Brandubh

When it comes to archaeological finds of hnefatafl games, the Ballinderry board is among the most spectaular. Found in a bog in Ireland in the 1930s, it is thought to be at least 1000 years old, and is fantastically preserved.

The board shows a 7 x 7 grid of holes, with the central and corner holes highlighted. Does remind you of hnefatafl, doesn't it? And if you then think of the game of brandubh, mentioned in the Irish myths and sagas as being played with a king and four men against eight .... you do the maths!

I wanted to make myself a brandubh set, inspired by the Ballinderry board. So with holes as playing fields. We have no idea what the pieces used for the Ballinderry board looked like, but they must been, or have had, pegs, to fit in the holes. With that in mind, I came upon the idea of using pieces of carbon tubes and fibreglass rods, and adorning these with feathers: pigeon, crow and pheasant feathers to be precise.

For the board, I took a square of relatively rough plywood, and drilled 49 holes in it. As 'brandubh' means 'black raven' I painted the silhouette of a raven on the board.

I really wanted the board to look rustic, so finished it with discs sawn from tree branches. Besides the raven silhouette, nothing was painted, just plain wood, with most of the bark still present on the discs. 

Really pleased with it! And adding the pieces to the board makes it look like this:

Neat, huh? And the use of crow feathers is an extra nod to the 'black raven' ...