Having seen the good stuff with Viking reenactors, I can’t get behind the style or lack of it in this video. If it wasn’t the pirate’s intervention, these tin cans might have hurt each other.
Tag Archives: live steel combat
The Friday Fight: Helmets
I wish this video was better quality, but apparently the big guy gets hit in the head or struggles with his helmet slipping.
The Friday Fight: Losing a Shield
You should know that I scanned YouTube for other videos, live steel combat with knights or other non-vikings, but what I found was sorry. I almost posted a video with some bold language in the sidebar from the video’s sponsor, but it wasn’t a fight–it was an instructional talk.
The Friday Fight: Broadswords
The Friday Fight: Florentine
Will McLean writes: “Florentine was first used as a term for a weapon style within the Society for Creative Anachronism circa A.S.2 (1970 AD) to describe a fighting style involving the use of two pounds of spinach and a pair of salad forks. Later the spinach was either discarded or eaten (feasts often started late in those days) and the term came to denote any two-weapon style, or, alternatively ‘what medieval knights would have called fighting in tournaments with two weapons at once if they had ever done such a thing, which they didn’t.’ The style is sometimes referred to as ‘Too many swords.'”
For those interested in fighting with too many swords, Lukrain offers a number tips.
Friday Fight: ARRRRGH!
It’s Friday, so let’s watch some live steel combat.
And now for something completely different.
And now, a music video.
A swordsman's tale
Friends, I have found my drug of choice.
It’s live steel combat.
On Sunday I was delayed by being on the church setup team and having to stay late. But as soon as I could get away, I tootled over to Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis, where the rest of the Vikings had already been set up for some time.
Minnehaha Park (home of Minnehaha Falls, immortalized by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who never actually visited there) has a sort of dedicated service road along its length, punctuated by (inadequate) parking areas. Since the day was nice and the Norway Day festival was going on, I figured I wouldn’t get a nearby place, so I parked in about the first slot I saw.
This was a mistake. I’d forgotten how long that park is. I had already determined that the smartest way to get my armor to the camp site was to wear it (mail is much easier to wear than to carry). So I set off walking toward the festival area.
And walked. And walked.
I think I must have parked at least a half mile from the site. I passed many open parking spaces, but reckoning (inaccurately) how far I had yet to go against how far I’d come, I decided to trudge on.
I made it at last (today my feet are extremely sore from the pounding they took in my thin-soled Viking shoes). I was too tired to join in the fight that was starting just then, but I got in a while later.
They put me up against Eirik, son of Ragnar, an old hand at live steel.
I beat him. Twice.
I’m still entertaining the suspicion that Eirik threw the fights, just to encourage me.
In any case, the guys told me that I’m pretty good. I didn’t beat Ragnar Hairyfoot when I went up against him, of course. Ragnar is wily and old and a Special Forces veteran. But he told me, with a straight face, that I gave him one or two worried moments. Then again, Ragnar has been known to embellish a story.
Be that as it may, I came away tremendously bucked, as I generally do after live steel (I’ve had training before, and participated in a couple small battles, but had never done a one-on-one duel before). For a guy as geeky as I, who has never, ever been any good at any athletic activity of any kind, to suddenly find myself playing with the big kids in simulated Viking combat was tremendously affirming. It’s a common nerd fantasy – “I was born out of my proper time. If I’d been born in an earlier age, I’d have been a mighty warrior.”
It’s not true, of course, but now I can pretend it is.
I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “He makes all these grandiose claims, but can he back it up with video documentation?
As it happens, I can. This Quicktime movie comes courtesy of the Viking Age Club & Society of the Sons of Norway. I am the guy with the red-and-blue shield on your left in the shield wall at the beginning. Note who is the Last Man Standing.
Fear my wrath.