I love the Lewis chess pieces and had never heard of Hnefatafil. That's pretty cool. From my 3 minutes of experience, I agree with you that it seems unlikely that the different types of pieces seen in the Lewis discovery would have been used in a game where all the pieces are the same.
Hnefertafl connection of Isle Of Lewis pieces?
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I have a set of the Isle Of Lewis pieces arriving soon as a gift and naturally being curious I read some history about them.
One thing I found intriguing is that some have theorised that the pieces are not for chess, but hnefetafl, an old Norse game. Recently I have gotten into hnefertafl, and enjoy it a lot. Objectively speaking I don't think it has quite the depth or subtelty of chess, but I still rate it as one of the best abstract strategy games of history.
However it never occurred to me that The isle Of Lewis pieces were anything but *chess* pieces. They have kings, queens, bishops, horsemen, and smaller pieces that look very much like pawns. Hnefertafl was usually played with stones. A carved piece is almost always needed for chess. Hnefertafl is played with a king too , for one side, but if they're hnefertafl pieces, why is there a queen? Or bishops? Chess can't be played conveniently with pieces of one colour, but neither can hnefertafl.
I can well imagine that some pieces could have been used for hnefertafl, most likely the small "pawns", in the same way that "checkers" can be used for both checkers/ draughts and backgammon, but to me the similarity to chess pieces is so strong, that I find the hnefertafl connection a bit hard to accept.