Sáhkku
| Years active | First documented in the 1800s, possibly played in the 1600s. Fallen somewhat out of use after the 1950s. |
|---|---|
| Genre(s) |
Board game Running-fight game Dice game |
| Players | 2 |
| Setup time | 30 seconds - 1 minute |
| Playing time | 5–60 minutes |
| Random chance | Medium (dice rolling) |
| Skill(s) required | Strategy, tactics, counting, probability |
| Synonym(s) | "Bircu", "Percc'", "The Devil's Game" |
Sáhkku is a board game among the Sami people. The game is particularly traditional among the Coast Sámi of northern Norway and Russia, but is also known to have been played in other parts of Sápmi.
Sáhkku is a running-fight game, which means that players move their pieces along a track with the goal of eliminating the other players' pieces. Many different versions of sáhkku have been played in different parts of Sápmi. The oral transfer of the sáhkku rules between generations was largely broken off during the 1900s (see Sáhkku today), so that modern rule sets have to rely on accounts written by outsiders. While valuable, these accounts are generally ambiguous or lacking when it comes to important parts of the gameplay. The following describes the rules that appear, according to written sources (see References), to have been widely practiced across different localities.
A sáhkku board traditionally consists of three horizontal lines intersected by a larger (variable) number of vertical lines. The pieces occupy the intersections of these horizontal and vertical lines. Some boards feature only the central horizontal line, or even no horizontal lines at all; however, the pieces still occupy the same notional intersections. The central point of the middle row, sometimes referred to as "the Castle", is indicated by a sáhkku-symbol ("X"), sun symbol, or other ornament.
The game features several gálgut ("women") and olbmát ("men"), and one gonagas ("king"). The men and women are collectively referred to as “soldiers”, in some variants. The most common number of soldiers on each side is fifteen, but the number has varied according to the length of the board. The smallest number of soldiers described as being used is eight (Boris Gleb), and the highest is twenty. The latter is described as being "used in the Finnmark fisheries”, without any further geographic specification.
In the sáhkku set donated by Isak Saba (pictured at the top of this article) the women's pieces had hooked-shaped tops, symbolizing the traditional North Sámi ladjogahpir hat which disappeared at the end of the 1800s because Christian missionaries and evangelists attacked the design for being a symbol of “the Devil’s horn”. The men's pieces were topped by cones. Elsewhere in Sápmi, the pieces appear to have had a simpler shape, both pieces ending in a sharpened “pyramid” which for the women had a notch cut into it at the top.
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Wikipedia