Photos of the interclub fighting day on my Flickr stream.

Reclaiming the Blade

Interesting documentary about the European sword tradition. It covered rather a lot of ground quite well.

I've been watching "martial arts" shows on Discovery Channel and National Geo for some time, and I've always been very disappointed with their bias towards the Asian martial arts. I've always thought that there should be something balancing it for the European side of things. Well, this is it. It's about the only decent doco on Western Martial Arts that exists. And it's really quite good.

The doco is about an hour and a quarter long. Now all that's left is the three hours of special features!

Yes, this will be doing the rounds of the AAF.

http://www.festival.blacktown.nsw.gov.au/my-lords-&-ladies-medieval-fayre.cfm

Blacktown has been cancelled due to bad weather. So I will be in town this weekend after all.

So I'm going to Blacktown tomorrow.

I was having second thoughts about it (third, fourth, fifth thoughts too), but Victor administered the necessary kick in the head, for which I am grateful.

Hopefully this will improve my mood. Blacktown is always awesome. I plan to take many photos.

The AAF has had quite a few displays this year, although I haven't been doing them because I've been saving up my leave for my USA trip. However, there is one school display that I just can't pass up, and that is the Mt Carmel School display in Yass.

This is the third time we've done this particular show, and it's always good. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take all that many pictures this year. Here they are. I've also added them to Flickr if you prefer it. They look great in Cooliris, by the way.

No injuries to speak of. Dave appears to have cut his thumb on the inside of his own shield, and I have a mysterious scrape just above my eye that I've no idea how I got.

I made something!

( The bling, I haz it )

I cracked a rib.

No-one's fault except my own. I went down hard at the end of the Challenge Fight, and felt it go "pop". Over the course of the next hour it got increasingly painful, and I said to myself yeah, that's going to stick around for a few weeks. The annoying thing is that I can't even remember exactly how I went down, and why it had that effect.

Cracked ribs are one of the most irritating kinds of injuries. They make doing just about everything somewhat painful, but not so much as to actually prevent you from doing anything. So you tend to go about doing your business as normal, but in a moment of carelessness you twist in just the wrong way and OUCH!!! And there's nothing anyone can do about it. I need to avoid doing anything especially strenuous for a while and let it heal up on its own. It'll probably take three to four weeks. :(

So apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the opera?

The display went really really well. I had a lot of fun, despite the above. We had ten fighters on the field, which is more than we have had at a display for a long time. We were able to actually fight out Hastings for the first time in years! The old Norman Knight Fight has been morphed into a trial by combat involving awful sheep puns, and we revived an old fight we haven't done in ages - the knight versus the horde of peasant bandits. It's a lot of fun, especially when I get to use Alex's hercules club. :)

We got lots of interest, and lots of MOPs to talk to. It was really good. A lot of fun. I hope we get invited back next year.

A couple of weeks ago I sat (stood) for a photographer. Jason McCarthy is doing a project on reenactors. I spent about an hour in his studio.

( The results )

The Ancient Arts Fellowship, inc. is once again running its annual meetup and conference during the October long weekend (Saturday, October 4 to Monday, October 6).

For details, please see the AAF website at the following address: http://www.aaf.org.au/beorgwic/

This year the AAF will be catering the evening feasts. There will as usual be fighting, organised along the same lines as previous years. But that's not all Beorg-wic has to offer!

The AAF will be running the following workshops:
Generic Metalwork
Ladies Headdress
Tablet Weaving
Candle Making
Medieval Cocktails
Soapstone Oil Lamp Carving

Additional workshops (including combat workshops) may be included on an ad-hoc basis.

Please print and complete the Booking and Indemnity Form (available from the Beorg-wic page linked above) to register for the event.

Registration will cost $70 for adults, $35 for teenagers aged 13-17, and Free! for children. Payment details are on the form.

Beorg-wic is a fun and accessible event which has enjoyed great success in the past. Don't miss your opportunity to attend! Register now! And here's another exclamation mark for your collection!

I've uploaded a few more videos of AAF fights to YouTube. Not sure how you'd find them, but I thought I'd make it a contest.

There's one with two Normans fighting - they start with kite shields, but they are discarded partway through and they fight sword-on-sword.

There's a video from the Blacktown Medieval Fair where I shatter a shield with a big axe.

And there's a video where a bunch of guys information get completely taken down by the defenders.

Anyone who can post a link to the video wins a prize!

We got video of a couple of the fights at the latest AAF display. One of them I'm particularly happy with.

Because neither Steve nor Victor were able to be at the display, Mike and I did the Norman Knight Fight. This is a fight based around an argument about whether a particular person is a "Real Norman" or not.

This particular fight is good in a couple of ways. I think my shield-fighting technique is good at the beginning - particularly since it's a display fight and it's supposed to be big and dramatic, but once we threw away our shields and went sword-on-sword, it was still good.

From abou 00:04, there's a sequence of sword/shield clashes that I think is particularly effective - but I'm viewing it from the perspective of a trained fighter. Once the shields are discarded, Mike attacks into my True Guardant at 00:26 and I riposte, then an abortive Bastard Guardant cross from which Mike strikes at my head at 00:29. I actually remember having to duck my head slightly to deflect that hit. Usually I don't remember specific techniques when I do a display fight, but this one stuck out somehow.

Of course, I lost the fight because I was fighting Mike, who is more or less unbeatable - especially in a display. But that's cool. It was a good fight, and a good show.

http://www.aaf.org.au/gallery/videos/displays/bergmann-anglican-school/MOV05211.MPG
(21.1Mb)

So a while back I sent an e-card to someone, asking if they'd consider going out to dinner with me sometime. To my astonishment, this person accepted! So I've got a booking for tomorrow night at Bella Vista, in Belconnen, which was recommended to me.

I've been tempted to call this a date, but I'm not sure about that.

Anyway, my day tomorrow is going to be pretty interesting. I've now racked up three trips into town. First, Helen wants a lift to a friend's place (in Tuggeranong, which isn't too bad) at 10:00. Then there's an AAF display in Gungahlin - about as far away from me as you can get while still remaining part of Canberra - at I think 1:45 (still double-checking that). Finish up there, come home, shower, shave, change, and head out to pick up a certain person at 6:30 for a booking at 7.

Whew! It's going to be a good day.

Well, a short film anyway. But it's a Terry Pratchett short film! How cool is that?

Snowgum Films is producing a film version of the Terry Pratchett short story Troll Bridge, and I've signed up to be an extra for the battle scenes!

I'm not actually listed in the main credits, but in the private list for Sven's Army (Stephen (Sven) Wiley is organising battle scene extras from the reenactment community), I'm listed as "Hrolf the Berserker" which is sooooo me! politas, you should recognise this!

Although the film is listed on the site as in post-production, filming of the battle scenes is scheduled for sometime in March or April.

Go me! Go me! Uh-huh! Go me! I'm going to be... in a film! Oh yeah! Uh-huh!

After years of negotiation, I have finally acquired the sax Thonk from my friend Dan Miller. He bought it way back, and for almost fifteen years he has sworn that he was never going to part with it. But Victor finally wore him down, and Dan agreed that it would be better to have the blade in circulation than gathering dust and rust on his shelf.

Fifteen minutes cleaning up on the linisher, and here she is.

( Photo behind the cut )

We needed to grind down the point a bit - it was a bit too sharp by today's standards. But it's still a beautiful weapon. Even with a hammer grip in a gauntlet, the blade is canted forward by almost thirty degrees. With care, I can shift to a pistol grip for almost full extension.

The runes on the outside read "old hag" in the Elder Futhark.

There are more photos of my kit on the AAF website.

So I got Victor to take photos of me completely kitted up.

See me in my new Viking/Vendel kit.

The AAF today presented a display at Stromlo High School, and yet again we rocked. We haven't had much in the way of school displays this year - the only other one was at Mt Carmel School in Yass. Today we had a bit of a hiccup because Sarah, our primary speaker, came down with laryngitis at the last minute, so I had to do the presentations. Not that that was a problem...

The kids were great - hesitant at first but they warmed to us. A few of them were actually genuinely interested! It wasn't much income for the group, but we may well get some hits on the website!

BTW, here's the link I couldn't find earlier this week, to the Vendel 1 reproduction. As you can see, it is a lot more ornate than my "inspired by". In fact it makes me feel inadequate.

But this helmet is enough to make any craftsman feel inadequate.

I needed a Viking helmet. I didn't want a Gjermundbu, because everyone's got one. There are four in the club already. And if I wanted a Viking helmet that isn't Gjermundbu, well, there isn't one. But there are a number of lovely Vendel helmets, which technically predate the Vikings, but are good enough. I chose Vendel 1, 'cause it looks really cool.

My new helmet is not so much a reproduction of Vendel 1, as it is "inspired by" Vendel 1. The original is waaayy too ornate. Ultimately I plan to add some brass to it, but this is good enough for display purposes. It's got a high crown, big faceplate and nasal, and looks all-round mean. It's also shiny, so it'll go well with my shiny mail.

Anyway, here's what you've all been waiting for...

( The Photos! )

More photos to come. I plan to have someone take some photos of me in full Viking costume at the school display we have this Friday.