, Uppland

To define the term cultural heritage is not as easy as one might think. The definition varies a lot between people and also throughout time. A general definition would probably be that it involves everything that humans have shaped throughout time but which in turn also shape us. It can be buildings, places and other types of milieus, but also traditions, crafts, artefacts, folklore, music, literature, art and oral stories. The common thread between all these categories is the stories they can tell about us both in the present and in the past.

Stern of the Vasa ship

Contrary to popular beliefs, a cultural heritage is never static nor is it powerless. It can be extremely political and be used both to include and exclude. The traditional view of a nationalistic cultural heritage has been seriously questioned and challenged in recent years. Recently even more so, due to the uprising of racism in many countries throughout the world, not least in Europe.

I have talked about my view on the term culture in many previous entries to this blog (most notably in this and this) and I don't intend to repeat myself too much in this one. However I want to state that my definition of the term culture is that it is entirely a social construction. It is never finished and it is under continous negotiations. It has all to do with what is socially acceptable in different social contexts.

St Olof's church ruin,
Sigtuna, Uppland

The traditional view of cultural heritage is just as much a product of the Romantic nationalism of the 19th century as the term culture and also the Nation state. The thought of a monocultural nation with one collective culture and history has been strong since then and is still fundamental in our view of the world. In its construction, the museums's (and bascially also the rest of the cultural heritage research) main task was to reflect this monoculturalism.

In my entry about the Stone Age I talked about how European encounters with other social groups through the Western colonialization of the last few centuries pretty much created the whole time period. Analogies was used to the contemporary "hunter-gatherer" societies to show that they belonged to a stage of development the European countries had left behind a long time ago. Just like the Stone Age was created based on a focus of difference, so was the Nation state created through focusing of what it was not.

Rune stone U161, Risbyle
Uppland

The creation of a glorious past was a very important part of the nation building process and therefore ancient monuments (in Sweden for example the mounds of Gamla Uppsala, seen in the second picture in this entry, or the rune stone like the one in the picture to the left) became important.

However, this perspective was very excluding. It excluded certain groups of people (in Sweden for example the Samis) but also parts of the past that was not glorious at all. For example, the Age of the Swedish Empire (Stormaktstiden) during the 17th and the 18th centuries was portrayed as bellicose, heroic and not least masculine. One did not talk about the rather catastrophic results of those war and values: Sweden itself was about to destruct due to the wars and a lot of people, both in Sweden and abroad, suffered greatly because of them. (Sweden would totally have been destroyed if it had not been for the women, but that is a story for another time.)

This is not so much a thing of the past either. We still tend to view our history through "romantic nationalistic glasses". To take the example of the Age of the Swedish Empire again, the Swedish newspaper Expressen as late as last year had a magazine about Sweden's "bloody history" in which one could read:

"Karl XII ärvde en stormakt från pappa Karl XI och de andra lyckosamma regenterna från 1600-talets krigiska epok." (Karl XII inherited a super power from his father Karl XI and the other successful rulers of the bellicose epoch of the 17th century.)

I didn't really know what to think about this quote and the fact that they this summer had a similar magazine devoted to the Swedish war kings made me realise even more how important investments in public outreach really is.

Microlithic flint blade, dated to the
Mesolithic that I found at Kanaljorden,
Motala, Östergötland in 2013

Not everything is bad though. Another Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter had a series of articles about the skull collection of Anders and Gustaf Retzius last year. This is actually really what I think we need to talk about more. Not many Swedes today know that Sweden sort of invented scientific racism (Statens rasbiologiska institut opened in Uppsala in 1922, the first of its kind in the world) This also at the same time as we had the Folkhemmet ideology which managed to be both open and including (the part mainly focused upon) and racist and elitist (the part mainly forgotten)...

There is another example, which might sound even more strange and I realised just how strange it is that we emphasize it because I went to a show by the American ventriloquist Jeff Dunham in Copenhagen a couple of years ago.

He came directly from Stockholm where he had visited one of the major tourist attraction of the Swedish capital and by far the most visited museum of the country: the Vasa museum.

Vasa is a Swedish warship (The stern of it can be seen on the second picture in this entry.) which is mostly famous because it sank after barely having left the harbour in Stockholm on its first journey in 1628 and because it was salvaged 1956-61.

The DC-3, Flygvapenmuseum, Linköping

In his show, Jeff Dunham joked about the fact that the Vasa ship is really a big failure and why do we make a museum of a failure? It really got me to realise that the Vasa museum is kind of brilliant just because of that. It is something that went totally wrong, but still we are proud of it. We really should be proud of both our tragedies and our triumphs. They both make us part of who we are and I think it is really important that our cultural heritage actually portrays both.

Why do we need a cultural heritage then? Well, I think mostly because it seems like a basic instinct inside of us all to seek our history, but also to be able to orientate ourself in time as well as in place wherever we are really. The important thing is that it needs to be including. We need to focus more on what makes our own cultural heritage similar to anyone else's than differences.

Last, but not least I want to show you a photo I found on Tumblr called “Globalization is beautiful sometimes”. It was taken in the Stockholm underground by Ninni Andersson in 2015.

The girls seem different at first, but once you start to really look at them they have very much in common all the same: they have the same colours in red and black, they sit in a similar manner and they both are looking at their phones. I find the picture to be a beautiful illustration that we all are both different and similar at the same time.

PS. Om Ninni Andersson eller någon av flickorna på bilden ser detta: Det är en underbar bild! Jag hoppas det är okej att jag lånade den. Tack!

Johanne Hildebrandt - Sigrid, Sagan om Valhalla

Sigrid is the fourth book in Johanne Hildebrandt's Sagan om Valhalla series and the first one to take place in the Viking Age. The name of the main character to me is rather special since one of my two middle names is Sigrid. The book does not have anything to do with me though. The Sigrid it is supposed to portray is the "Swedish" queen Sigrid Storråda (Sigrid the Haughty according to Wikipedia) who first married the "Swedish" king Erik Segersäll (Erik Victorious), but who later divorced him and remarried Danish king Svend Tveskæg (Sweyn Forkbeard). The book is about Sigrid Tostesdotter who is forced to marry Erik, but falls in love with Svend instead. The connection to Freja is not entirely clear, but it is said that Sigrid is related to her and there is also talk about what happened to Saga and the geneaology in between the book about Saga (The post was updated 1 september 2016.) and the one about Sigrid.

At first I thought the topic for this book would be, the Christianisation of Scandinavia and/or the changing power structures which that entailed. It is my favourite research topic and I think I have something to say about it. However, as I thought more about the historical Sigrid Storråda I found a more interesting topic would be her power and her marriages. Actually I think you can find out a lot about her character (and also the role of the Viking woman) from how she handled her relationships. This sounds perhaps very much like "a woman is nothing without a man", but I do intend this to be something completly different.

In a time when marriages were much more a matter of politics (Especially in the higher end of the social ladder that Sigrid belonged to.) her choices of husbands do not seem so strange. I think the historical Sigrid was much more practical in this than Hildebrandt's Sigrid. For short I do not think she hated one (Erik) and loved the other (Svend). Instead I think she had a very strict view of both her power and the politics of Scandinavia during this time.

In a way this gives her a connection to what is probably one of the most famous female rulers throughout history: Cleopatra VII of Egypt. I am sure everyone have heard all about her love life, but because of my love for the British children's show Horrible Histories, I will leave a link to their Lady Gaga inspired song so they can tell you the short version:

Cleopatra also had two pretty famous relationships: Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) for which she is actually most famous. It has been pretty easy to rally about Cleopatra and her relationships and lots of people (mostly men) have done so both in the past and in the present. However, I want to put her and Sigrid Storråda together and see if I can say something about them as people beyond their husbands by looking at their relationships to them.

We have already established that marriages for the Viking elite was more about politics than love and the same is true for Ptolemaic/Roman Egypt. Looking at Sigrid's and Cleopatra's relationships they actually both seem to have been pretty politically consious women. Establishing allies with the most powerful men in their world (Erik Segersäll and Svend Tveskæg respectively Caesar and Mark Antony) they seem to both had thought about what would give them most power. They also happened to establish this power by bearing everyone of these four men's children. This was probably the only means women in upper class families could gain influence and power (if their husbands didn't die). What I think is interesting too about this is the fact that Sigrid actually manages to get a divorce from Erik (The Norse written sources are not clear as to why, so I will leave it at that.) and manages to get some power status for herself while "between marriages" (so to speak). When she divorced Erik, she also took away all the new allies she had brought into the marriage.

In my last entry about chess I talked about how the change from vizir to queen in the European version of chess was an excellent way of showing the importance of women in Early Medieval Europe and Sigrid's story supports this. The women seem to have been very important in the political structures of the time and also free to move as they pleased. Sigrid's marriages to both Erik and Svend and her divorce from Erik show to me that she was a very politically consious woman and her children ended up on both the Swedish and Danish thrones at the time. I also think the Christian church's negative attitude towards divorces might have originated from this power that the women had in divorces.

Detail of the Oseberg ship

The story of Cleopatra is far more tragic, but I do not think her society was as open to female power as the Viking one was. Her relationships to two of the most powerful political leaders show, just like Sigrid's that she had a political mind. It was not her fault that she ended up on the losing side.

Last but not least, the Scandinavian archaeological artefact I have chosen for this entry is a picture showing how beautifully decorated the Norwegian Oseberg ship is. The ship burial belongs to my favourites. It was found in Oseberg in Vestfold in Norway and excavated in 1904-05 by Norwegian Haakon Shetelig and Swedish Gabriel Gustafson. It was a burial of two women and included lots of precious artefacts. More information can be found here.


I read the hardcover verison of Sigrid, since that is the one I own myself (and it is really nice), but I think the papercover edition is so wonderfully beautiful, that I just had to include a picture of it. The picture was borrowed from here.
The Youtube clip is owned by CBBC. 
The picture of the Oseberg ship was taken from Wikipedia.

About chess - or the other inspiration for my view on culture

Not much is known
Of early days of chess
Beyond a fairly vague report
That fifteen hundred years ago
Two princes fought, though brothers
For a Hindu throne

~ Chess, Story of Chess

The Eddan Queen
Photo: Historiska museet i Lund

I read a blog post from 2014 on the blog of the contract archaeological company then called Riksantikvarieämbetets uppdragsverksamhet (Now Arkeologerna.). It was about a chess piece from the 13th century turning up at the excavation of the Eddan block in Linköping in Östergötland, Sweden. Therefore I think it would be perfect opportunity to tell you about the history of chess and why I think it is perfect for understanding both how cultures interact and what the game can tell us about early Medieval Europe. In many ways it is a continuation of the entry I made a while ago about the Sami hat.

My grandfather taught me to play chess when I was five. Even though the blog post about the Eddan Queen is very imformative, there are some problems with it. For example it uses a direct translation to Swedish of the English names of the pieces and I will tell you why I find this problematic later on in this post, but first som back story.

Chess originated in India and is said to have been spread to Europe via the Arabs in the early Middle Ages. The oldest known written sources of the game and its rules is Versus de scachis dating to c. AD 1000. The blog post about the Eddan Queen says that it probably came to Scandinavia during the 12th century. However, as always with written sources, I think there are reasons to be cautious saying this dates the first use of the game in either Europe or Scandinavia. It might have been used for quite some time before that, just that no one had thought about writing it all down.

Part of the Lewis chess set.
Photo: National Museums Scotland

The Silk Road was, after all, very important to the Vikings and they tended to pick up whatever they liked and brought back home to use it as their own. An indication of when the game was first introduced in Sweden, might the name of the pieces actually provide wherefore I found it sad to see that a direct translation of the English names was used in the blog post about the Eddan Queen.

Like so often when different cultures interact and pick something up from one another, changes need to be made to accommodate the new social context. This also happened to the chess set. In the blog post about the Eddan Queen, it was explained that the army of the Indian and Arabic game turned into representations of the social classes in the European feudalistic society. I, myself, would actually not say that that was really the case.

The Medieval army of the European countries actually did consist of both kings, pawns, knights and bishops and sometimes even women (like queens). However, there were ceveral changes in the pieces collection anyway. The king kept his title, but his advisor, the vizier of the Indian/Arabic version turned into a queen. In Swedish she is normally known as Dam (direct translation: Lady). The battle elephant turned into a bishop in the English version of the game. In Sweden those same pieces are known as Löpare (direct translation: Runner) and the horses where never turned into knights as in the English version. The name normally used in the Swedish version is an older term for horse: Springare. In the Indian/Arabic chess, there were also two wagons that became castles in English and Torn (towers) in Swedish and also the foot soldiers turned into pawns (This is actually the only piece that can be directly translated in Swedish: Bönder.).

Why is this so important to me? Because chess is actually an excellent way to see how far Christianity had spread throughout Europe and which of the "classical social classes" of the Medieval period that had been established at the time the game was introduced.

More stilistic chess pieces

England seems to have already had an established medieval society with knights, kings and queens and the Church seems to have had much more influence there as evident by the bishop's name, than it had in Swede, when the game was introduced there. The names of the pieces reflect this.

The rules of the games also changed when it came to Europe, giving the new queen a much more active role in the games. Today she is the most valuable and piece.

But how about the Arabs? Did they find a need to change the game from its Indian roots? Yes, they did. The older, more naturalistic pieces contradicted the Quran's prohibition of portraying humans and animals. Because of this, the game pieces were transformed to more abstract versions. Today you can find them both while looking for chess sets.

King in a set of game pieces for Hnefatafl
from burial BJ750, Hemlanden Birka, Björkö, Mälaren, Sweden
Photo by SHM 2001-09-26

Another board game that seems to have been popular among the Vikings is Hnefatafl and I just have to show you the one to the left from Birka since I think the pieces are so beautiful. Game pieces turn up in elite Viking burials from time to time. There are some similarities to Chess with both being played on a checkered board and both have the purpose of defending a special piece called "king" which, just like in chess is actually pretty weak. An interesting aspect considering both games illustrates Medieval power structures...


Pictures were borrowed from here, here and here and here.