When one hears the term “martial arts”, they no doubt think of things like karate, taekwondo, or maybe even kendo. While all of these are certainly martial arts, they are only from one area of the world. Many people are familiar with the fighting systems used in feudal China and Japan, yet very few consider the martial arts employed by the people of medieval Europe during the same time period.
It is also a somewhat common misconception that the knights and other fighting men of the western world didn’t even have any sort of detailed fighting system and just hacked wildly at one another. Well, to be blunt, a continent which was in a nearly constant state of war tends to get pretty good at fighting people and tends to write down how to fight more effectively. Enter Historical European Martial Arts or HEMA.
HEMA is both an academic and martial study of the fighting techniques used throughout Europe from around the 13th century to the 19th century. It covers everything from wrestling and boxing, to fighting with daggers and long knives, to fencing with longswords and all another manner of bladed weapons. Let’s be clear, this is not the kind of fencing seen in the Olympics with the white padded suits and foils. Historical fencing, as it is called to distinguish it from “sport fencing”, uses unsharpened but otherwise real metal swords as similar as possible to the period contemporary to what is being taught or practiced. Despite being such a diverse and engaging activity, very few people actually know about HEMA at all.
This could be for several reasons. The first of which is that we, here in the U.S., are just too far away from the source for it to be as popular of an activity as it is somewhere in Europe where the sense of heritage alone is a reason for many people to take it up. Another reason may be accessibility. HEMA has only been in anything resembling the mainstream for about twenty years and therefore hasn’t had the time to gain traction the way many other martial arts have. Outside of major cities like Chicago, there are very few HEMA clubs to be had making it exceedingly difficult to train effectively.
The saddest part of all of this, according to many HEMA practitioners such as myself, is that HEMA as a hobby would be right up the ally of a lot of people that simply don’t know it exists. How many people join a fencing club because they want to learn how to swordfight but are disappointed in what they find? How many people collect swords and are fascinated by the time period but simply don’t know that there is an outlet where they can actually use the things? What those people wanted all along was historical fencing, but they were just unaware that such a thing was out there waiting for them.
Even for people who don’t have some burning lust for the song of steel on steel, there is still a lot that HEMA can offer. Swords, spears, axes, daggers, bayonets, staffs, all can be taught to someone with an interest. This is what really sets the martial art of HEMA apart from something like taekwondo, the sheer amount of variation in disciplines and weapons one has to choose from.
HEMA has benefited greatly from the rise of the internet, and the interest in it, in general, is rising steadily. More and more clubs are opening across the U.S. as well as other countries every year. So if any of what is written here spoke to you, try it!
