A Game on the Edge: An attempt to unravel the Gordian Knot of tafl games (original) (raw)

The paper begins with a definition of tafl games and a examination of nomenclature, followed by a review of the distribution of the various games in the tafl family in Ireland, Wales, England and Scandinavia, viz. brandub, tawllbwrdd, alea evangelii (noting, en passant, the probable identity of one of alea evangelii’s two inventors, Israel the Grammarian (ca. 900 – ca. 970) and offering two candidates for the second, Bruno the Great or Rotbert of Trier); and tablut. The paper offers a discussion of the faulty 1811 translation of the rules of tablut from Linnaeus’s manuscript of 1732, subsequently amplified by Murray (1913, 1952) before concluding with an evaluation of the evidence for Linnaeus’s apparent encounter with the game on an inland journey based on close reading of his problematic journal.