Board Games in Boat Burials: Play in the Performance of Migration and Viking Age Mortuary Practice

Abstract

This contribution explores an aspect of boat burials in the second half of the first millennium ad across Northern Europe, specifically boat burials that included equipment for board games (surviving variously as boards and playing pieces, playing pieces only, or dice and playing pieces). Entangled aspects of identity, gender, cosmogony, performance, and commemoration are considered within a framework of cultural citation and connection between death and play. The crux of this article's citational thrust is the notion of quoting life in the rituals surrounding death. This was done both in the service of the deceased and in the service of those wanting to remember the deceased, the argument distills around the biographical trajectories or the different social and individual uses to which people put ostensibly simple things such as gaming pieces.

Cet article a pour but d'explorer un aspect des sépultures à bateaux de la seconde moitié du premier millénaire apr. J.-C. en Europe septentrionale, et plus particulièrement les tombes à navires qui contenaient des éléments de jeux de société (conservés sous forme de plateaux et de pièces à jouer, de pièces à jouer seules, ou de dés et de pièces à jouer). L'examen porte sur les aspects du jeu qui entremêlent des notions d'identité, de genre, de cosmogonie, de performance et de commémoration dans un cadre formé par les références culturelles et les liens entre la mort et le jeu. L'idée essentielle derrière l'usage de ces références consiste à invoquer la vie dans la mort pour servir le mort tout autant que ceux qui désirent le commémorer, et ces notions se concrétisent autour des divers usages auxquels on a pu soumettre des objets apparemment tout simples. Translation by Madeleine Hummler

Dieser Artikel versucht, einen Aspekt der Schiffsbestattungen der zweiten Hälfte des ersten Jahrtausends n.Chr. in Nordeuropa zu untersuchen, namentlich die Bootbestattungen, die Elemente von Brettspielen (verschiedentlich als Spielbretter mit Spielsteinen, nur als Spielsteine oder als Würfel und Spielsteine erhalten) enthielten.

Keywords:

• Migration period
• Viking Age
• afterlife
• board games
• boat burials
• ship burials
• performance
• play
• remembrance

Mots-clés:

• période des grandes migrations
• époque viking
• au-delà
• jeux de société
• sépultures à bateaux
• tombes à navires
• performance
• jeu
• commémoration

Stichworte:

• Völkerwanderungszeit
• Wikingerzeit
• Jenseits
• Brettspiele
• Schiffsbestattungen
• Bootbestattungen
• Aufführung
• Spiel
• Erinnerung

Acknowledgements

Versions of this paper were presented at the European Association of Archaeologists Annual Meeting, Pilsen, 2013, and the Nordic TAG Conference, Stockholm, 2014. I am grateful to The Strathmartine Trust, the Hunter Archaeological Trust and the Society for Medieval Archaeology (Sudreys Fund) for grants for attending the Stockholm conference. I am grateful to the following colleagues for useful criticism and further examples: Nanouschka Myrberg Burström, Mats Burström, Howard Williams, Alison Klevnäs, Annemarieke Willemsen, Matthias Teichert, Neil Price, Frands Herschend, Stephen Driscoll, Hans Skov, Erki Russow, Helge Sørheim, Roger Wikell, Bergljot Solberg, Jan Kindberg Jacobsen, Anne Sørensen, and Volker Hilberg. Four anonymous referees added further useful criticism and nuances of interpretation for which I am grateful. I would be delighted to hear of further examples of boat burials with board games.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark A Hall

Mark A. Hall is an archaeologist and museum curator based at Perth Museum & Art Gallery, Perth & Kinross, Scotland and currently on secondment in the Western Isles of Scotland working on the Udal Project. He has long-standing research interest in the archaeology of board games and play, the cult of saints, Pictish sculpture, cultural biography and cinematic re-imaginings of the past.