I’m flip-flopping here. I said my previous sword post would wrap it up, but (as is so often the case) I thought of something else I wanted to say.

One of the great things about blogging is that you’re generally immune from “staircase syndrome,” the phenomenon where you get into an argument with somebody at a party, and then finally come up with the perfect retort as you’re going down the staircase as you leave.

When a blogger comes up with something he should have said, he can just make it a new post.

One of the guys I do live steel combat with is a Vietnam combat veteran. At one point early in my training, after I’d been in my first fight, and he saw how much I’d enjoyed it, he told me, “Now you know what it’s like.” There was a gleam in his eye as he said it. Continue reading On swords IV: The epilogue →

This ought to be my last post in this series on swords. As you’ve doubtless noticed, it hasn’t been a sword series so much as a Viking sword series. This has doubtless been a disappointment to the shamshir and falcata fans out there, but it has the virtue of keeping me to material I know (or think I know). And I’ve found that in general I speak with more authority when I’m talking about things I actually know (or think I know).

The purpose of a sword, it goes without saying, is to severely injure or kill another man. For all the romance of the sword, its use actually works out in serious practice to mean severed muscle, spouting arterial blood, and unreeled intestines.

It’s nasty. Continue reading On swords III: Swords in battle →

One thing not generally known about swords, but cruelly understood by sword owners, is that the darn things are highly prone to injury and premature death.

This is probably another reason for the historical rarity of swords. Aside from being expensive and impractical for the average guy, swords are high maintenance.

One of the trials of being a Viking reenactor is that people come around and ask to look at your sword (or don’t ask, which is extremely irritating [and dangerous for them]), and then they unsheathe it and pick it up with both hands, one around the grip and the other grasping the blade.

The same blade which you have spent hours polishing with oil and steel wool, to get some previous idiot’s fingerprints off it. Continue reading On swords II: The vulnerability of swords →

Now that I’m an author with a publisher again, and have achieved the heights of fortune and public adulation, what shall I do next?

I shall talk about swords. That’s a subject everyone’s interested in.

Every guy, anyway.

I suppose there are guys out there who don’t like swords. But I’ve never talked to one.

Feminists and psychologists—especially feminist psychologists—scoff at this. They make snide remarks about symbolism and compensation. They speak slightingly of swordfighting as a symbolic competition in virility.

You know what? Who cares? The only reason they sneer is because they can’t do it themselves.

I shall tell you all I know about swords. It will probably take a few posts to do that, and I’m not even an expert. Continue reading On swords I: The prestige of the sword →

Russian soldiers have been seen capturing Georgian soldiers and taking American Humvees out of a Black Sea port. This comes after a week of sightings of Russians destroying Georgian equipment in the city.