Battle of the Nations have held the UK national tournament in our local park for the last couple of years. My wife and I went to watch the first year, thinking it would be a quaint medieval reenactment thing.
It wasn't. A few minutes into the first bout we realised they were dead serious and properly going for each other. It was a lot of fun, but there was definitely an odd feeling of 'how much should I be enjoying this?' as it was so violent. Basically two people in full armour beating the crap out of each other with a heavy metal bar and a big wooden plank.
Some all-out kendo fights / training are downright frightening in that regard. Many blows would be maiming (some even lethal) were it not for the protective gear.
People have similar reactions to the Gloucestershire cheese rolling. "How fun!" they think. Then they see people hurling themselves down a really steep hill and realise that it's not so quaint. Most people aren't running, they're falling, and they have little control over those falls.
Often multiple people end up with broken arms or legs.
It's certainly an activity that requires a lot of fitness; sparring/bouting without all that armour on is tiring enough for me.
But, I hear from mediaeval HEMAists that it's not really quite the same as mediaeval combat in that thrusting into the gaps of the armour has been replaced (for obvious safety reasons) with bludgeoning and that it is not based on any particular historical systems.
I wouldn't know, not specialising in that period myself.
> I hear from mediaeval HEMAists that it's not really quite the same as mediaeval combat
As soon as anything becomes a sport it deviates from how it works in real life. It has to, especially when the thing is combat based because killing someone in the name of sport simply isn't cricket.
I'm a member of a group that practices medieval sword, dagger, and unarmed techniques - with a view to being martially sound and historically accurate (within the limits of not actually maiming each other - there are things we know how to do that we would never try on a live training partner or in a tournament). Other groups have a different set of priorities: re-enactors tend to be very detailed about the look of the uniforms, equipment, and formations, but are much from lax/free with the actual combat techniques; people doing it for sport obviously can't be entirely accurate both for safety and audience entertainment reasons; and so on.
> I wouldn't know, not specialising in that period myself.
Even those that do don't 100% know how people back then trained and fought because the surviving manuscripts are not complete and even if they were would not contain all the information a modern audience would need as there was a certain amount of play combat kids would have been exposed to very early that didn't need to be taught - no one writing the training down thought that some of those details would ever need writing down. As with many historical studies, working out how the masters intended their work to be trained out is often therefor an exercise in reading between the lines (filling in the gaps with morsels of information from other sources and sometimes just from what we know about how the human body and the materials in the weapons and clothes/armour physically work) and of course this leads to multiple differing interpretations. This isn't just an issue when looking as far back as medieval periods: there are a few parts of the original Fairbairn/Sykes techniques from WWII (modified versions of which are still in use today by many forces), including the areas that were deliberately simple overall so they could be taught quickly to new intakes of soldiers who were sometimes completely inexperienced at fighting, where people can't entirely find agreement about how to translate the written instructions to useful physical techniques.
I'd argue that it cannot ever be close to the same for as long as it's missing the vital psychological component of the fear for life that accompanied the real thing.
The impact of fear can be observed even in relatively safe modern combat sports. Moving from, say, freestyle wresting into MMA makes one a whole lot more cautious changing the fighting style altogether. In fact, I've witnessed multiple times how trained sportsmen coming to MMA would lose to newbies simply because they were too weary of traumas and acted less aggressively. Sportsmen often get lost when the whole setup changes from scoring points to physically beating opponents into submission risking the same fate for yourself. I can only imagine how much different it would be when the very life is at stake.
Pretty much any fighting style (armored or otherwise) that's adapted to not actually maim or kill (or at least carry a significant risk of doing so) is probably going to look quite a bit different from the "real thing." See, for example, discussions about which fighting/martial arts styles are closest to no-holds-barred street fighting.
Sounds like it's just a load of blokes bashing each other with scant regards to finesse & technique (and even safety).
Plus, it's not like a blunt sword can't maim or kill. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58NVoTocUOk
>I overhear one particularly worrying account from a fighter talking about receiving a head blow from a pole axe: “My right vision completely went; there were sparkly lights and stuff. I spent a week in a brain-fog haze, walking around like a zombie.”
This sport sounds like a great way to earn a concussion and acquired brain injury.
Your post ironically will probably draw more people to this activity. Their choice of course. It seems a bit nuts to me but then again I used to climb mountains every now and again. That might seem nuts to some people.
> More GBH than LARP, it substitutes foam weaponry for real steel and scripted acting for unpredictable scuffling
This sentence confused me deeply, given it contradicts the rest of the article, until I realised they meant to say "it substitutes real steel for foam weaponry and unpredictable scuffling for scripted acting". Or, if you prefer, "it substitutes foam weaponry with real steel and scripted acting with unpredictable scuffling". You substitute new for old, and old with new (but in the latter case you may as well say "replace").
I have a friend who does this and I went to watch one of their events. He says he only does 1-on-1 fights for safety reasons and I can understand why. At least you always have your opponent in front of you in this case. The group fights are super fast and dynamic and the biggest strategy is basically covering distance quickly, teaming up on people, and tackling from behind. They're less about weapons and more about American football-style tackles from the side/back while the opponent is busy sword fighting with your team mate. The armour is also so padded and thick that ordinary weapons like swords are really more for just point fighting. Two handed weapons definitely do more damage. Also, getting jabbed in the face with the edge of a wooden shield looks pretty serious, not to mention quick and unexpected! Watching their event was super exciting, but at the same time there's a looming feeling that someone will get seriously hurt at any second.
I'm part of the SCA. I've done fencing (heavy rapier) and some heavy. Yes, the heavies use rattan (wood) for their weapons. That's because we like our fighters to live afterwards, and be relatively uninjured. Have injuries happened? Yep. Have deaths happened? Yep. But the SCA's policies on fighting are battle-tested, over melees of thousands of fighters.
This article is just 'Not Even Wrong'(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong) - There's ways to do mostly safe fighting, and ways to be a douchebag that can end up breaking bones and killing people. This is certainly the latter.
I've fought both European re-enactment and SCA, and they're both totally different styles, and both about as safe as each other. I wouldn't say the SCA method is the only safe way of doing this. But I don't think they're too worried about safety anyway.
Re-enactment (in Europe anyway, I can't speak about US or Japanese re-enactment) has always has two sides:
The desire to recreate historical costume and practices
vs
The desire to get drunk in a castle with your mates and have a damn good fight
As re-enactment spread east through Europe from the UK, the latter tendency became more pronounced. The Russians and Poles get a real reputation in the European scene for fighting dirty, hitting hard and not taking their shots.
This sport developed from that. Their gear is almost completely unrelated to what was actually used in the time period they say they portray, and safety takes a back seat to "not being a pussy". I suspect the rules around drinking are more lax than you'd expect from a conventional re-enactment society too. They're all about the "beer and bash".
I expect that there'll be a few more splits as they evolve, with the safety-conscious moving to a more toned-down style while the real nutters keep the rules rough and accumulate scar tissue.
Seriously. "...a fast-growing sport that began in Eastern Europe about five years ago..." Even a cursory background check would reveal that the SCA was started in the late 60's and predates these other organizations by decades.
[+] [-] mattkevan|9 years ago|reply
It wasn't. A few minutes into the first bout we realised they were dead serious and properly going for each other. It was a lot of fun, but there was definitely an odd feeling of 'how much should I be enjoying this?' as it was so violent. Basically two people in full armour beating the crap out of each other with a heavy metal bar and a big wooden plank.
A fun day out for all the family.
[+] [-] lloeki|9 years ago|reply
Some all-out kendo fights / training are downright frightening in that regard. Many blows would be maiming (some even lethal) were it not for the protective gear.
[+] [-] DanBC|9 years ago|reply
Often multiple people end up with broken arms or legs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4n8KkOpqkY
[+] [-] scotty79|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gvurrdon|9 years ago|reply
But, I hear from mediaeval HEMAists that it's not really quite the same as mediaeval combat in that thrusting into the gaps of the armour has been replaced (for obvious safety reasons) with bludgeoning and that it is not based on any particular historical systems.
I wouldn't know, not specialising in that period myself.
[+] [-] dspillett|9 years ago|reply
As soon as anything becomes a sport it deviates from how it works in real life. It has to, especially when the thing is combat based because killing someone in the name of sport simply isn't cricket.
I'm a member of a group that practices medieval sword, dagger, and unarmed techniques - with a view to being martially sound and historically accurate (within the limits of not actually maiming each other - there are things we know how to do that we would never try on a live training partner or in a tournament). Other groups have a different set of priorities: re-enactors tend to be very detailed about the look of the uniforms, equipment, and formations, but are much from lax/free with the actual combat techniques; people doing it for sport obviously can't be entirely accurate both for safety and audience entertainment reasons; and so on.
> I wouldn't know, not specialising in that period myself.
Even those that do don't 100% know how people back then trained and fought because the surviving manuscripts are not complete and even if they were would not contain all the information a modern audience would need as there was a certain amount of play combat kids would have been exposed to very early that didn't need to be taught - no one writing the training down thought that some of those details would ever need writing down. As with many historical studies, working out how the masters intended their work to be trained out is often therefor an exercise in reading between the lines (filling in the gaps with morsels of information from other sources and sometimes just from what we know about how the human body and the materials in the weapons and clothes/armour physically work) and of course this leads to multiple differing interpretations. This isn't just an issue when looking as far back as medieval periods: there are a few parts of the original Fairbairn/Sykes techniques from WWII (modified versions of which are still in use today by many forces), including the areas that were deliberately simple overall so they could be taught quickly to new intakes of soldiers who were sometimes completely inexperienced at fighting, where people can't entirely find agreement about how to translate the written instructions to useful physical techniques.
[+] [-] maga|9 years ago|reply
The impact of fear can be observed even in relatively safe modern combat sports. Moving from, say, freestyle wresting into MMA makes one a whole lot more cautious changing the fighting style altogether. In fact, I've witnessed multiple times how trained sportsmen coming to MMA would lose to newbies simply because they were too weary of traumas and acted less aggressively. Sportsmen often get lost when the whole setup changes from scoring points to physically beating opponents into submission risking the same fate for yourself. I can only imagine how much different it would be when the very life is at stake.
[+] [-] ghaff|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kikimaru|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcarmo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostboys67|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cup|9 years ago|reply
This sport sounds like a great way to earn a concussion and acquired brain injury.
[+] [-] ygra|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marmot777|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dghf|9 years ago|reply
This sentence confused me deeply, given it contradicts the rest of the article, until I realised they meant to say "it substitutes real steel for foam weaponry and unpredictable scuffling for scripted acting". Or, if you prefer, "it substitutes foam weaponry with real steel and scripted acting with unpredictable scuffling". You substitute new for old, and old with new (but in the latter case you may as well say "replace").
[+] [-] dre85|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kefka|9 years ago|reply
I'm part of the SCA. I've done fencing (heavy rapier) and some heavy. Yes, the heavies use rattan (wood) for their weapons. That's because we like our fighters to live afterwards, and be relatively uninjured. Have injuries happened? Yep. Have deaths happened? Yep. But the SCA's policies on fighting are battle-tested, over melees of thousands of fighters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrueFTheV-Y
This article is just 'Not Even Wrong'(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong) - There's ways to do mostly safe fighting, and ways to be a douchebag that can end up breaking bones and killing people. This is certainly the latter.
[+] [-] marcus_holmes|9 years ago|reply
Re-enactment (in Europe anyway, I can't speak about US or Japanese re-enactment) has always has two sides:
The desire to recreate historical costume and practices
vs
The desire to get drunk in a castle with your mates and have a damn good fight
As re-enactment spread east through Europe from the UK, the latter tendency became more pronounced. The Russians and Poles get a real reputation in the European scene for fighting dirty, hitting hard and not taking their shots.
This sport developed from that. Their gear is almost completely unrelated to what was actually used in the time period they say they portray, and safety takes a back seat to "not being a pussy". I suspect the rules around drinking are more lax than you'd expect from a conventional re-enactment society too. They're all about the "beer and bash".
I expect that there'll be a few more splits as they evolve, with the safety-conscious moving to a more toned-down style while the real nutters keep the rules rough and accumulate scar tissue.
[+] [-] KingMob|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JabavuAdams|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thought_alarm|9 years ago|reply
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