THE WALRUS IN BRITISH WATERS 7 
1831, at the head of the Bay of Uig, in the island of Lewis, 
there were discovered, in an underground dry-stone chamber 
which had been buried under a sand-bank, seventy-eight 
chess men, fourteen table men or draught board pieces and 
a buckle, all carved in Walrus ivory. 
There is no doubt as to the Walrus origin of the ivory, 
for the chess men are cut from the tusk in positions such as 
would yield the most suitable size of figure: the kings and 
queens from the base of the tusk (so that the softer lining 
of the pulp cavity sometimes shows), the bishops and 
wardens from the middle of the tusk, and so on, in a series 
the grading of which is determined by the narrowing of 
the tusks.” 
In the learned account from which these last statements 
have been gathered, the author, Frederick Madden, further 
states that the carving and costumes of the figures indicate 
Scandinavian or Icelandic workmanship about the middle of 
the twelfth century, and suggests that they may perhaps 
have been lost by an Icelandic merchant shipwrecked off — 
Lewis. But can their presence not be accounted for on 
a simpler hypothesis? The Northmen long dominated the 
Western Isles—from the beginning of the ninth century, 
according to Hume Brown, “till past the middle of the 
thirteenth century.” With them came their skill and their 
crafts, and is there not probability in the suggestion that the 
great store of carved Walrus ivory was wrought, after their 
own fashion, by the Scandinavian settlers in Lewis from the 
tusks of Walruses obtained in the land of their adoption ? 
Fortunately there is more definite evidence that the 
Walrus still inhabited northern Scotland even to the 
sixteenth century. Hector Boece, the historian, makes no 
doubt about it. As translated by Bellenden, 1536, he wrote 
in 1527: “In Orkney is ane gret fische, mair [greater] than 
ony hors, of mervellus and incredible sleip. This fische, 
quhen scho beginnis to sleip, fesnis [fastens] hir teeth fast on 
ane crag above the watter. Als sone as the marineris findis 
hir on sleip, thay cum with ane stark cabill [strong rope] in 
1 Proc. Soc. Antig. Scot., 1889, vol. xxiii. p. 9. 
” Archeologia, vol. xxiv., pp. 203-91. 
