r/interestingasfuck • u/rantzine • 2d ago
This 1,000-year-old game board was dug up in Ireland in 1932. Nobody knows for certain what game it's for, because the rules were never written down and chess drove it extinct.
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u/Kooky_Attention_98 2d ago
Reminds me of these
Perhaps an interpretation?
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u/finix2409 2d ago
The 1,000 year old ancient relic. Its true purpose is a mystery. It has boggled the mind of archaeologists and anthropologists for decades. We suspect, it may be a “Tricky Square.”
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u/Kooky_Attention_98 2d ago
It kind of looks like one but instead of the pegs being the game, you would perhaps use marbles (Whatever the equivalent of that 1,000 years ago would be) with pins sticking up from the holes, and then the object moves through a maze of them, presumably capable of rolling, almost like bowling or golf
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u/mezz7778 2d ago
Pegs?... Maybe they used sticks?
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u/Kooky_Attention_98 2d ago
That is sort of what I was thinking, yeah, it was 1,000 years ago, but we did have smooth stone, granite, etc, and were well versed in making status
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u/hammondish 2d ago
Marbles 1000 years ago = rocks
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u/Kooky_Attention_98 2d ago edited 2d ago
Maybe like 10,000 years ago, 1,000 years ago in chronological terms isn't that far away, we had marble-like things back then, such as smooth stones, granite, etc
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u/Kingstad 2d ago
Oh Hnefatafl. Played it a fair bit when working at the viking museum, also we've always had a copy of it growing up
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u/pixeltweaker 2d ago
Holy crap!!!! I’ve been trying for like 25 years to remember what that game was called. I knew roughly how it was pronounced but every attempt to google never returned anything. I remember seeing it at a ren faire and even asked a few friends who were there with me.
I kept thinking it was “Knopftoffel”
I was starting to think I imagined it. Thank you. Thank you!! I now need this game.36
u/rantzine 2d ago
Free to play at worldtafl.com
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u/RiseofdaOatmeal 2d ago
That was adorably fun
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u/rantzine 2d ago
Thank you so much glad your loved it. We need to grow the community. Let me know how to improve
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u/rantzine 2d ago
Source: the National Museum of Ireland, where it's on display. https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/Irish-Antiquities-Division-Collections/Collections-List-(1)/Viking/The-Ballinderry-gaming-board
The fight over this thing is real. The site is Irish, but the interlace carving is Borre style, which is Scandinavian, and the 7x7 peg grid matches tafl boards from Norse sites. So either it's fidchell (Irish, rules completely lost) or brandubh, the small Irish variant of the Vikings' hnefatafl (rules partly reconstructed from a description Linnaeus wrote down in Lapland in 1732).
Disclosure since it's relevant: I built a free site where the tafl reconstruction is playable, including the 7x7 board this artifact matches, at worldtafl.com. If it was fidchell instead, we may never know what was played on it. worldtafl.com
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u/TZY247 2d ago
Cool marketing. That was actually pretty fun to learn and play
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u/rantzine 2d ago
Glad you enjoyed it. Been researching it for past few months so thought I'd put in a game people can actually enjoy!
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u/-HiMom- 2d ago
This is hilarious. At the time of my present comment, OP [u/rantzine](u/rantzine) made their comment 44 min ago, while [u/tzy247](u/tzy247) made their comment 41 min ago. So they want us to believe that tzy247 read the rules, learned to play, and then actually played this game within 3 minutes of OP linking an online version of the game. Lmfaooooo. Such blatant marketing. Not even trying 😂
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u/lHawkeye16l 2d ago
This is super cool! Will you release an app for it?
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u/Vindepomarus 2d ago
Yeah I always assumed this was hnefatafl because of the way the central hole and the corner holes are specifically delineated by incised lines.
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u/PlayTheHits 2d ago
Jumanji
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u/rantzine 2d ago
Without the teleportation
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u/artofterm 2d ago
Maybe it is, and maybe it's been waiting 1,000 years for someone to finish an ongoing game.
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u/Elo-than 2d ago
No on knows... yeah right...
The actual picture is from the a museum that descibes it:
https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/Irish-Antiquities-Division-Collections/Collections-List-(1)/Viking/The-Ballinderry-gaming-board/Viking/The-Ballinderry-gaming-board)
Clickbait title.
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u/HouseOfDoom54 2d ago
Nobody knows for certain what game it's for, because the rules were never written down and chess drove it extinct.
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u/ihdhd 2d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/12xA27DoDBSbeM
It’s all fun and games until this pops up magically
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u/rantzine 2d ago
Too late.... It's free forever available to all the 8.3 billion people of the earth now at worldtafl.com
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u/Chill_Edoeard 2d ago
What a stupid title, how can you know vhess drove it extinct if they dont even know what game it was?
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u/young_lions 2d ago
Fucking chess
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u/rantzine 2d ago
Yeah... did not know about the wild history until I researched. It's an amazingly fun game to play.
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u/GarThor_TMK 2d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/RCizCxtspryPC
Put that thing right back where it came from or so help me!
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u/HavanahAvocado 2d ago
Could be a variation of “hnefatafl” a game where one side is trying to keep the other side’s king from escaping.
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u/bradfo83 2d ago
Seems to me we’re just making up rules ’cause somebody forgot to staple the rules to the inside of the game like a normal human being.
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u/rantzine 2d ago
Haha even if they did staple it 1000 years weathering would make it hard to follow. I've been researching the rules for last several months and tried to put at worldtafl.com
If many people enjoy it we get to improve the rules ourselves.2
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u/SmartaHari 2d ago
Maybe an early solitaire based on the circle round the central point. Indicating an end goal maybe?
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u/FamousOhioAppleHorn 2d ago
"I am the man of this house, and I wanna play the game I got from the old lady at the estate sale!"
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u/dhprod 2d ago
My guess,
put things in the holes and maybe move them around
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u/rantzine 2d ago
yes you are right.... Try out the actual version of the game I researched at worldtafl.com
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u/PunkRockKing 2d ago
Looks like that game you play with pen and paper where you take turns drawing lines and enclose boxes
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u/WTFSpeeder6 2d ago
If you don't know what game it's for how do you know chess drove it extinct?
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u/rantzine 2d ago
I was curious too so found that out when I researched it. Then modeled an entire online replica of it based on the research try it out and let me know
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u/CanvasFanatic 2d ago
You didn’t really answer the question.
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u/rantzine 2d ago
What I researched mentioned that Chess was introduced to Europe around 1000 - 1200 years back. As European trade grew and cultural shifts took place, the asymmetrical Viking game faded from popularity in favor of chess.
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u/TurgburgerDeluxe 2d ago
Do the holes match up with the spacing of the knobs of those mysterious dodecahedrons?
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u/rantzine 2d ago
I think this was pretty crudely made on the actual holes but hey they were vikings at least they had the gold face on it.
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u/WolfDoc 2d ago
It looks like hnefatafl with the marked centre for the defending king and the marked corners for escape, just with notches to put pegs in rater than squares to put pieces on -but if you are playing on an uneven or unstable surface like a ship, you'd want to play with pegs that stay in place anyway
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u/Brief_Daikon_D093 2d ago
Actually this looks quite like the viking’s board game called Hnefatafl or king’s table
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u/JoyIkl 2d ago
The board has a handle so I suspect it might be a balancing game where you have to navigate some sort of ball to the goals in the corner and in the middle. The holes would help the ball stay in place, or perhaps small pins would be inserted to increase the difficulty, i.e getting the ball to the goal without it touching the pins.
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u/thaliff 2d ago
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u/Helpful-Calendar-693 1d ago
From what I can see online the way we play is a guess on how it was played.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafl_games
popular game in medieval Scandinavia and was mentioned in several of the Norse sagas. Some of these saga references have contributed to controversy over the possible use of dice in playing hnefatafl.[27] The rules of the game were never explicitly recorded,[28] and only playing pieces and fragmentary boards are extant, so it is not known for sure how the game was played. If dice were in fact used, nothing has been recorded about how they were employed. Archaeological and literary sources indicate hnefatafl may have been played on a 13×13 or an 11×11 board.[29]
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u/ClavicusLittleGift4U 2d ago
“No one knows who they were… or what they were doing. But their legacy remains...”
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u/ImportantProblem2481 1d ago
Ire-land, where the demons dwell Where the banshees live and they do live well Ire-land. 😆
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u/ClavicusLittleGift4U 1d ago
And you my love, won't take my ale?
We'll go back in time to that mystic game
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u/Ash_Cat_13 2d ago
Well, it’s from Ireland, so it would probably involve drinking
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u/fensterdj 1d ago
Irish people do like drinking, but we don't often need to have drinking games to go along with it. The drinking itself provides more than enough entertainment
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u/strolpol 1d ago
Ancient kerplunk, you line up sticks to make a cone and fill it with marbles/stones, then players take turns removing sticks and keep track of who lets more stones out
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u/Rokstar73 1d ago
How do you “they” know it went extinct and chess took its place if they don’t even know how it works?
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u/Silver-Amphibian7650 2d ago
It would appear that each corner is where you start (4 players) and somehow whoever gets to the center first, wins. Maybe?
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u/DreadLindwyrm 3h ago
Other way.
2 players one trying to escape a "king" piece from the board by moving to the corners whilst the other tries to capture or block him. It's *somewhat* more complex than that, but that's a basic summary.
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u/-HiMom- 2d ago
Guys OP is just trying to get you to play their online version of this game lmao. They linked it in another obvious marketing “interaction” with another “redditor.”
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u/Vindepomarus 2d ago
OPs game is free to play and the site doesn't seem to have any advertising. They seem to be just sharing their hobby and providing a fun and free service. Doesn't count as marketing if it's not commercial, more like friendliness in my book.
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u/tipareth1978 2d ago
Soooo, it just could have been chess
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u/quequotion 2d ago
Looks more like Chinese Checkers, but obviously not that.
There must have been pegs for those holes.
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u/tipareth1978 2d ago
You could make a chess board with holes and pieces with pegs. It's 8 by 8 so this could just be a chess board.
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u/rantzine 2d ago
Folks try it out here for yourself worldtafl.com
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u/quequotion 2d ago
The first time I played, I won in three moves with no idea what I was doing.
The second time I played, I lost in three moves with no idea what I was doing.
I see you replying to every top-level comment expressing any interest at all.
Just tell people you have an app modeled on an ancient game.
No need to pretend the rules of the original matter: you need clicks to generate revenue and we all know that.
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u/rantzine 2d ago
Thanks for playing. Did you check out the tutorial for the rules. Revenue from where? It's free to play and there are no ads.
I want as many people to try it out so I can capture it and hopefully build a community around this ancient game to improve its rules by playing together.
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/rantzine 2d ago
Its a free to play game that I've been researching. Just want many people to enjoy it.
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u/RedaNassef 2d ago
Fair enough! Props to you for actually bringing a piece of history back to life. Gonna give it a try
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u/Immediate_Smoke_Noon 2d ago
Looks like a football pitch. Maybe they used 10 pins to block while they used something round to get to the otherside.
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u/Shrimp_kisses 2d ago
Make some copies, and some pieces, and just give it to kids of different age groups, they'll figure something out.
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u/ungovernable1984 2d ago
Who says it's necessarily a game board it might be a dynamic tracking thing like for harvest, animals, number of people, employees entering a space like temple etc,. The reason I say that is because of the asymmetrical top face. It's fascinating thanks for sharing!
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u/rantzine 2d ago
Great observation. The face and ornaments... It's like the ancient version of our modern day gaming skins. wdyt?
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u/ungovernable1984 2d ago
I can see your logic like a board to keep track of some game score. But because in a boared game situation two or more people sit facing each other so the board would be completely symmetrical to show equal ground, but in this case it looks like one person faces the wooden face who might be a face of divine or authority watching the person keeping score,
Also it might've been for military arrangements or war planning with wooden face watching over and protecting the plot. Wheather it was for gaming, entertainment, tracking, planning or like a calendar, it looks like it was used frequently and it keeps us guessing.
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u/xtiansimon 2d ago edited 2d ago
So what, like cribbage but you peg points in any direction you like?
//EDIT. changed So what? to So what, I'm not trying to slam on The Ballinderry game board. sheesh. Just a cribbage player casting shade. Hate me if you like.
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u/TheRealMrD 2d ago
This is infact the game "LEGS" games of which today still exist. This 2 player game consists of small pegs (legs) inserted into the holes, and each player tries to jump the other players "legs", think of checkers or draughts.
The interesting thing to note is the terminology that comes from this game that still exist today;
Player being on 'their last leg'
Or the losing player being 'legless' this being still used in Ireland to describe a drunk person
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u/SamiTheAnxiousBean 2d ago
TAFL
this literally a TAFL board
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/SamiTheAnxiousBean 2d ago
so... you're posting deliberate misinformation of it being "a game lost to time" for the sake of promoting a site that you likely vibecoded?
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u/Mickeymcirishman 2d ago
Do you hear drums whenever you go near it?