Who knew!
I saw a man playing chess on his phone during his commute and I thought "Blaaaarrgh chess." This is because I have no patience for chess (or yoga, but that's another story) and I thought playing chess would make my commute feel longer, not shorter! It reminded me that I've seen a lot of people playing chess on their phones, not to mention a lot of little kids and teenagers playing chess at school of their own free will. Every classroom in primary and secondary school usually has a big box of chess boards and pieces for children to play with from the age of 6 onwards. And they know what the pieces fucking do! (Not like some kids I saw in England once who were just eating the pieces.)
The superabundance of chess is due in part to generous state funding. Sweden's Chess federation has a well organised committee and spends their money wisely on many projects, there are chess events and clubs all over Sweden and the sport is linked closely to schools. In comparison to the English Chess federation the Swedish website is sleeker, has a flashy logo and has a much catchier URL suggesting that it is, in fact, the go-to place for chess. The English website looks like some chess nerds had a panic during their 5 minute break from chess and asked their non-chess playing friends to throw something together with some non-state awarded pennies they saved while not playing chess.
So why does Sweden play more chess than England? Er, well, actually it probably doesn't. I haven't done a whole lot of research, but my limited digging did show that there have been significantly more notable chess players in England than in Sweden. (The problem with my research is that it's from English Wikipedia, there wasn't a corresponding Swedish list). All I can say is that I have definitely seen more people playing in Sweden and that chess has a much better public profile here than it does in England, almost undoubtedly thanks to the uptake of chess in schools. The only place I've seen kids enjoying chess in England was working in a private school, suggesting that good old Swedish socialism has spread the game across the masses, rather than keeping it as the preserve of the intellectual (read: rich) elite.
Otherwise we can thank the long history of chess in Scandinavia for its being an established game; Vikings brought the game to Sweden in the first Millennium having received it during trade in the Middle East and Byzantium. The famous Lewis Chessmen found in Scotland were made in Norway and the current world chess champion is a Norwegian. The most common and famous opening chess move is even called the "Scandinavian Defense".
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| The Lewis Chessmen, British Museum |
As I said, chess is really fucking popular here in Sweden and who knew!
Well, now you do.
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