Download Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them AudioBook Free
In the first 1800s, over a Hebridean beach in Scotland, the ocean exposed a historical treasure cache: 93 chessmen carved from walrus ivory. Norse netsuke, each face specific, each filled with quirks, the Lewis Chessmen are probably the most famous chess pieces on earth. Harry played out Wizard's Chess with them in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Natural stone. Housed at the English Museum, they may be among its most visited and much loved objects. Questions abounded: Who carved them? Where? Ivory Vikings explores these mysteries by joining medieval Icelandic sagas with modern archaeology, fine art history, forensics, and the annals of board games. In the process, Ivory Vikings reveals a vivid history of the 400 years when the Vikings ruled the North Atlantic, and the ocean road linked countries and islands we think of as way aside and culturally different: Norway and Scotland, Ireland and Iceland, and Greenland and THE UNITED STATES. The storyline of the Lewis chessmen explains the financial lure behind the Viking voyages to the western world in the 800s and 900s. And finally, it brings from the shadows an extraordinarily proficient woman designer of the 12th hundred years: Margret the Adroit of Iceland.
