EXHIBITIONS Moves in the dark


The Lewis Chessmen ABERDEEN ARTS GALLERY (AND TOURING)


ny mention of Iceland conjures up a com- plex array of associations for the Scots: cod wars; the ash cloud and blissfully empty skies last spring, and lost investments in the banking crisis. Now, it seems, the Icelanders are claiming that one of Scotland’s greatest archaeological treasures may, in fact, belong to them. That’s not quite true. In fairness, SNP leader Alex Salmond is claiming that the Lewis Chessmen, the 93 twelfth-century walrus-ivory pieces found at Uig on Lewis some time before April 1831, should all be restored to Scotland. The British Museum holds 82 of them, with the rest held at the Royal Museum in Edinburgh, and while some of the pieces from both locations are currently on tour in Scotland, they have become a small- scale version of the Elgin Marbles in Anglo-Scottish relations. The Icelandic claim is less about proper ownership than about provenance. At a recent symposium in Edinburgh, it was suggested that the iconic pieces were made not in Norway, as has always been thought, but in Iceland, and perhaps by a priest’s wife. There are ancient documents relating to Bishop Páll of Skálholt, whose wife, the splendidly named


A RADIO Line to nowhere


The Ghost Trains of Old England BBC RADIO 4


he title of the travel writer Ian Marchant’s spirited documentary (27 October) was faintly misleading. One expected a riot of phantom signalmen and headless drivers, and what one got was a whimsical little enquiry into bureaucratic obfuscation, begin- ning in the coldly realistic setting of Stockport station. Here, Mr Marchant stood chattily awaiting the 9.22 a.m. departure to Stalybridge, an innocuous enough choice of destination until you discovered that service ran only once a week and did not, mysteriously, come back. What, then, was the point of the train’s exis-


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tence? Marchant was keen to assure us that it did have a function, and that should anyone want to pursue the complicated cross-country route that takes one from Aberystwyth to Huddersfield, this half-hour journey played an integral part. Ominously enough, his fellow travellers – there were nine passengers, all told – were either train buffs or vacationing railway employees (the exception was a man attending a conference in Ashton-under-Lyne who seemed taken aback to find that he would


Margrét the Adroit, was apparently famed for her skill in carving wal- rus ivory. The men behind this claim, which has been sharply con- tested, are Icelandic chess enthusiasts Einar Einarsson and Gudmundur Thórarinsson. The chief evidence for Icelandic provenance appears to be the use of the word “bishop” for a piece known as a “runner” in most lan- guages apart from English … and Icelandic. Thórarinsson freely admits that the suggestion is specu - lative, but believes that the pieces were made for trade or as gifts and were lost during a voyage.


Why were the pieces buried in a small chamber in a dry sand dune, if, indeed, that is where they really were found? The obvious answer is that they were buried there for safe storage by a twelfth-century merchant, this at a time when the Outer Hebrides were gov- erned by Norway rather than Scotland, and were probably intended for sale in Ireland. That’s reinforced by the likelihood that the pieces come from four different sets. Inevitably, there are conspiracy theories and there are some decidedly dodgy figures involved in the eventual sale of the pieces. One observer has noted that at the exact time the Lewis Chessmen appeared, there was a pungent rivalry in chess between Edinburgh and London, successive moves being posted by stagecoach. How convenient to be able to assert Scotland’s priority! It goes further.


have to take an alternative route home). Their purpose in assembling for what one of them, with no irony whatsoever, termed “a pleasure trip” was to celebrate something that the rail- way companies try very hard to ignore and would be happy to see disappear altogether. The 9.22 Stockport-to-Stalybridge turned out to be what industry insiders refer to as a “Parliament train” – a service that the author- ities yearn to close but, finding the legally enjoined process of consultation too expensive, nearly always choose to retain in a form so vestigial that it is barely advertised to the pub- lic. Having recruited himself at the buffet (too early, alas, for the celebrated real ale), Marchant could next be found at “Teesside Airport”, a station so sequestered that only 22 people had purchased tickets to it and back again in the whole of 2008. Even then, it was alleged, most of them were not bona fide travellers, but enthusiasts who simply wanted evidence of the line’s existence for their scrapbooks. But it took a trip to Ealing Broadway to establish how unutterably bizarre the “ghost train” phenomenon has become. Here, Marchant joined a select band of hopefuls (all male – this was never a woman’s hobby) avid to board the 9.45 to Wandsworth Common. Curiously, this vehicle was a bus – the precarious legacy of a service that had once run from Manchester Piccadilly to Brighton. One man had come all the way from Preston (it was “something of a unique oppor-


Pawns in a political game? Examples of the Lewis Chessmen


According to one argument, the Lewis Chessmen are nothing more than a collection of Viking figurines, of which half were stained red in order to make them look like chess pieces. The bishop is again the crux of the argument. If the pieces were carved in Norway somewhere between 1050 and 1150, that is still at least 300 years before any documented appearance of a bishop in a chess set. Which suggests they aren’t chess pieces at all … unless the Icelandic theory stands up. Whatever the case, they remain powerful


and evocative figures even in the resin copies that sell well in Scottish tourist shops. But will Scotland get her chess pieces back? Are they worth the fight, or just another clever piece of heritage-mongering? Brian Morton


tunity”, he declared) to attend an excursion that seemed to be taking place in outright defiance of the train company responsible, which advertises it by way of two or possibly three posters, each carrying a telephone num- ber which, if dialled, leads not to a customer services operative but to a bemused recep- tionist at the Department of Transport. Marchant and his BBC tape-operative ended their enquiry at Newhaven Marine, a 200-yard step from the better-known Newhaven Harbour and apparently closed since 2006 on public safety grounds. Although a train from Lewes still trails back and forth each night of the week, Marchant’s attempt to buy a ticket to the station was stoutly repulsed by a booking-office clerk who assumed that he was poking fun. After tele- phoning the Department of Transport and talking to a helpful lady, Marchant secured a taxi to take him to Newhaven Harbour on the understanding that the £2.60 it cost him would be reimbursed by the taxpayer. Downbeat, gently ironical and full of charm- ingly unrehearsed dialogue, Marchant’s investigation had, of course, a serious point to make: why close railway lines if they serve some purpose and people want to travel on them? Teesside Airport, it was suggested, might attract some custom if there was a regu - lar service and people knew of its existence. This was the best thing I have listened to on radio on all year. D.J. Taylor


6 November | THE TABLET | 29


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