What Board Game Did They Play In The Television Series Vikings?

In a certain scene in Vikings (that fantastic television series that can be watched on Netflix), King Harald plays a board game that looks a little bit like chess, together with the children of Ragnar Lothbrok.

As a medieval historian, I like historical series and I also get incredibly excited when I hear a peculiarity being mentioned that I’ve never heard of before.

“Cool! It’s viking chess!” I thought.

But what did he actually say? Hnefalafel?

No, not Hnefalafel, although that admittedly sounds like a tasty game.

To save you the headache of playing the scene back three times like I did, here’s the name of the board game: Hnefatafl.

Say what? Hnefawaffle?

No, no, no! Although now you’ve really made me hungry.

Hnefatafl is the name of this viking chess.

I know, that word seems like a pain to pronounce. But you’ll get used to it, trust me. 

The game literally means “king’s table”, as hnefa means king, and tafl means table in Old Norse.

And it’s actually a great game to play. So much so that it has inspired us to create a little website about this wonderful game.

This scene from the series Vikings has actually inspired the domain name for the website you’re currently on: Let’s Play Hnefatafl.

In the scene, king Harald stands up and shouts enthusiastically at all the Vikings in the room: 

“Le’ts play Hnefatafl!”

And all the Vikings start cheering. 

After my girlfriend and I played the scene back three times and finally understood that he said Hnefatafl, we went down a deep rabbit hole of ancient viking history.

We discovered that the game is still in production. You can actually get your hands on a playable set, as we did. 

While there are many different rules, in each variation there’s a king surrounded by his own men (the white player) in the center of the board, and his group is being ambushed by 4 tribes (the black player) who want to capture the king. The king needs to escape to one of the 4 corner squares of the board, while the black player must try to prevent that from happening and capture the king by surrounding him.

The game was quite popular for centuries (4th-12th century), being played in both Scandinavia, the Brittish islands, and, among other places, even as South as France. But towards the end of the 12th century, it became slowly supplanted by chess itself. 

Admittedly, it was still being played in small regions up until much later. But around the 20th century it can be said that it had been properly forgotten. As a result, our understanding of some of the rules are reconstructions. Elsewhere on this website you can find more detailed information about the rules.

But I suggest you just go ahead and give the game a shot yourself – I made a little online version of the game which you can play with a friend sitting next to you.

I wrote this quick little article to help you understand the name of that board game mentioned in Vikings, in case you missed it the first time, and your interest peaked like mine.

May this article be the start of a beautiful journey into viking chess: Hnefatafl!