An aproach on discovering historical fighting

And how to train it

Even though there is a lot of source material for 15th century HEMA, the quantity and details of descriptions become less when we dive deeper into the dark age and antiquity. We have thus far done a gladiator fight show as Servi Morituri for Espoo city museum, and a short movie presenting a late 9th-century fight with Ruined Films. Both are of an era from where we don't have more than a couple of fragments to read about the fighting technique, so we have to go on discovering it through indirect ways. (Other less serious productions like this fantasy action flic HOME have also been done.)

In Servi Morituri we approached the fighting trough contemporary art of the time, wounds in bones that are considered belonging to dead gladiators, writings of Galenos, later manuscripts explaining fighting on a similar kind of weaponry, and most importantly by inspecting and testing what kind of effects the gear has for fighting. Our stance is that having as close to authentic gear as possible is essential for understanding the rest of the material. When we learn about the gear trough solo training and different methods of sparring, all of the material starts to speak to us. Then we can start figuring out how certain wounds came to be, and how one feels when one does something one sees in mosaic art. Now if the gear is wrong we will end up with a different interpretation. For taking this into account we have to at least be aware of the level of mistakes in our gear. In the late 9th century fight we also had these methods, but since the large spear felt like a pole arm we also took inspiration from later manuscripts describing pole arm use. The center grip shield also has some mechanical similarities with the buckler.  

Fighting with authentic gear poses challenges since we don't want to risk serious injury or death. Authentic weaponry is of course meant to do just that. To kill or to injure. Since we cannot directly approach the fight we have to move around the subject and approach it from many different viewpoints. In this post, we will present three frequently used ways to approach this subject.  

Sparring in modern safety gear and with blunted weapons

Although the modern gear affects movement and takes away the fear of death it allows full speed fights with weapons somewhat similar to authentic ones. The fighter gets to enjoy the freedom of discovering movement and tricks without much fear or care. Adding competitiveness and good game rules to this improves it even further. Below you can see a video where Arttu (red shield) and Joeli (green shield) are trying out shield and ax combat with weapons that mechanically simulate viking age weapons.

Sparring in authentic gear and with sharp weapons

This is of course a potentially deadly game so one needs an experienced and thrust worthy training partner and a very different set of rules. Our rules, that are in use on the game played bellow are: 1. You can't change the tempo. 2. The one who moves slower dictates the tempo. 3. No hits or cuts touch with the sharp part. 4. No thrust touches the target. 5. No wrestling if one does not know where all weapons are. 6. The goal is not to touch with the weapon but to show one could deliver a blow or a thrust or a cut.

From this kind of game one gets an idea of how it would feel (mechanically) to fight with real weapons in a real context. The fight with sharps act out surprisingly different from blunts and that needs to be learned so it can be presented in the actual performance. There are other ways of learning these things, so this is not mandatory, but it is something we do. In the next video Arttu (using a shield with no paint) plays very slowly with Julius (using a red shield).

The fast to full speed and  no to some gear method

For this one, one should probably use a bit safer weapon simulators like leather dussacks. Some light safety gear like a mouthguard and safety goggles are probably recommended by reasonable folks. With all that, it still is true that the skill of both fighters is the only thing keeping them safe. The same is somewhat true with all these methods. In the video below members of the Grieswart fencing club (thought by hirdmenn member Joeli Takala) playing with messers. This is most likely also quite close to the historical method of training messer fighting, even though the fencers of the time probably used a variety of different simulator from wooden or leather swords, up to a real blade. 

 

Getting a third opinion

This post has concentrated on sparring methods and gear use. Those are of course not the only things to do and simply studying, what the weapon is like, is a huge effort alone. Also, we don't consider anyone is smart enough to think about all aspects of this complicated subject on their own. We have visited few scholars who also work with the same subjects to widen our view. 

Video of some hirdmenn fighters fencing with Roland Warzecha at hes weekend workshop.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j3YBHSLQ9ps&t=10s

Video of some hirdmenn members learning the opinions of Rolf Warming in Escrima workshop.

https://fb.watch/bj8IdZCWCF/

We invite you to leave your critique and insights in the comments. Thank you.