Board games from the city of Vijayanagara (Hampi ... - Gioco dell'Oca.

On some unusual types of stick dice / Peter
Michaelsen
The North European dice board games daldøs(a) and sáhkku (described in BGS 4)
are played with some very special dice. These are carved in wood, and are prismatic
and four-sided with more or less pyramidal or rounded ends. They have
four faces which are typically marked with 1, 2, 3, or 4 vertical strokes, which are probably
to be interpreted as the corresponding Roman numerals. Sometimes one side is left
blank, and with one exception one of the sides always is marked with an ‘X’.
Since the publication of BGS 4, several new pieces of information about these games
and their dice have come to my knowledge. The close relationship between the South-
West Norwegian daldøsa dice and the Saami sáhkku dice has become even more evident.
One of three types of sáhkku dice preserved at Norsk Folkemuseum, Oslo (Fig. 1, c)
is marked in exactly the same way as the daldøsa dice. Two strokes are placed opposite
to four strokes, and an X opposite to three strokes. This arrangement has not been found
on other sáhkku dice. The dice mentioned differ in one more respect from other known
sáhkku dice: all edges are chamfered, and in stead of a pyramid shape on two sides they
have a square, blank surface, somewhat smaller than the four sides provided with symbols.
(1)
The only known pair of Danish daldøs
dice belongs to the game set kept at Thisted
Museum, North West Jutland. These dice
have short, pyramidal ends, and are marked
with an A instead of the X found on the
daldøsa and sáhkku dice. Normally the
Norwegian daldøsa dice have rounded ends
– a feature found on several 150-200 year
old dice. There are exceptions from this
rule, however. Alf Næsheim sent me a drawing
of a very old daldøsa die with clearly
pyramidal ends. This unusually large die has
1 cm long ends, making it 6 cm long in
total, and is 3 cm wide. (2)
Fig. 1.Three types of sáhkku dice kept
at the Norsk Folkemuseum, Oslo.
The 13 dice belonging to type c have
museum no. NFSA.0955, while the two
dice of type a and one of type b
are unnumbered. (Drawing: curator
Leif Pareli, Norsk Folkemuseum).