SNP ministers back calls for British Museum to return Lewis chessmen to Scotland

File photo of Norse chessmen from a Viking hoard found on the Isle of Lewis (Image: CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)

THE Scottish Government has backed a Yes group’s calls for the Lewis chessmen to be returned to Scotland.

The renewed calls come as the vast majority of the famed 12th-century chess pieces, discovered at Uig on the Isle of Lewis in 1831, have been sent to France by the British Museum in return for a loan of the Bayeux Tapestry.