This Grumpy, Medieval Chess Piece Was Lost for Nearly 200 Years.

This Grumpy, Medieval Chess Piece Was Lost for Nearly 200 Years.

Now It Could Fetch Over $1 Million.

A medieval chess piece, one of five that have been missing for nearly two centuries, was chilling in a drawer in Edinburgh.

Now, the grumpy-faced, sword-wielding chessman, otherwise known as “Lewis Warder,” will be auctioned off for up to 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) at Sotheby’s Auction House in London on July 2.

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The warder,

which translates to a rook in modern-day chess, is part of a famous group of four medieval chess sets discovered in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides (an archipelago in Scotland), according to a statement from Sotheby’s.

The pieces were likely crafted — most of them from walrus ivory — sometime between the 12th and 13th centuries in Trondheim, Norway.

https://www.livescience.com/65621-medieval-lewis-chess-piece-auction.html

Lewis chess pieces

https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/lewis-chess-pieces/