Sword on Sword Contact in Real World Combat?

The way I always liked to look at it (for better or worse) was that buying a sword was like buying a vehicle. You've got a whole range from beat up used bicycles to Ferraris and everything in between. You might be able to get a low-end previously-owned sword at "used bike" prices while a more typical "good quality" one would be like buying a used car. A significant sum, but attainable. Then you have the premium ones that cost as much as a new car+.

All different calibers and all different prices, many of which were affordable for the common man, if not anything much to write home about.
 
That is fascinating. And I do, sincerely stand corrected. I will defend myself just a little bit though. In Roman and Celtic times the massed infantry were armed with swords...the Celts and iron sword and the Romans the gladius. These swords were not the same as either Medieval or Japanese swords in terms of quality. The gladius was a great big Bowie knife basically for close in stabbing. The Celtic iron sword was a sharp club basically. They Bayeux tapestry was propaganda and there are numerous other pictures from the middle ages showing the "enlisted men" with pole arms. I suspect the truth may be somewhere in the middle?
 
I think you'll find that Celtic iron swords were far from "sharp clubs." :eek:

Here's one example of a Celtic iron-age sword blade. Nothing club-like about it if you ask me.

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My instructor explained that for battle Japanese swords were only sharpened at the top third (approx)

Tameshigiri cutting when done well will only utilise the top part of the sword for the cut.

Schools also practise blocking techniques using the sides and spine of the blade.

I have also seen a few techniques where japanese people grab the sword blade from the spine (iaido and ninjutsu have these techniques). I wouldn't do it but it makes more sense if the blade isn't a razor..

I would have no issue blocking with the blade in a real situation.

Better to be alive with a rooted sword than to be buried with one that's perfect :)
 
BePrepared said:
...Was this really what happened? A sword requiring hundreds or even thousands of man hours to forge having severe (and apparently irreparable) edge impact damage after one or two fights?...
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No, because the sword was infrequently used against the sword in combat. Most of the time it would have been used against conscript peasantry or reserved as a status symbol or backup weapon. The main battle weapon would have been longer range spears, lance, polearms or bows, or anti-armor impact weapons like maces, hammers, axes and clubs. Fencing and sword training develop fairly late in the process and then the sword evolves away from the edge to develop an emphasis on the thrusting attack; before then the fighting would have been more likely with sword and shield, where edge to edge contact from a sword parry would have been less likely.

n2s
 
not2sharp said:
No, because the sword was infrequently used against the sword in combat. Most of the time it would have been used against conscript peasantry or reserved as a status symbol or backup weapon. The main battle weapon would have been longer range spears, lance, polearms or bows, or anti-armor impact weapons like maces, hammers, axes and clubs. Fencing and sword training develop fairly late in the process and then the sword evolves away from the edge to develop an emphasis on the thrusting attack; before then the fighting would have been more likely with sword and shield, where edge to edge contact from a sword parry would have been less likely.

n2s
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If I remember correctly the Viking sagas have a poetic line referencing their emphasis on various weapons in combat that went in order of spear, axe, sword, club. May be remembering wrong though. I think I read it in an Oakeshott book.
 
I'm not recalling any lines that reflect such a preference in the sagas, but I think that order does reflect the relative proportion of weapon finds in Viking burials. Scandinavia did not have a lot of quality iron available at the time. Most of the iron was bog iron and it took work to get the quality of the iron up to where it needed to be to make good steel. This is why so many weapons produced in the North were pattern welded. They had to be in order to make the best use of limited resources. Because of the cost and time involved most Scandinavian freemen, who were required by law to be outfitted for a muster, would be armed with either an axe (which did double duty as a tool) or a spear (which required far less metal) rather than a sword. A sword cost more than a dozen milk cows. A spear would cost far less and everyone would have owned and been familiar with an axe.

I'm unsure whether the axe or the spear would have been more common as a weapon. Axes make more practical sense to me, but I think there are more spears found in burials. This would make sense, though, given that spears were associated with Odin as a battle patron. You would expect warrior burials to include a spear as proof of status when a sword was beyond a freeman's economic means.

ETA: Forgot to mention that most Viking era warrior graves contain only a single weapon and less than a fifth contain swords. Either they were too expensive to afford in the first place or too valuable to bury as grave goods.
 
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Of course, by the time of the Bayeaux Tapestry you have barrels of spare swords mentioned, and during the medieval period I've read it was typical for those armed with polearms to also have swords as backup weapons.

Again, I may be incorrect here, but it's the information I've seen. :)
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
Of course, by the time of the Bayeaux Tapestry you have barrels of spare swords mentioned, and during the medieval period I've read it was typical for those armed with polearms to also have swords as backup weapons.

Again, I may be incorrect here, but it's the information I've seen. :)
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Yup. Importance of context. Best answer is often 'it depends' :)

Normans had access to continental sword makers and were a fully feudal society. Danes were less so, but were pretty far along the process for Scandinavians. Norway and Sweden and Iceland were far less so in 1060s. When people speak of Vikings, though, they usually mean 793 to 1000 CE or so -- back when the Normans *were* still Danes and the Franks were trying to embargo their weapon imports.

Saga-wise it gets even more complex because we are talking about documents written down in the 1300s that deal with historical material from the Viking era (or even earlier in the Migration Era) to the era of Hastings. The poetry is likely early material that is little changed due to the complexity of the poetic forms but the prose accounts can get anachronistic in places or be distorted by contemporary politics.

Fun stuff...
 
There is never any reason why an edge can not be intercepted with a flat. Swords are expensive to produce/replace, always have been and still are. Real world combatants using swords would NOT have intercepted an edge with an edge unless it was an accident. Such damage is difficult to repair and the damage would most likely be beyond superficial (nick in the edge) and would likely have caused the creation of a weakness at that point, which, if subjected to another impact, might break the sword completely at that point.
 
A demonstration of recieveing strikes on the flat of the strong of one's sword, with Longswords.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtNZQBc4RpE

No edges were harmed in the filming of this demonstration. :D

In addition, swords were not typically sharpened along the whole length of the blade. Usually the bottom quarter to one third, closest to the hilt, was left blunt and therefore stronger. This is the strong of the blade, as opposed to the weak which is closest to the tip. Strong and weak refer to the leverage one can use on these parts of the sword. In other words, you have greater leverage to bind/displace your opponants sword the closer you recieve his blade to your hilt.
 
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ttoney83 said:
There is never any reason why an edge can not be intercepted with a flat. Swords are expensive to produce/replace, always have been and still are. Real world combatants using swords would NOT have intercepted an edge with an edge unless it was an accident. Such damage is difficult to repair and the damage would most likely be beyond superficial (nick in the edge) and would likely have caused the creation of a weakness at that point, which, if subjected to another impact, might break the sword completely at that point.
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I'm trained to block with the flat but I've been guilty of edge blocking a few times when I've been caught too far behind to do anything but get a blade in the way, and I've seen my instructor do it as well. I'm not sure I would call an act of desperation an 'accident'. It's not something we want to do if given a choice, but sometimes you don't have much say in the matter.
 
SeaxyBeast said:
I'm trained to block with the flat but I've been guilty of edge blocking a few times when I've been caught too far behind to do anything but get a blade in the way, and I've seen my instructor do it as well. I'm not sure I would call an act of desperation an 'accident'. It's not something we want to do if given a choice, but sometimes you don't have much say in the matter.
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My thoughts as well.
 
SeaxyBeast said:
I'm trained to block with the flat but I've been guilty of edge blocking a few times when I've been caught too far behind to do anything but get a blade in the way, and I've seen my instructor do it as well. I'm not sure I would call an act of desperation an 'accident'. It's not something we want to do if given a choice, but sometimes you don't have much say in the matter.
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Do you practice full contact, as in, take downs permissable? I have been caught behind and moved to grapple, effectively changing my behind to my before. :D In other words, if I'm behind I'm either going to get hit or I'm going to rush to get inside his blade.
 
ttoney83 said:
Do you practice full contact, as in, take downs permissable? I have been caught behind and moved to grapple, effectively changing my behind to my before. :D In other words, if I'm behind I'm either going to get hit or I'm going to rush to get inside his blade.
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In open sparring we practice with actionflex weapons and no pads and takedowns are entirely permissible. What you are talking about is often effective when dueling, but the odds of being able to do that get very slim the moment that you end up with more than one opponent and can't afford to lock in on a single person.

When you fight against multiple opponents either alone or with your group at your side it really changes the dynamic of what you can afford to do. You have to fight compact and contained and you can't to commit in the same way. If you can manage a quick takedown and get out without going down yourself it can work, but if you both go to ground the chance are that one of the people sill on his or her feet will take you out in passing. Better to lose a blade in an edge to edge block than be grabbed and lose mobility.

The founder of my MA association survived a year and a half of close quarter jungle fighting in the PL. He broke a couple blades and saw others break them and was forced to fight with a flatstick for a while after snapping his blade in a fight. He was a perfectionist and a very careful man, but he always said that the rules go out the window and you do whatever you have to in the chaos of battle. Preserve your blade if you can, but preserve your life and the lives of your men above all else.
 
SeaxyBeast said:
In open sparring we practice with actionflex weapons and no pads and takedowns are entirely permissible. What you are talking about is often effective when dueling, but the odds of being able to do that get very slim the moment that you end up with more than one opponent and can't afford to lock in on a single person.

When you fight against multiple opponents either alone or with your group at your side it really changes the dynamic of what you can afford to do. You have to fight compact and contained and you can't to commit in the same way. If you can manage a quick takedown and get out without going down yourself it can work, but if you both go to ground the chance are that one of the people sill on his or her feet will take you out in passing. Better to lose a blade in an edge to edge block than be grabbed and lose mobility.

The founder of my MA association survived a year and a half of close quarter jungle fighting in the PL. He broke a couple blades and saw others break them and was forced to fight with a flatstick for a while after snapping his blade in a fight. He was a perfectionist and a very careful man, but he always said that the rules go out the window and you do whatever you have to in the chaos of battle. Preserve your blade if you can, but preserve your life and the lives of your men above all else.
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I practice European Martial Arts these days and the focus is definitely more on individual combat. As I thought more about it, the more I thought, in those combats, if I can get any part of my sword between me and my opponant's sword, it is just as easy to get the flat as the edge.

I have to agree that individual combat is different than fighting in groups, like Fezzik said, when fighting groups you use different moves than when you have to worry about only one man. In open combat or combat in the lists, I would more likely use a Pole axe rather than a sword, or a relatively shorter sword and shield.

So what is this you are doing? Is it LARP? SCA? Something other?
 
ttoney83 said:
So what is this you are doing? Is it LARP? SCA? Something other?
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Giron Arnis Escrima. Leo Giron was a commando in WWII and landed on Luzon by submarine in order to establish radio contact with the guerillas in N. Luzon and map Japanese troop movements in preparation for MacArthur's return. Very low ammo, low visibility and the need for stealth meant a lot of his combat encounters were hand-to-hand or bolo vs. bayonet. He earned two Bronze Stars for his service.
 
Great discussion so far, especially with the video's linked to demonstrate.

I have a beater sword and axe. My careless uncle bumped the edges together very very lightly (carrying both, and being nonchalant that little contact edge to edge left a decent nick in both).

I could not imagine the gouge that would happen if you hit edge to edge full force.
 
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