Odd Medieval Dice Discovered in Norway

[EnolaGaia]

This little find is odd in and of itself. I find it more odd that everyone seems to presume the dice's odd format was probably for the sake of cheating ...

That's Cheating! Medieval Dice with No 1 or 2 Found on Street in Norway
A 600-year-old wooden dice that seems to have been specially designed for cheating during gambling was recently discovered in Norway.

The "cheating dice" was found beside a medieval-era street during archaeological excavations in the Vågsbunnen district in Bergen.

"Over 30 dice from the Middle Ages have been found in Bergen over the years so the discovery of a dice in itself is not very surprising. This dice is, on the other hand, special," wrote a team of archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research ...

A normal dice has only one number (usually represented by a dot) on each of its six sides, ranging from 1 to 6. But not this dice.

"The dice from Vågsbunnen has two fives and two fours, instead of the numbers one and two. It is therefore very likely that this has been used to cheat in games," the archaeologists wrote.

Another possibility is that this particular dice was meant for a game that used a dice without a 1 or 2, but rather two 4s and two 5s. However, it's more likely that it was used for cheating, archaeologists say.

How exactly the cheating would have worked is unclear. It's possible that the gambling involved a game where rolling a 4 or 5 was favorable, but a 1 or 2 was unlucky. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/62273-cheating-medieval-dice-norway.html

SIMILAR ARTICLE FROM THE NORWEGIAN INSTITUTE FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE (In English):
https://niku.no/en/2018/03/uvanlig-terning-middelalderen-funnet-bergen/

 

[EnolaGaia]

Here are two photos illustrating the arrangement of numbers on the dice.

The six faces display the following numbers / values: 3,4,4,5,5,6.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

They would have to be cheating some very dense people!

Do we have any surviving game that uses just those numbers?

 

[kamalktk]

I agree. Not sure why they think it's a die for cheating, the numbering is going to be quite obvious.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Now here's why I'm not so sure this item recommends itself for cheating ...

According to the photos, the duplicate 4's and 5's are adjacent to each other. This means that anyone in a position to see one of these duplicated values might well be positioned as to see the second / adjacent one.

This doesn't strike me as a cheat that would work for very long at all.

Furthermore ... Conventional dice are arranged so that the sum of any two opposite faces will be 7 (i.e., 1/6; 2/5; 3/4). I'm not sure this has any significance (e.g., facilitating randomness in some sense).

This newly discovered arrangement accomplishes the same uniformity of opposite face sums, only in this case they all add up to 9 rather than 7.

The combination of these two points makes me suspect the mystery die was specifically 'legit' for some purpose or game other than what we moderns recognize. In other words, I think an alternative purpose explanation is #1 and the cheating explanation is #2.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I agree. Not sure why they think it's a die for cheating, the numbering is going to be quite obvious.

They would have to be cheating some very dense people!
Do we have any surviving game that uses just those numbers?

We got a sharp crowd in here tonight ... The two of you caught on to the curious bit before I could post the wrap-up ...

James: I haven't yet found a game that uses only 3,4,5,and 6 and / or relies on anything involving 9's.

On the other hand, there do seem to be historical examples of dice that have duplicated values and / or display only a subset of six possible values.

 

[Ermintruder]

I can't decide if the 'targe' markings, precise though they are, have been pyrographically-branded into the die faces, or not.

The whole feel of the piece strikes me as somehow being a lot-more modern than medieval (I'm sure the experts will have dated it correctly, it's just the appearance at first-take).

 

[EnolaGaia]

I can't decide if the 'targe' markings, precise though they are, have been pyrographically-branded into the die faces, or not.

I wondered about that, too. It strikes me that the edges of the markings are a bit too crisp - with no sign of peripheral 'crisping' (i.e., burning) - to be the result of branding.

The incisions seem to be of relatively uniform depth, with no debris within them.

I don't know one way or the other, but I tend to think they were stamped / cut into the wood.

The whole feel of the piece strikes me as somehow being a lot-more modern than medieval (I'm sure the experts will have dated it correctly, it's just the appearance at first-take).

Agreed. Then again - it's a simple motif. That which was a concession to simplicity circa 6 centuries ago resembles 'clean' modern design.

 

[Ermintruder]

That which was a concession to simplicity circa 6 centuries ago resembles 'clean' modern design.

Indeed.

But: the apparent equality of penetration depth, in a localised Z-plane, and the (subjective) accuracy of the relative XY positioning gives a strong impression of machining. The tooling that created these shapes was astoundingly-precise, both in its own making, and (less-so) to the piece itself.

I cannot help but wonder- how on earth was the tooling done for the metal branding/impression former? The threefold axial concentricity is amazing, as is the apparent in-face parallelity / consistency of the design's wood extraction.

In modern times, we'd probably curl flat sheet into closed spirals, and perhaps capture this within a molten cast base...presumably this has been some form of super-accurate lost wax unitary casting, but I cannot decide if eg a "five" is a single "one targe" appliquéd five times, or if there was a singular five-tap tool that produced the required apositional outcome in a single action. I see similarities and yet differences between each of the fives, so I'm split-jury.

I'd love to see this under a full EM survey or even just a few rough micrographs of the pits. Hopefully that will be done, surely.

 

[Austin Popper]

Seems like Medieval Norway would be a very bad place to be caught cheating at dice. I agree, assuming these were designed for cheating is lame. Interesting artifacts!

 

[EnolaGaia]

... I cannot help but wonder- how on earth was the tooling done for the metal branding/impression former? The threefold axial concentricity is amazing, as is the apparent in-face parallelity / consistency of the design's wood extraction.

In modern times, we'd probably curl flat sheet into closed spirals, and perhaps capture this within a molten cast base...presumably this has been some form of super-accurate lost wax unitary casting, but I cannot decide if eg a "five" is a single "one targe" appliquéd five times, or if there was a singular five-tap tool that produced the required apositional outcome in a single action. I see similarities and yet differences between each of the fives, so I'm split-jury. ...

I tend to suspect it was a single-dot instrument repeated as needed, because I can't see there having been enough demand for dice to justify creating (e.g.) 6 separate devices to incise the 6 faces, each as a whole.

On the other hand ... It needn't necessarily require 6 separate devices. For example, a subset capable of inscribing 1, 2, and 3 would suffice for producing all 6 presentations with a notable regularity of form / format.

 

[Dr_Baltar]

Perhaps you had to roll the two special D6s to cast a Banishment spell on an attacking Frost Giant, or somesuch.

 

[Cochise]

Well, there are many games and wargames that use unusual dice - average dice (233445) , dice with anything from four to 20 sides, etc.

So I think if they are genuine they are meant for a game that needed a weighted result from the dice.

 

[Mythopoeika]

The regularity of the circular marks suggests to me that one tool was used to make all the marks.
I think it's probably a punch originally made for leather working. It'd be heated up, then struck with a hammer to make the mark and burn the wood.

 

[Vardoger]

The Ancient Aliens show will soon take a closer look at the dices and suggest it was aliens who made them.

 

[WanderingFox]

I'd lean toward a particular, likely long-forgotten game, as well. It seems too blatant to be cheating, too obvious; you'd seriously struggle to use the dice in such a way as to keep the duplicate numbers secret, yet not come across as suspicious.

Unless there was a dice game popular in medieval Norway that placed enough importance on fours and fives for someone to rig cubes to favour those numbers, I fail to see where the archaeologists are coming from, here...

 

[Andy X]

Exactly: I'd assume this design was used in a game in which the role of the roll of the dice differed from that which we're used to. You'd have to be unbelievably dense not to notice otherwise.