The Hnefatafl Board
The board is always square, and always has an odd number of playing spaces. The pieces are set out on the board with the king on the central square, his defenders around him, and the attackers symmetrically around the edge of the board. So much is common to all hnefatafl games. But the size of the board and the numbers of men vary.
Historically, there were boards from seven rows of seven squares to 19x19, holding anything from 13 pieces to 73. Modern hnefatafl games tend to have nine or eleven squares on a side, with 25 or 37 pieces, but smaller and more specialist manufacturers still make games in the more extreme sizes.
Brandub
Many boards of seven squares by seven have been found, particularly in Ireland, and Scotland. These boards are fittest for thirteen pieces (a king, four defenders and eight attackers), though some try to crowd 25 pieces onto the board. Grafitti on a a flagstone board found in Buckquoy in Scotland suggest that the pieces were laid out in a simple cross formation.
Tablut
Linnaeus recorded the exact layout of the tablut pieces in the eighteenth century, so this layout has become widespread. Other sources and archaeological finds show boards of similar size: various finds of gaming pieces conform closely to this number of pieces, and a Welsh calculation of the value of a tawlbwrdd implies a similar number of pieces.
Tawlbwrdd
A sixteenth century description gives the size of board and the general distribution of pieces, but the exact layout is open to interpretation. One layout that matches the description has been widely adopted on the eleven-by-eleven square board, with 37 pieces, having the defending forces in a compact diamond and the attackers in T-shapes around the edges.
Alea Evangelii
The complex layout for this game was illustrated in a mediaeval manuscript of about 1140, MS. 122 at the Corpus Christi College library in Oxford. It depicts a game played in the time of King Athelstan (924-939), and the description concerns itself not with the game's rules, but with a numerological analogy with the gospels. From this the game gets its name "alea evangelii", "the game of the gospel".
Next: Moving the Pieces
Comments
I plan on making my own board. I am still reading on the rules of the game as I just found this game after reading about Viking history. In the game of Chess, there number and board is same for all. What size of board and game piece would be used to play against others.
Jim - 20:41, 31/07/2018
I am going to build a board for the game of Hnefatafl and most of the boards have 11 rows of 1"squares. I would like to make the board a little larger using 11 rows of 1 1/4 " or 1 1/2" squares. This would make the board 13 3/4" or 18" square . Would this cause any problems?
Thanks, Richard K.
Richard K. - 07:19, 26/11/2019
interesting gamem. kim buckley - 02:36, 07/07/2021
It should not change anything.It's not different ,it is just a bigger board and larger squares.William Nordmark - 02:32, 20/09/2021
I've played it with my son on a regular 8x8 chess board, using one king and all or most of the pawns, but moving on the lines and intersections of the grid (intersections standing in for the Hneftafl squares) for either 7x7 or 9x9 games. That's probably the cheapest way to introduce the game to new players who are already familiar with chess (in most common variants, the "pawns" are all moved like chess-rooks anyway). You might mark the King's Square (center) and the corner "squares" with small stickers or other visual marks, if it helps.J. J. Griffing - 17:20, 03/12/2022