Board Game Studies

Studies Issue 3

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The present issue of Board Games Studies covers fewer games than previously. Broadly speaking there are two: tāb and chess. If chess history has a wide coverage, tāb games have been little studied. It is a fortunate opportunity that we can present in this issue four contributions dealing entirely or partially with tāb games. We first have Alf Nęsheim's article on the Norwegian game daldųsa, followed by a set of rules that are common to both the Norwegian and Danish games. Peter Michaelsen, who has been studying daldųs for many years, had published his first conclusions in the Danish journal Ord & Sag (Michaelsen 1999) and gives here a revised version of his work. Alan Borvo, an ethnologist by training and an old (French) friend of the Sįmit, offers a fascinating account of the Sįmi (Lapp) game sįhkku from his own experience. Thierry Depaulis then publishes a corpus of tāb and sīg games from the Arab-Muslim world which he has been collecting for years from rare or hard-to-find, mostly French sources. He also offers some hypotheses about the strange travels of these games.

Chess is now the subject of many renewed studies. Even if some students are reconsidering the role of India as the birthplace of chess it is crucial to have as many materials as possible at hand. The HariharacaturaŁga chapter on 'Grand Chess' is of great importance for the understanding of Indian chess variants, and we are grateful to Andreas Bock-Raming for his meticulous edition of this rare text and for his translation into a European language.

The Fribourg (Switzerland) IVth 'Board Games in Academia' colloquium has led to new approaches in board game studies which will no doubt appear in our forthcoming issues. One of the decisions we took in Fribourg was to hold a colloquium once a year and not every two years as previously. The next and Vth one will be held in a few months in Barcelona, Spain. These meetings not only are good opportunities to hear learned contributions, but they also provide a venue where ideas can be freely exchanged.