SWORDS and SANDALS

The revival of European Martial Arts,

by Antonia Senior

We all struggle with authenticity. How can we best approach the past, weighed down as we are by our tech-heavy, sanitised modern lives?

Last month, I wrote about sailing on tall ships, and how that has fed into my fiction. I am a great reader of swords, sandals and sails. When I came to write, I knew that some of my compulsive, eclectic reading of everyone from Patrick O'Brien to Conn Iggulden, CS Forester to Angus Donald, Alexander Dumas to Giles Kristian would leave echoes in my own work. 

All three of my first books have involved the writing of battles, the bearing of swords or the rush of sea and wind. The second of my books, The Winter Isles, presented particular problems about my relationship to the central character, Somerled, which can be summed up like this:

Somerled: A violent 12th century Scottish warlord, with a sperm-spray of offspring in numbers only matched by Genghis Khan. A father of sons who try to kill each other. A boy of MacDonald myth, who is light of heart and deep of thought. A son of the wild Atlantic seas. A monstrous fighter.

Me: A scaredy-cat Londoner. A mother who frets if her children sniffle. A starter at shadows, a concrete-walker. Weak-armed and flubbery-tummied. Someone who once saw a decapitated squirrel and has never quite got over it. 

As part of that initial process of thinking my way into his world, I persuaded a commissioning editor at the FT to take a piece on learning sword-fighting. Not namby-pamby fencing, with the silly little pointy swords - proper medieval fighting, with big, heavy swords.  

This was my first introduction to the weird and wonderful world of Historic European Martial Arts. A global, internet-linked group of enthusiasts have, for the last thirty years or so, been reviving medieval fighting techniques using the remaining fighting manuals. An estimated 13,000 people worldwide are now believed to practice the sport.

For my day with the sword-master Dave Rawlings at The London Longsword Academy, we used an extraordinary manuscript. 1.33 is a medieval fighting manual, prosaically named after its position in the Tower of London armouries' catalogue. It is the oldest surviving combat fighting manuscript in Europe, and dates from early fourteenth century Germany. It shows an incredible series of instructions on how to fight - and much to my joy, some of the illustrations show a female fighter named Walpurgis.

A page from 1.33 showing the incredible detail. 

Most of the techniques are for a sword and buckler, a small easily portable shield that is used to support the vulnerable sword hand. One lovely detail, pointed out by Dave, is that some child has had access to the manual on its wanderings across Europe, and coloured in all the bucklers...

Here are some of the things I learnt about fighting with a sword.

1. Swords are very, very heavy. Arm-trembling, shoulder-sapping heavy. This is not obvious when you first pick it up - but becomes clear seconds after holding it aloft. Muscles are a must. 

2. When you first pick up a proper sword, you will feel a fizzing glee. There is something elemental and brutishly satisfying about handling one. Any sword is Excalibur to the one holding it.

3. Looking down your sword at someone who is looking down a sword at you is very, very scary. Even when it's a nice bloke called Dave who is definitely not going to hurt you. 

4. You will think you look like Samantha Swords, the incomparably awesome champion Long Sword fighter who is a big name in the European Martial Arts world: 

5. You look nothing like Samantha Swords. And that is something you will have to come to terms with, slowly and with much regret.

6. Practice. Practice. To build the muscles, and learn the moves again and again and again, so that they become a memory in the bone. Sword skill would take a lifetime to achieve.

I decided, alas, that I was a better writer of swords than a wielder of one. 

*STOP PRESS*

Along with the HWA and a few other fabulous writers, I am curating a new monthly evening of historical fiction chat in London. The first one is on Tuesday. Look us up on https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/historia-history-by-the-river-tickets-33696646577

@historybyriver

Swords of Lineage

by Marie-Louise Jensen

Tolkien's named swords in Lord of the Rings have brought the concept of swords with lineage and personality into common consciousness. Swords such as Bilbo's Sting and Elendir's Narsil which is reforged for Aragorn as Anduril (Flame of the West) are known to Lord of the Rings fans everywhere.
Tolkien took his inspiration for this - like so much else - from the Norse sagas. His people of Rohan, in particular, were based on Viking peoples and society.
There are a number of named swords recorded in the Viking sagas and elsewhere. All the names are intended to glorify the wielder or the gods and to intimidate the enemy. The sword of Laxdaela Saga is Leg Biter, another recorded name is Foot Biter. Others are Fierce, Head Biter, Hole Maker, and Sword Breaker.

Viking swords (courtesy of Wikipedia)

There was also a sword known as Odin's Flame.

All these swords were almost certainly the valuable Ulfberht swords which were forged with sharp steel edges in Germany or Russia, using hotter forges and more advanced techniques than the Vikings had themselves. They were highly prized and often worth more than everything else a man owned. It was centuries before such quality could be reproduced again.

When one considers these swords were pitted against Viking-forged iron swords which had a habit of bending in combat and needing to be straightened underfoot, it becomes clear why they were so prized.

There were also Viking battle axes with murderous names: Skull Splitter and Head Crusher are two I've come across and I wouldn't feel inclined to face either in battle. And of course the most famous Norse named weapon is the hammer of Thor himself - Mjolnir.

Viking named swords were passed down through families or were occasionally buried with their owner. Rarely, they were stolen from the burial mounds by men who were brave enough to face the grave ghost. 

Both these traditions (if they can be called that) are also used by Tolkien. Sting is found in a troll hoard by Bilbo and later passed to his nephew Frodo. And in the Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo and his hobbit companions are trapped in a barrow by a barrow-wight, sent by Angmar the Witch King to haunt the downs. They manage to defeat the wight and escape, taking the valuable swords with them from the barrow, thus echoing the ancient Norse tales in many ways.

Tolkien borrowed freely and I love discovering the links.