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Tablut & Tafl

The family of Tafl games is at least 1,500 years old and is most closely associated with the Vikings who brought it to all parts of Scandinavia, Britain and many parts of Europe and Russia.

The game is a fascinating game of unequal forces and different objectives. The attackers aim to surround and kill the enemy King while the defenders must protect their King as he tries to escape to a corner of the board. The game is simple to learn but can require deep thought - a classic game of strategic warfare.

The etymology of the word Hnefatafl is disputed but 'hnefi' translates as 'fist' and often referred to the king-piece and tafl in old Norse came to be a generic term for board game. Therefore a likely interpretation is King's Board or King's Table.

History of Tafl Games

A fragment of a gaming board of 18 x 18 squares, found in Wimose, Fyn, Denmark dated prior to AD400 is the first evidence of a game called Tafl, which also regularly appears in the early Icelandic sagas. Tafl apparently developed into Hnefatafl (which literally translates as ‘Kings Table’), which was played by the Saxons as well as other Northern Europeans on the same size board and which is mentioned in Icelandic sagas from the beginning of the fourteenth century. The Vikings took the game with them on their forages which helped it to spread far and wide.

It isn’t known exactly how either Tafl or Hnefatafl were played but evidence shows that the game of Tablut, described by a traveller called Linnaeus during his trip to Finland in 1732, is likely to have been very similar to Hnefatafl. The later British game Fox & Geese, still played today is an ancestor of the game converted to use a chessboard.

You can learn more about the History of Tablut from The Online Guide to Traditional Games.

How to play
Games of the Tafl family are distinguished by the unequal size of the opposing forces. The objective is usually for the force of fewer numbers to take all the members of the larger forces whose aim is generally to stop them doing so.
Hnefatafl is played on a 11 x 11 board. In the game one player controls the Defenders whose aim is to move their King to one of the corner squares to win. The other player plays as the attackers who aim to surround and capture / kill the enemy King.
All pieces move like the rook in Chess – a straight line across any number of unoccupied squares. Capturing happens when the opposing piece is “sandwiched” between two of your pieces.
For full rules, please see our Rules of Hnefatafl – Viking Chess page.

Tablut, Viking Tafl Game is similar to Hnefatafl, but played on a 9 x 9 board. Tablut translates as “Kings Table” in Icelandic and our wooden version of the game is based upon a game found in Lapland in 1732.

Irish Brandubh is a smaller, fast-paced version of the Tafl game played on a compact 7 x 7 board. These boards have been found predominantly in Ireland from the medieval ages.