Andy Goddard (a.goddard@strath.ac.uk)
Thu, 07 Oct 1999 09:10:22 +0100
Stephen Hand wrote:
>Is everything in the UK choreographed? I don't know anyone in Australia who
>uses choreography for anything. Even at shows, fights are competitive.
There may have been a degree of choreography back in the "knitted mail days
of yore". (More than ten/fifteen years ago). I certainly can't think of a
group who would do such a thing now. Or expect to get away with it during a
show.
Fighting *is* competitive, by its very nature.
>...most of what re-enactors do (and I include what I did myself until
>I got into using the historical manuals) is ludicrously ineffective.
Devil's advocating (throughout this email) it's not "ludicrously
ineffective" in terms of the general re-enactment safety records in the UK.
This, ultimately, has to be the bottom line. Certainly it's "probably
inaccurate" and could be improved upon.
>We can
>safely say that this is not how people fought unless we want to postulate
>that our ancestors were all suicidal.
Ultimately, we have *no* idea how people fought in the heat of battle: all
we have is limited forensic evidence of some wounds, which gives little
away about the details.
The manuals, when and where they exist, are "perceived ideals" drawn up by
a particular mindset - perhaps a mindset not applicable to those who lived
100, 300 years previously in a different culture. Certainly not the mindset
that, for example, saw tens of thousands hacked to death in Rwanda only a
few years back: study of which - I would suggest - might be a more
applicable model for any Viking "style" of fighting than a work firmly
rooted in 1300.
Andy Goddard
Circa:1265
Glasgow, Scotland
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