Olli Salmi
1.12.2013 [updated 18.6.2015]
Tablut
Translation of Linnaeus’s rules for the Saami game
Linnaeus describes the Saami board game tablut in his ‘Tour of Lapland”. His notes were published in English in 1811 (volume I and II).The Latin text below is from the Royal Skytte Society edition of Iter
Lapponicum (2003).
Tablut. | Dabllo |
1. Arx regia. Konokis Lappon., cui nullus succedere potest. | 1. The fort of the king (gånågis in Saami), which nobody can enter. |
“Succedere” with dative seems to mean
“enter”. Gånågis
means ‘king’. It’s unlikely that it refers to the central square.
Fries: “Konokis in Saami, which [i.e. the King] nobody can replace.” The word Lapp is not politically correct nowadays, so I use “Saami” in order not to get blame for Linnaeus's use of words. I use the Finnish spelling that Sámi giellatekno uses in English. |
|
2 et 3. Sveci N:r 9 cum rege et eorum loca s. stationes. | 2 & 3. Swedes, 9 of them with the king and their squares or positions. |
Fries thinks that number 9 refers to the squares only. | |
4. Muscovitarum stationes omnes in prima aggressione depictæ. | 4. The positions of the Muscovites at the beginning of the attack. |
0. Vacua loca1 occupare cuique licitum, etiam Regi, idem valet de locis characterisatis praeter arcem. | 0. Empty squares can be occupied by any piece, also the King. This also applies to the specially marked squares except the fort. |
“Praeter” means “in front of”, but it can also mean “except” (Cartier’s suggestion), which is very precise in the context. Linnaeus could have used numbers but this is shorter. | |
Leges | Rules |
1. Alla få occupera och mutare loca per lineam rectam, non vero transversam, ut a ad c non vero a ad e. | 1. Any piece may occupy a square and move from one square to another in a straight line but not diagonally, as from a to c, but not from a to e. |
“Alla få occupera och”, Swedish, “all can occupy and”. | |
2. Nulli licitum sit locum per lineam rectam alium supersalire, occupare, ut a b ad m, alio aliqvo in i constituto. | 2. It is not allowed to pass over any other piece that may be in the way, or to move into its place, for instance, from b to m, in case any were stationed at i or somewhere else(?). |
“Constituto” participle “placed”. “Alio aliquo” is “anyone else”, or “any other one”, suggesteed by Ahston's professional translator. | |
3. Si Rex occuparet locum b et nullus in e, i et m positus esset, possit exire, nisi2 mox muscovita aliqvod ex locis nominatis occupat, et Regi exitum præcludit. | 3. If the king should stand in b, and no other piece in e, i, or m, he may escape by that road, unless one of the Muscovites immediately gets possession of one of the squares in question, so as to interrupt him. |
4. Si Rex tali modo exit, est praelium finitum. | 4. If the king be able to accomplish this, the contest is at an end. |
5. Si Rex in e collocaretur, nec ullus s. ejus s. hostis miles esset in f g sive i m, tum aditus non potest claudi. | 5. If the king happens to be in e, and none of his own people or his enemies either in f or g, i or m, his exit cannot be prevented. |
6. Ut Rex aditum apertum vidit, clamet Raichi, si duæ viæ apertæ sunt tuichu. | 6. Whenever the king perceives that a passage is free, he must call out rájgge ‘hole’ and if there be two ways open, dujgu ‘hither and thither’. |
Fries: “tuichu Luule Saami tuoiku ‘up there in front, that way forward’ (Grundstöm, s. 1255f)”. Wiklund’s Lule-Lappisches Wörterbuch has the form tuiku (dujgu in the present official orthography), which is prolative plural, ‘through those [holes]’. Perhaps best translated as ‘this way and that’. | |
7. Licitum est loca dissita occupare per lineam rectam, ut a c ad n, nullo intercludente. | 7. It is allowable to move ever so far at once, in a right line, if the squares in the way be vacant, as from c to n. |
8. Svecus et muscovita in gressibus alternant. | 8. The Swedes and the Muscovites take it by turns to move. |
9. Si qvis hostem 1 inter 2 sibi hostes collocare possit, est occisus et ejici debet, etiam Rex. | 9. If a player can move so that the enemy is between two of his pieces, it is killed and taken off, likewise the king. |
“Possit” present subjunctive, “be able
to”. Literally: “If somebody can move [so that] a piece [ends up] between two hostile pieces,…” Linnaeus had trouble finding a concise formulation of this rule. A suicide interpretation probably makes the game impossible. Fries translates literally. |
|
10. Si Rex in arce 1 et hostes in 3bus ex N:r 2, tum
abire potest per qvartum, et si ejus in 4to locum occupare potest, si ita cinctus et miles in 3 collocatur, est inter regem et militem qvi stat occisus, si qvatuor hostes in 2, tum rex captus est. |
10. If the king, being in his own square or castle, is encompassed
on three sides by his enemies, one of them standing in each of three
of the squares numbered 2, he may move away by the fourth. If one of his own people happens to be in this fourth square, and one of his enemies in number 3 next to it, the soldier thus enclosed between his king and the enemy is killed. If four of the enemy gain possession of the four squares marked 2, thus enclosing the king, he becomes their prisoner. |
11. Si Rex in 2, tum hostes 3, sc. in a α et 3
erint, si capiatur. |
11. If the king be in 2, with an enemy in each of the adjoining squares, a, α and 3, he is likewise taken. |
12. Rege capto vel intercluso finitur bellum et victor retinet
svecos, devictus muscovitas et ludus incipiatur. |
12. When the king is taken or imprisoned, the war is over, and the
winner takes the Swedes, the loser the Muscovites, and the play
starts all over. |
This rule says nothing about the case of the Swedes winning. | |
13. Muscovitas sine rege erint, suntque 16 in 43 phalangibus disponendis. | 13. The Muscovites have no King and the 16 pieces are deployed in 4 units. |
14. Arx potest intercludere, æque ac trio[tertio?], ut si miles in 2 et hostis in 3 est, occiditur4. | 14. The fort can block, as a third [piece], so if there is a soldier in 2 and enemy in 3, it is killed. |
Tertio is Ashton's suggestion. Fries: “Trio ‘ox’ seems to be taken from some game where the “ox” is surrounded.” |
1. Translation 1811
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36059/36059-h/36059-h.htm
The 1889 edition says that the translation into English was done by a
young Swedish merchant, Carl Troilius, who was in London at the time (p.
3, footnote 1). However, Troilius’s Latin wasn't enough, and the editor
translated those parts
2. Swedish 1889 edition
https://archive.org/stream/ungdomsskrifter02linne#page/n155/mode/2up
3. Iter Lapponicum = Lappländska resan, 1732. 1, Dagboken / Carl Linnæus
; utgiven efter handskriften av Algot Hellbom, Sigurd Fries, Roger
Jacobsson. Umeå : Skytteanska samfundet, 2003.
The second volume is a commentary. It has translations of the Latin texts
by Ingegerd Fries. The third volume is a facsimile edition.
Available for purchase here:
http://www.skytteanskasamfundet.se/?s=iter&s_cs=true
Differences compared to the 1889 edition: item Regi>etiam Regi, item Rex>etiam Rex, tuicha>tuichu, miles in 2 collocatur>miles in 3 collocatur.
Saami
The Lule Saami dictionary by Olavi Korhonen (1979) has dáb'lo which means “board [Swedish tavla]; stone board; game board”. Linnaeus’s “raichi” is probably rái'ge “hole”. For “tuichu” Wiklund’s Lule-Lappisches Wörterbuch has the form tuiku (duigu in Korhonen’s orthography). Wiklund also has a verbal stem tablu-. Linnaeus’s form tablut could be nominative plural of the noun or the infinitive of the verb, probably the latter because there's no reason for a plural form.The Old Norse terms tafl ‘board game’, tafla ‘game
piece’ tafl-borð, húnn ‘bear cub, child; mast top;
dice’, hnefi ‘fist, king in tavl’
https://archive.org/stream/gamalnorskordbok00haeguoft#page/186/mode/2up
In Modern Icelandic húnn can mean ‘knob’. That’s what the
pieces in archaeological finds look like.
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/IcelOnline/IcelOnline.TEId-idx?type=simple&size=First+100&rgn=lemma&q1=h%FAnn&submit=Search
The word húnn has also been borrowed into Fench (hune), where it means ‘top’, the platform at the upper end of each (lower) mast.
There is a riddle in Hervarar Saga, which involves húnn. Here is Christoper Tolkien’s translation (p. 39 nr. 59, footnote, Appendix D, p. 88-9):In March 2015 the Finnish Broadcasting Company showed a Danish video it had acquired in 2006, about the reconstructed Viking ship Havhingsten fra Glendalough. The programme, presented by Anja Philip, was unusually informative and showed the halyard sheave box in both the scale model and the reconstructed ship. It’s form and function was the same as in Brändö, but it was built around the mast. No metal.
Links to speculation about húnn and húnspænir:
http://wiki.verkata.com/de/wiki/Diskussion:Wikingerschiff
http://www.septentrionalia.net/lex/e295.html
http://www.edd.uio.no/perl/ordbok/ordboksviser.prl?b=f&o=hunsla&k=%
http://icelandic_english.enacademic.com/13522/HÚNN
https://archive.org/stream/icelandicenglish00cleauoft#page/294/mode/2up
English
In Old English the name of the game was tæfl. The board was bred.
Sweet: The student’s dictionary of Anglo-Saxon
https://archive.org/stream/studentsdictiona00sweerich#page/n7/mode/2up
The Oxford English Dictionary has tavel, tavelbred and the surname Tavelmaker, last attested in the 13th century. The same words occur in the Middle English dictionary. These can also refer to other board games. The word hnefi ‘clenched fist’ has been attested in Scotland and Northern England up to the present day. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the entry nieve (rhymes with sieve). Samuel Johnson had the form neaf, neaves.
Useful sites:
Latin morphological analyser
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?redirect=true&lang=la
Old Norse study tool
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=mjök&la=non&prior=ok
Kintel, Anders: Julevsáme-dárro báhkogirjje
http://gtweb.uit.no/webdict/ak/smj2nob/b_smj2nob.html
Omniglot: Lule Sami
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/lulesami.htm