How can we demand Chessmen's return when we hold far more grisly plunder?

Published on Tuesday 8 January 2008 20:19

With controversy over the proper location of the Lewis Chessmen gathering force, Tim Cornwell (Agenda, 7 January) raises important questions and provides much information.

Yet before we all froth at the mouth with Iain Ramsay about imperialist English looting, it is salutary to grasp that the 82 chessmen in the British Museum were acquired via unforced market transactions. I wish Malcolm MacLeod had been in a position to sell direct to an end purchaser, but one, perhaps two, other Scots made money out of selling on.

Even MacLeod's 30 selling price was not as paltry as it sounds, being about 2,700 in today's sterling values. Nevertheless, the case for the Chessmen's return to Scotland still stands, for the Chessmen are deeply grounded in Hebridean history. I hope they end up in Uig, which would not preclude their periodic loan to other venues.

There is an another angle on all this, however, as raised by Roddy Maclean (Letters, 26 December). Perhaps Boxing Day lethargy prevented it being noticed as widely as it deserved. He is all for the Chessman returning to Scotland. He also informs us, however, of an ill-gotten item in the vaults of the National Museum, Edinburgh – a Tasmanian Aboriginal skull. Its continued presence there potentially disgraces all of us who desire the return of the Lewis Chessmen, including Alex Salmond.

Following the violent slaughter and dispossession of Tasmania's Aborigines during roughly the first four decades of the colonial occupation, their skeletal remains and hair samples were prized by collectors, very much so by curators of Britain's museum and university collections. That rotten fruit of imperialism, racist pseudo-science, drove this scandalous curatorial fad.

Though there is a strong case for return of the Lewis Chessmen to Scotland, the nation has no moral right to clamour for that until the skull is redeemed, without strings, from Edinburgh into the hands of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. I call for leadership and support from the Scottish Government on this question, as an urgent priority.

(DR) IAN DUFFIELD

Dundas Street

Edinburgh

Alex Salmond is to be congratulated in his attempt to have the Chessmen returned to Lewis.

Lewis was under Norwegian jurisdiction for hundreds of years and the chessmen were found by a man with the Norse surname Ljot (MacLeod) in the Norse village of Koppadal (Capadal) situated in the Norse parish of Vik (Uig), an area once ruled by the Norse tribe Olaffson (MacAulay). The level of Norse influence in the Western Isles can be gauged by the fact that the islanders fought for the King of Norway against the Scots at the Battle of Largs in 1263.

In view of the close affinity between the Hebrides and Norway, there is a possibility the chessmen were made in Lewis or perhaps were a present from Norway to a Viking chief in Lewis.

DONALD J MacLEOD

Woodcroft Avenue

Bridge of Don, Aberdeen