"Constant jump-cuts" *immediately jump-cuts* Love the humour.

Every good Skallagrim video starts with "Ok guys i'm gonna do something i don't normally do, but..."

Skall went full Crocodile Dundee when it came to the tiny shields :D "That's not a shield!" *draws bigger one*

It'd be funny if overly telegraphed swings were how they fought and we just don't know it.

"We use dull Swords" "That´s a good point" lol

"You could argue that historical combat should be based less on 'hit' and more on 'don't get hit'..." ^^^ THIS.

TBH the way their fighting looks like a slap fight.

2:13 Well I guess that explains why you keep getting injured.

they look like background npcs during a battle on loop

I think what we actually need to talk about is that Link v. Ganondorf painting

I did HEMA for a brief period and in that my instructor said there were only three rules for fighting with swords (and, honestly, probably fighting in general) and one of the rules was optional: 1) Don't get hit. 2) Hit the other guy. 3) Look good doing it. (optional)

The Thumbnail tells me it was important for the Vikings that their Eyebrows got enough Sun Light.

2:04 When Skall realized he had been doing it wrong his entire life xD

Viking rule: no head shots. Dang it Randy. But it worked better. We didn't rehearse this to win. But how we suppose to win?

No Viking fighting manuals? Er, See thine enemy before you. Make a corpse of him and of his wife a widow. Drink to the Allfathers glory. What. More. Did. You want??? :-p

2017 : Sword tests 2018 : Gameplay 2019 : Reaction vids A long way we have come skal...

"People didn't always do the best possible thing" This is something I feel needs to be said more. We don't even know for sure what went on in people's heads back then (not that we do now either). Some people might have been even *more* pragmatic about fighting than is expected, but then you have matters of religion, honour and other social things that might have mattered a lot. We often think that today all we care about is big flashy effects and hollywood style fight scenes, but in some ways, especially historical re-enactors interested in the 'practical' warfare, we might have a mentality that was also absent from medieval/viking-era peoples. I can't say that was the case, but I can't say it wasn't either. They may have thought about battle quite differently from us. The reason I say this is that historical re-enactor culture has a somewhat similar tenor to modern military culture: very pragmatic, very utilitarian. I can't say that viking or medieval warriors (some or most) did not think the same way. But the ways of thinking about warfare today may have emerged from the changes brought about by industrialisation (and now digitization) and the detaching of the 'aura' from martial conduct, particularly in the case of the aristocratic warrior caste. Just some possibilities.

This was one of the most respectful and enjoyable "reaction" videos ive seen. This would be fun to see thrown in the rotation every once in a while. Keep up the great work Skall!!!

He said " you can injure" his acsent made it sound like "can't"

I do MMA and I can say spinning is used to generate more momentum and force which is not as necessary when you have a weapon. For example, u could use a spinning back kick to finish a tired opponent who is not defending themselves as effectively as before, if someone gets that tired in a sword fight, u just stab/cut 'em, no spinning required

2:04 since they are choreographers it's clearly aimed at sword-fighting in movies where they just hit each others swords

Way I see it, spinning sword strikes is like letting off a blackpowder cannon made of cheese. It can work but it's a lot more likely to blow up in your face Also Skall-dundee "that's not a shield. THIS is a shield."

"Sword Fighting as It Was Not Actually for the Vikings"

I miss the Viking intro so much. Badass to the fullest extent!

i think when he mentioned attacking from the sides, he meant the diretion of the attack. instead of attacking in a straight line, attacking horizontally

'The best techniques are past on by the survivors' Gaiden Shinji 1E 946

Glad you mentioned Adorea. As a czech I am very proud of them. :D They certainly deserve much more attention.

Skall, It's June. You're in Canada, not West Virginia. Take down your Christmas lights.

Round shield: Exists Dimicator: Oh yes.

Hello from Olomouce, Czech republic. Adorea is very good martial art group and I'm very proud of them.

I'm always reminded when I see people arguing that "The people in the past would have done X this way because it's the most rational and common sense way to do it" and I always think back to the FBI Manuals back in the 1940s and 50s, where they trained their men to hold their pistols at *Dick Level,* Ignore the sights, and stand like they are taking a shit mid-air. HISTORICAL fighting does not have any obligation to make any rational sense.

"This is how Vikings actually fought, trust me, we were there"

Oh shit, Olomouc is my hometown, lovely historical town in Moravia, Czech republic. And those videos are awesome.

Biggest modern reason for 24 fps being standard is CGI. 60 fps when you have to render CGI scenes becomes FAR more expensive and time consuming. That was a big problem for the hobbit.

(13:12) This is the primary reason that I come back to watch more of your videos. Your outlook of never thinking that you know it all, which actually makes you a genius. This is something that with 20+ years more than you, I've yet to master... namely humility. I appreciate your sincerity, it moves you to keep investigating and bringing to light always increasingly cooler stuff! :) Keep up the great work!

Most other sword channels or HEMA practitioners on youtube would have made this video 3 times as long, thanks for keeping it short and simple Skall

But Skall... Anakin said that spinning is a good trick :/

100% Accurate battle simulator...

They: sun is shining. Skall: *5 min essay on why this is true that sun is shining*

even in hand to hand spinning attacks are used in very specific situations. One is pursuit, which is to say if you tried to do a round kick, but the opponent stepped back, transitioning from that to a roundhouse kick without stopping your momentum is beneficial. The second is for instance with a spinning side kick, which is well employed when you are very close in with your opponent that you can't lift your front leg into a side kick, but want a strike with a lot of power and reach that can push him away. Arguably, the spinning side kick is also used to generate more speed and power in the strike, but...

Definitely like the point that humans don't always do things the best possible way, as far as historical martial arts go. A lot of technological and general militaristic advancement came from something complicated being invented, then it getting refined down to a simpler, better version that could have existed earlier but didn't due to the lack of the proper perspective to think of it. An example would be how bolt actions are much simpler than lever actions, but lever actions came earlier. Same with the wheel-lock existing before the flintlock. If I didn't already miss a video on it, I would like to see what Skall thinks about Shaka's iklwa- the Zulu shortspear he invented to gain an edge over rival tribes. I believe that apart from being a shortened spear, it also had a larger tip, and some historical pictures also include somewhat of a pommel on them.

Well I'm member of a Viking re-enactment group circa 1066 and the way we fight is mainly hacking slashing and slicing rather than thrusting, stabbing. 1: We do it for safety reasons, as it hurts getting poked with a dull non sharpened blade, and it's more energetic and lively when fighting to see slashing and hacking lateral movement in combat. 2: The historical and archeological finds of Viking swords do have a sharpened point but they were not stabbing weapons as the viking swords were very blade heavy and the handle didn't offer much protection or momentum, also the swords were also used as sharpened metal clubs too. And you could get more damage against a Viking warrior in a shield wall by hacking and bashing their shield with a Viking sword rather than trying to stab and thrust into the chunk of wood and metal.

Whoever uploaded this just filmed two living history vikings doing medieval fair full contact sparring. I know, I grew up doing stuff like that. Medieval Fair/Living History people do a lot for show, so there are some rules, it is a kind of open full contact stage fight to show of. Great for the tourists to watch.

They are reenactment-fencers who use a combat system called "Codex Belli" - which is a combat sport, at best. These people are NOT martial artists or practicioners of HEMA.

No one mentioning that awesome Legend of Zelda art piece in the background?

Good stuff. How about sword fighting during the early bronze age?

Love your breakdown of the techniques

Cool that you did this Skall. Enjoyed it.

Skall: always have a critical mind Me: hmm, im not so certain. I am a bit critical of that. As to head injures through blunt impact : raider would like to know your location. (#nerfstunningtap)

I didn't expect someone agreeing with me on the 24Hz cinema standard here of all places, but... THANK YOU. As a multimedia student, nothing hurts me more than painstakingly animating something and then having to output it in 24Hz for no other reason than "it's always been like this" even though any modern monitor or even TV are MADE to output 60Hz.

been doing viking combat recently and im loving it, seeing skaal doing a review fills my heart with joy, but there are many flaws to this. 1st is that i always stand sideview with the shield in front resting half my sword on top of my shield, therefore restong my sword arm so i dont waste energy, 2nd is that very few actually takes into concideration going around a target because you leave them to YOUR blind side (outside of periphereal vision) and they can then strike you, other than that, GREAT VIDEO ANALYSIS

Skall, you're right about jump cutting, but 24fps is here to stay and there are good reasons for it. The biggest being to avoid the soap opera effect; it helps hide the fact that you're watching actors on a set, maintaining your suspension of disbelief. Check out Filmmakers IQ's video on 24 fps. Don't go tearing down the fence before you know why it's been put up 😄

I remember this! It was on a cable show, they where interviewing a group who where trying to figure out how vikings likely fought each other for a HEMA organization, and for archeologists! The editing makes them seem a quite out of touch, and I think they mentioned outside of the clip that they where using what they believed where training tools so training exercises where what they where trying to reproduce. Discover or history channel though... I don't remember Edit: spelling and great video! 😁

Shields are more like bucklers with painted viking stuff than viking Shield...

A thing that kind of tells a lot about Viking fighting is a story from one of the saga`s. This was about a battle between ships against each other, after the arrow shooting when they had come to the close combat. It says that they shifted between standing in the front line to get renewed strenght there. And also it said that there was one on board the ship that had it as a job to sharpen the sword that had been used in the front, and that those in the front often shifted swords and axes in the middle of the fight to get a newly sharpened weapon. In a battle in Grenmar(Grenland inTelemark in Norway now) there was also a battle between ships(600 ships) where they fired arrows at each other for 3 days before they finally got in to close combat with each other. Some have asked if the Vikings used Halberds, and if we read between the lines, we knew that some did, but that it was very seldom. For example in Njåls Saga, we can read about a Iclandic Viking that was famous for his halberd and it was feared(they ofted put superstitious belief in to weapons that had been in many victories) As Skallagrim point out in this video, the saga`s was often told as stories, but also they was always basically from real happenings, even if they often was not correct. But we can still use sense and read a lot in between the lines from them. For example there is little doubt that he had a halberd, and it also comes pretty clear out that it was a very seldom weapon to use, and very effective for those who knew how to use it.

It's good to see a video commented by someone whose opinion you respect

You should watch "The Scythian" (aka "The Last Warrior"), I really enjoyed the fights for the great coreographic work as well as a fantastic camera work

You should do a breakdown review of the Hector v. Achilles fight from Troy :D

7:05 this is a huge point I make to my friends when debating historical tactics in our down time. Distance= time. Time= safety and options. If you have distance between your opponent then one person has to close and that gives you opportunities to either counter or be proactive and eliminate the advantage of distance that your enemy has.

That hugely telegraphed blow thing was always the first thing I tried to break people of when we used (fake) swords even as a kid; use as little movement as possible to strike as often as possible without losing a good position for guarding yourself.

"Professional fight coreographers" Like those who make every movie fight scenes ever..? Yeah this is gonna be bad..

Question, Skall. wouldn't it be useless to strike with a Viking-era sword against mail? Even with sharp swords, wouldn't the blows simply glance off the armor? Or does a sharp sword actually stand a chance of "cutting through" it? If they cannot do that, then what they are showing in this video would most *definitely* not be the way Vikings "actually" fought, since the way they do it in the video would be utterly useless, wouldn't it? I would love to read your thoughts on this!

in our Viking combat training we use the shield at about a 30 degree angle from the eyes out, to the front/side (hard to describe), but it creates stability . A shield is only a good as the leverage of the arm and can be easily knocked to the side, pulled to the side and after just a minute or 2 (our rounds are 1:30) can become very heavy. As with all the "medieval" combat arts things changed with the times along with advances in tech etc. Long story short, if im in a "viking"fight with swords , a shield on an extended arm will result in a dislocated shoulder in the blink of an eye. Sabers and bucklers....different story, kite shields, different, roman shields, different. blah blah blah. xoxoxo

the wielder of the 110 cm shield would need to be a big guy. like 7 foot.

Roland Warzecha of Dimicator has some really good examples of Viking combat.

Feel like playing Brytenwalda after this...

Man, haven't seen that vid in ages. Was thinking about it again recently. Thank you for this video.

I think a lot of their limited lateral movement was the old curse of trying to do a demonstration and still stay in the camera shot & focus.

holding your shield closer to your body conserves way more energy though, gotta keep stamina up. ; )

The fighting in the video seemed realistic, after all have you seen kids fighting with pool noodles?

There's a guy I think his channel is called warzecha or something like that he has a good video on realistic Viking sword and shield fighting.

just gotta note that in movies spinning attacks seem to be a part of the telegraph to the audience, but in mma, you can generate much more force through the torque of your full body weight going into your limb, so much so that people who can become extremely skilled at it risk injury from the forces applied to their own extremities being used offensively

Reaction videos are wonderful - a shared experience is nice.

I always had the feeling it was a bit weird... WEll, now what do you think about Dimicator/Roland Warzecha?

I think the video ended up being more like "How they moved and what they wore" and the fighting part was just them explaining how they choreograph fights themselves

Great video skall.

4:02 i thought he was pointless Hehe

If you don't like jump cuts in movies i recommend all the John Wick movies :-)

Good point. Perspectives changes with time as more information is built.

Jump-cuts aren't my biggest problem in movies. Shaky cam is the worst, especially when newer phones have optical stabilization.

The rusty mail is incredibly distracting.

So Skall's ideology: Stay covered behind a shield even it reduces your range, power and mobility. Like boxer who does only jabs (except range is worse)

8:21 maybe the guy holding the small shield, no i think its normal shield and the guy is huge :3

You're like the Nostalgia Critic of Sword fighting videos.

Skall you should set up some sparring and before ask one of the individuals to try a spin move or two while filming it. Without letting the other person know.

@skallagrim I think he actually said you "can" Injure somebody, Skall.

Hi from Europe. I know the guy from the Video and meet him 15 years ago. Kelle, Strongbow is a amazing person and everyone in the reenactment vikingszene knows him. He fighting for more then 20 years. Fighting! Not only talking about things. The Reenactors here learning by doing...fighting, train real as possible. Protected sure. Sometimes a big shield is very shity in fights when you are not in a liniefight. You see not so mutch, you are not quick, fight more passive maybe..so you choice a smaller one for go aktiv..in..the enemie. So better you are as a fighter...so smaller can be your shield. I do 8 years fighting in fullarmours fullcontact, 8 years in the viking reenactment scene. I invite you to come to Germany and fight with us.....and you will understand...how good this video here and Kelle you talking about is... Hugs from Germany When you talking about things have to be this or this way... Kelle and the vikingscene still fighting last (best) man standing: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gKx7h62p36rZdpc.html

Comments are very funny, but ... It still is more funny watching people so motivated to train and do sword fighting. So doubel fun it is. I don't agree about kicking in combat, generally. it is risky, but if you knew how and in which moment, it is great as for opening as for game changing element of fight. Great video. Thanks.

He said you CAN injure somebody

Constant jump cut should be punish by death

"Viking shield size" isn't THAT well-defined. You use the right shield for the job, and the largest ones for "going viking" would be for passively protecting against arrows while raiding civilians, rather than nimble shields for duels. For a one-on-one duel, the smaller round shields are naturally a better fit, as you can use it more like a buckler.

Damn. Funny start. Nice video man.

My $0.02: Veterans trained the next generation of warriors. Fools don't survive on the battlefield to forward their stupidity.

No *Sources* from the *Norses* on fighting wih *Sworses* 💪😅🙏

I’ve seen that video back in the day. Do have to say, for fight choreographers, they do a pretty good job, and are far better than most, at least with more realistic things.

A good example of how speculation can be wrong is the kyber knife which I probably misspelled. It looks like a designated thrusting blade but according to surgeons of its time people were most often chopped with it

If you want to know, how they probably got passed these big shields: Viking Axe & Shield Combat by Roland Warzecha

Hey there, I happen to one of those who practice that sport (and yes, I do consider it a sport) - these guys there are fighting the german variant of western style viking combat. It is not historically accurate and I have not met any viking reenactor myself yet who claims this is historically accurate. - In fact, the reenactment part is the part we're doing when we're not fighting - when we're fighting, it's a sport. And it is a lot more fluid than what you see in the video. These two in the video are not a good representation of the sport nor of reenactment. But, I can recognize what they are doing though.

When you read the sagas and eddas, they seem to outline a few fights that took place. It doesn't sound to me like they had a martial art and more just... made due the best they could. There are stories of one fighter just picking up his opponent and throwing him on to a sharp rock, breaking his spine. But with the stories that carry on, they seem to "seed" from the notion of finding that one long lived warrior in a town somewhere to learn fighting from because he could teach you, but there weren't really dojo's or treatise or a clear way to fight, you just learned what the old guys figured out the hard way. I know some styles were adopted from the romans, like shield walls. Then you have to factor in the ones that traveled abroad and got hired as fighters or guards elsewhere, that they may have learned a rigid and structured fighting art. But from everything I've read and seen, it really does look like they just brawled it out with weapons and saw who came out on top. So, learning to fight like a viking is just learning how to be practical in the use of your tools to get the job done, there doesn't seem to be one set way to do it though.

The unorthodox and abnormal videos of yours always have a tendency towards being my favorites.