Show us your chess set!

What's not true?  the thing about the Lewis chess men, or the thing about urinating?  

As far as the Lewis chessmen, I posted earlier on that, but in general, they are considered chess pieces, and the theory that they are not is pretty much one of those fringe theories without much support.  

If you think about it, these pieces include Kings, which just happen to be around 4" tall.  Same as typical sets today and perfect for a board game, Kings and queens with crowns, religious bishops wearing clergy hats, knights on horses, and many additional smaller pieces without human form that would serve perfectly as pawns.  So, if they aren't chess pieces, they sure have a lot in common with chess pieces!

One thing the doubters bring up is that no Castles (rooks) were found.  The rooks in the lewis set are warriors called warders or in the case of the crazy looking guy biting his shield, berserkers.  But chess sets didn't alwys have the castle figure for the rook, and the Lewis warriors make perfectly cool rooks.  

The latter - I suspect that Chessbae49 didn't really hate raining on your parade. 

As for the set, many historians seem convinced.

But this bit: "The 78 pieces consist of eight kings, eight queens, 16 bishops, 15 knights, 12 rooks and 19 pawns" (wikipedia). If it's 8 chess sets, I wonder why there are so few pawns. 

Some interesting thoughts here: 

http://textualities.net/geoff-chandler/not-even-from-lewis-mate-2

Well, they think its 4 chess sets not 8.  2 kings and queens per set.  4 Rooks knights and bishops per set etc.  

But yeah, way more pawns missing than other pieces.  45 pawns missing, 1 knight missing, 4 rooks missing.  

There were also 14 plain discs in the collection, also looked like board game pieces.  

Hmm, good point!

D'oh!