The martial art around center-grip round shield and could we reconstruct it?

The Martial Art around center-grip shields

The center-grip round shield was used in Europe for over a millennium. From Roman parma to vikings and even further, if one counts bucklers of later periods. The size of the shield and the context of usage varies, but the basic form of the center-grip shield remained the same from the Roman infantryman to Charlemagne's knights and late viking warriors.

Weapons that were used with a parma were spear, lance, javelin, and sword (gladius or spatha). The original Roman parma was round in shape and most likely 90 cm in diameter. Quite similar to the largest viking age shields. It was first used by light skirmishing javelineers on foot (velites), as well as by cavalry lancers (equites) in the Roman Republican period. The origins of the shield can be found in the Hellenistic period, and the Romans copied it from the Greeks, who used it for similar purposes, especially by Hellenistic cavalry. Even though the main shield of the legionary became the scutum (first oval, then square), the parma maintained its role as the shield of the cavalry and auxiliary infantry. The parma changed its shape from round to oval somewhere between the late Republic and the early Imperial era. Late Roman infantry shields were again oval, but convex in shape too. All these shields had the unifying feature of center-grip on them.

Museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen (Gelderland). Imperial Roman auxiliary cavalryman with a flat oval parma shield.

As time went on, parma remained. The migration era and the viking age both show us that the round center-grip shield seemed to be the most used form of shield in Europe for the time. Mostly round, sometimes slightly oval, sometimes convex, and sometimes having metal edging, sometimes not. The umbo was most often metal, but wooden examples exist. The shield was always paired with a spear or a javelin and a side arm like a sword or axe. Often dagger or knife as a last resort, or just as a handy tool to be part of a warrior's equipment.

The weapons varied in style more than the shield seems to have. Spears vary in length and in purpose, from long and strong to specialised javelins like ango, and everything in between. Sword length lived between 1 meter long spathae and shortest gladii that were only 60cm long. The longest seaxes of the viking period have been longer than the shortest gladii. 

The martial art of round shield fighting has thus lived for more than a millennium (Of course it is much more than a millennium. Check this out: Bronze age shield) with varying weaponry and with varying shield construction traditions. This all can in my (Arttu) opinion be put under a similar kind of context and similar kind of martial context and art. Especially if we look at single combat.

 

Recreation of a centergrip shield martial art

The goal of recreating round shield fighting has been an endeavor of pioneers like Roland Warzecha, and as his context, he has used the viking period. To be able to use literary sources he used a later fencing manual called I.33, but also the viking sagas to learn about the use of weapons. Another example of people recreating this type of fighting is Rolf Warming from The Society for Combat Archaeology, as he has been traveling around teaching active shield use to reenactors and martial artists. Roland uses a very intelligent and safe method of slowed-down fighting that allows fighters to use sharp weapons and shield reconstructions of high quality with reasonable safety. Rolf uses a training system from escrima where one learns a sequence and then trains it separately. This is also relatively safe and allows a high speed of movement and correct generation of force.

As I (Arttu) feel both methods above are needed and offer different benefits. The method used in HEMA competitions is also needed. In early days of HEMA people realised that just training the the art as learned from manuals is not enough, but the interpretations need to be tested in a competative environment with full speed and force being a factor. To achieve this we need to use training weapons that are safe enough to be used with protective gear in a full-speed competetive scenario. Thus far the problem has been that there is no right kind of equipment available. The biggest problem here is the shield. While it is evidently easy enough to build a training sword that does not break a fencing mask, we have the problem that shield boards made out of wood don't bend enough not to break the mask and face of my training partner. Also, the neck and collar bones are easily injured when the shield is used actively. 

 

Inventing the tool

As an attempt to solve the issue of shield board being too dangerous as an offensive weapon, I first built two training shields out of rubber. I gave them a wooden handle and a cheap metal boss. I also made them a metal frame similar to some African shields I had seen. These work quite well and were good enough to use with a fencing mask. The rubber would not break one's bones and the metal structure was somewhat bendy to add safety. 

My plan for a rubber shield with frame number 2.

The rubber shield was almost so good that one could have used it without much safety gear and without a fear it would break bones. The main problem with it was that it was ugly AF. The soft structure also didn't create the same kind of effect, when pushing the opponent with it, like a wooden structure would.

I didn't mind they were ugly. I loved them.

So even though I found these to be safer and thus more versatile to train with than plywood shields often used in reenactment, they were not as good as the training shield needs to be. I had previously chatted with the Faceless Fencer, since I love his axes and dussacks. He recommended HDPE plastic, for it is bendy and doesn't break easily. I went to the hardware store and they let me test bend some plastics (or did not see me test bending them) and I bought a bunch of 800 mm × 800 mm wide 5 mm thick HDPE boards. (Bought from ETRA)

They are prettyyyyy ❤🧡💛💚💙

Here is little intro video of them just after I finished making them:

Arttu said HDPE in Finnish :P

 

Shields bent nicely and I was sure they are safe to punch with.  I can not punch as hard as I can hit with a longsword so a fencing mask made for longsword sparring should easily handle them. Still needed to test that. In longsword sparring, it is rare to be hit with full force because a competent fencer is usually able to block or move away somewhat. This is different for example in buhurt where there are many vs many situations so a "freebie" can be well aimed and delivered with full force against a person who is not focusing on you. When the shield is used, it is possible one can lock both of the opponent's weapons using only one weapon of yours, enabling you to deliver an unchallenged blow to the opponent's face. With this in mind, when competing with shields, we recommend using a higher quality mask able to take a punch up to 1600 N force.

The quickly searched info on human punch force was that an untrained person can deliver about 750 N force punch. (Source: https://www.omnicalculator.com/sports/human-punch-force). Someone who has trained can produce even 2500 N or more.  HDPE is super impact resistant, but we trust it to bend enough to reduce this power way down. We also hope that people have read their spiderman comics and remember that "whit great power comes great responsibility". The shield now has the optimal weight of 3 kg, but a thinner plastic can bend even better so this will be considered. (The weight is important to make a new trainer of the art to engage back muscles instead of shoulders.) 

So here one can see us being responsible AF:

So as one can see it hurts, but Joeli is ok. I (Arttu) weigh 70 kg and am not punching more than 1000 N for sure, but we are now in a place where this can be integrated into sparring.

 

Other recommended weapons are:

1. Spear made out of a rubber roll on a softwood shaft. The benefit of a rubber roll is that, unlike many commercially available spearheads, this one really sticks to the shield quite like a sharp one, and thus provides the spear user with a reasonable amount of stopping power. If the spear is used two-handed, one should again consider the use of power. (...or reinvent the saft?)

Lancea on the left. Arttu's rubber spearhead on the right. A small javelinhead photo bombing in the middle. (I should take a better picture later.)

 

2. For the side arm we highly recommend the dussacks and axes built by Faceless Fencer. They are very nice to use. There are many viking practice swords out there, but dussacks have a soft edge that binds fantastically, imitating the behavior of a sharp sword. The dussack is about as long as a seax or a gladius and offers a nice amount of hand protection.

Even though these are the best, some people will want swords and that's fine. 

For swords, there are a lot of options like this one: https://blackfencer.com/en/one-handed-swords-synthetic/104-viking-.html. I haven't tested that one but it seems OK. It even has a sharp simulator option that makes it better. Then there is this cool thing I can't afford, but it seems amazing: https://www.arms-n-armor.com/products/viking-trainer

 

Now we can fight (and compete?)

Now that the weapon is safe enough I really want to try it out. I suggest you build your own and train active shield use with your friends. I hope someone will make a commercially available product, now that we know it's going to work. 

There is no direct material on how to reconstruct this martial art. Suggested material includes the I.33.  There might be something very interesting on Indian kalaripajattu. The Dueling shield in Talhoffer's Manuscript of 1967 seems super relevant. Manciolino's Opera Nova (1531) has material on the use of rotella, which ought to be very relevant. The Historical African Martial Arts page seems to be a great resource. From studying this material we can collect ideas about fighting with the coolest weapon system in history. The most complete work this far has to out knowledge been done by Roland Warzecha and if one reads german this is super:
https://www.academia.edu/31615328/Roland_Warzecha_Form_folgt_Funktion_Das_Schwert_Symbol_und_Waffe_s_153_161

I hope we can arrange an event and that you come there and beat some shit out of us. I can bring weapons, to make this accessible. You need your mask and fencing jacket, that will keep you safe. 

The name of the competition will be Warrior Competition. Everyone is allowed a shield, a spear and a sidearm, and a knife. Since weapons are different and damage is hard to count we will give one point from each hit until people will invent better rules. Stay tuned! follow us on Facebook. Sent us a message about how your shield works and how it should be better to still work, but allow safer face punching.

EDIT 29.1.2022

We did some sparring and boy are these fun. We need to develop the handle (thus they brake and need to be changed often) and maybe test if 4 mm thick plastic would be good enough, but these are great as they are, when used with heavy safety gear. One note that we all agreed upon is that we should not ad a rubber edgin to the shields for it would make the shield grap the mask and make strikes to the mask hurt our necks,  We tried out sparring combining the shields with leather dussacs, FFaxes, and rubber spears. The fight that changed the most was the fight with spears and shields, and there we had most shied mask contact occuring. 

See the whole training playlist here:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRDL6wPnRyPgI9HgnXk7XhLNh5YnW8nd2

( ps. give us a hint how to score axe throws... ??? )

Tested fighting gear that we use on videos. ( The knife needs an update :D )

We also tested synthetic swords and a nice bendind viking sparring sword, but against an agressive shield use one needs something that gives a similar response as a sharp tip does, so one can defend against the shield. Blunt metal swords and synthetic swords slide of the shields surfice thus havin zero stopping power to help defend agains the shield strike.