Hnefatafl – the Game of the Vikings
An asymmetric siege game from the Iron and Viking Ages: a superior attacker side surrounds the king at the centre of the board, while the defenders must get him to the edge or into a corner refuge. Drag to turn the board, pick a piece and move it – like a rook in chess.
Tip: you can change the AI strength (1 = beginner … 5 = master) at any time, mid-game – it takes effect on the AI’s next move. So you can work your way up, or still turn a losing position around.
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The Rules – explained in full
The goal
Hnefatafl is an unequal siege game. The attackers (the dark side) are twice as many and want to hem the king in at the centre and capture him. The defenders (the light side, half as many) and their king must do the opposite: slip the king through the ranks and get him to safety. So it is not the side that captures more pieces that wins, but the one that reaches its goal with the king.
Setup & turn order
The king stands on the throne in the centre, his defenders in a cross or diamond close around him, the attackers in four groups along the edges. The attackers move first; after that exactly one piece moves in strict alternation. You need not capture anything – moving is compulsory, capturing is an opportunity.
How a piece moves
Every piece moves like the rook in chess: any distance horizontally or vertically across empty squares. No jumping over other pieces, no diagonal moves, and the destination square must be empty.
Capturing (the sandwich)
You capture an enemy soldier by trapping him between two of your pieces with your move – horizontally or vertically, never diagonally. Instead of a second piece of your own, a hostile special square (throne or corner) can form the second wall.
- Only the move that actively closes the trap counts. You may voluntarily move between two enemies without being captured.
- If one move closes several brackets at once, several pieces are captured together.
- The king may help capture like one of his own pieces.
The special squares
Only the king may enter the throne (centre) and the corner squares. They are also “hostile”: a piece pressed against such a square counts as sandwiched and falls. Other pieces may move across the empty throne but not stop on it; the corners are entirely off-limits to soldiers. The edge of the board, by contrast, is not hostile.
How the defenders win
They bring the king to his escape goal:
- Tablut (9×9): to any edge square.
- Brandubh (7×7) & Hnefatafl/Fetlar (11×11): into one of the four corner squares – the “refuges”.
How the attackers win
They capture the king:
- Strong king (Tablut & Fetlar): on an open square the king must be surrounded on all four sides by attackers (or hostile special squares). On the edge he has only three neighbours and cannot be caught – so the attackers must above all seal off the escape routes and corners.
- Young king (Brandubh): on the small board the king already falls between two attackers like an ordinary soldier.
End & special cases
Whoever is to move and has no legal move left loses. If the same position is repeated three times, the game ends in a draw.
A quick strategy tip
As the attackers you throttle the king’s freedom of movement, block the lines to edge and corners and pick off the defenders one by one. As the defenders you open a clear rook line to the outside for the king and lure attackers into brackets – often the king only breaks out late, once the front has already been torn open.
These rules are today’s common reconstruction (after Linnaeus 1732 / Murray 1952 / the modern tafl community) – the exact Viking rules are not recorded.
Background & Symbolism
Hnefatafl (“fist table”, from hnefi = king piece) is attested across northern Europe for centuries – the Ballinderry board (Ireland, ~10th c.) shows the 7×7 layout, the Ockelbo rune stone two men at a game board, and a tafl board also lay among the finds of the Gokstad ship. Only chess displaced it; it survived only as Tablut in Lapland, where Carl Linnaeus recorded it in 1732.
Anecdotes & Finds
In the Völuspá the gods play with golden pieces in the grass in the golden dawn of the world (teflðu í túni) – and after the world’s fire the surviving Æsir find these very gaming pieces again in the new world. Whether Hnefatafl was already meant we cannot know; but the image shows how naturally the board game belonged to the world of the Norse.
A riddle in the Hervarar saga describes the game in code: Odin, disguised as “Gestumblindi”, asks King Heiðrekr about the weaponless maids who fight around their lord – some shield him, the others charge in. The answer is the pieces of tafl with their king in the middle. That is how poetically a siege game could be paraphrased in the North.
How much tafl counted as a mark of learning is shown by the Orkney jarl Rögnvaldr Kali Kolsson: he boasted of nine mastered arts – and in his verse placed the game of tafl first of all, ahead of runes, poetry, harp, smithing and skiing. In the Eddic poem Rígsþula, too, the young nobleman learns tafl as one of the skills that make the high-born man.
In noble graves from Scandinavia to Ireland lay whole sets of pieces in bone, antler or glass – the king piece (hnefi) usually larger or more finely worked than his guards. A game for long winter evenings in the hall, betraying rank and leisure at once.