Reykjavik/Stockholm - Former world chess champion Bobby Fischer was buried at a private ceremony Monday in southern Iceland, news reports said Tuesday. Fischer died on Thursday, aged 64, after a long illness.
Among those who attended the funeral at a parish church in Selfoss, some 60 kilometres south-east of Reykjavik was his Japanese partner Miyako Watai, Icelandic media reported.
Fischer, who often generated controversy during his lifetime, won the chess title in 1972 against then-champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union.
The win ended an era when the game was dominated by players from the Soviet Union, but Fischer lost the title by default in 1975 after refusing to play Anatoli Karpov.
In 1992, Fischer came out of seclusion and won a match against Spassky played in then-Yugoslavia. The match violated US economic sanctions against the Balkan country and he spent years dodging US authorities.
Fischer had lived in Iceland since 2005 after renouncing his US citizenship and avoiding extradition from Japan.
Born in Chicago as Robert James Fischer, he became the youngest US national champion at the age of 14.
