The ancient strategy game that Holy Island monks may have played in their leisure time
Back in Early Medieval times, there was no Monopoly, Scrabble or Ticket to Ride to occupy long periods of leisure time.
However, humans have long using board games to keep their minds busy and enjoy down time, as a partial game piece discovered at an archaeological dig on Holy Island could demonstrate. Hnefatafl (King's Table) was a strategic board game simulating a Viking raid, with a team of attackers aiming of capturing the king.
A second team, consisting of 12 pieces, defends the king, who must escape 24 attackers arranged in groups of six. Version of Tafl were played in Britain, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland Norway and Sweden before the arrival of Chess in the 11th - 12th centuries.
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In 2019, a tiny piece of worked glass believed to be a Hnefatafl (or local equivalent) game piece was unearthed on Holy Island. At the time, it was only the second Early Medieval glass game piece ever discovered in the UK, and it remains on display in the Lindisfarne Priory Museum.
Earlier this week, it was confirmed that a fragment of a game piece has once again been discovered on Holy Island, possibly belonging to the same set, dating back to the 8th - 10th century. Archaeologists have described the find as "nationally significant" and say it could demonstrate how well-connected the island is, and how its monastery's residents may have spent their leisure time.
Harriet Tatton, community archaeologist at DigVentures, told ChronicleLive: "The piece that we found this time is a partial piece so it's small, but what we noticed immediately was that the design is exactly the same as the full piece that we'd found several years prior. We took the new fragment into the museum where the full one is displayed and the glass is the exact same colour and the pattern has got these white fronds that come off."
Archaeologists are confident that the find is from the same set that the full piece discovered in 2019. Harriet described it as "incredibly exciting" to find that the previous piece wasn't just a one off.
She added: "The last piece was in the higher layers of our site so there's a big jumple of mixed up material which has been mixed up through the process of ploughing, animal activity and other stuff. It's been years and years and we haven't found any more of these, so we'd accepted it was perhaps a bit of a one off little thing that's really nice.
"The buzz when this young man found it and brought it over to me, I recognised it straight away as being the same design as the first piece. We were all really thrilled, and no we're on the hunt for more - if there are two bits, surely there is a third we can find!"
Freddy Wannop, another community archaeologist with DigVentures, added: "It's really exciting that five years later we've found a little bit more. Hopefully we can try and complete the set!"
Other finds discovered in this year's digs have included two name stones (early grave markers), jewellery, and several skulls and "long bones" in a charnel pit at a new dig site next to the island's Green Lane Car Park.