Re-enactment (part 1)

I started re-enactment back in 1994 and continued with it until about 2012, with the last few years being very intermittent. The period in which I re-enacted was Saxon, Viking, Norman, from the 750ad, through to about 1100ad. For most of that time, I was a member of Regia Anglorum but I also trained with the Joms Viking and was for a short time a member of The Vikings, who where a rival of Regia and the oldest of that period re-enactment organisations.

The main reason I did that period was because of the fighting. What most people don’t realise is that the fighting isn’t scripted, it isn’t like choreography. Whilst, we were not trying to hurt each other, the fighting was competitive, with certain parts of the body being able to be hit (upper arms, shoulders, chest, stomach, back, buttocks and upper legs.

For some reason I was pretty good. I was certainly one of the best swordsman and generally a good spearman (if a little heavy handed). I was also rather fit for a re-enactor, which gave me a bit of an advantage. The other advantage (and disadvantage) was the fact that I was left handed. This is an advantage because a lot of re-enactors were not used to fighting left-handed people but even than I was generally seen as one of the best fighters. The down side to being left-handed was that I got hit in the head more often than most (oddly, people complained if I hit them in the head (very rare) but the fact that I regularly got hit didn’t seem to matter).

I had been fighting for around 12 years, when a member of my group, had an accident and lost an eye. Though I tried not to show it, it really did shake me up and I realised that with my job (at the time I was a professional cameraman), if a similar accident occurred to me, I wouldn’t be able to continue with my job. So I started to say, I wanted to give up fighting, which no-one believed.

Unfortunately, the numbers fighting were down and so I would often step up and fight, though most of the time, I would try to Sargent a battle and stay behind the line helping to organise the our side. I had been worried about the quality of training for a number of years and a change in the rules, which in theory was fair but was easily abused (and often was).

Things came to ahead in 2008 and I had a big falling out with a number of high ranking members of Regia, I said some things I probably shouldn’t and in the end I left.

From around 2002, I had been training with the Joms vikings. They were based in London but their shows were in Europe. They had a very different fighting style to Regia, they were much more aggressive, hit harder and trained more regularly. I regularly trained with them for several years. In Regia, I was one of the top fighters but in the Joms vikings, I was average to above average. I could hold my own and would win a circle occasionally but the quality of fighting, particularly with swords was much higher.

Even though I left Regia, I was trained with my local group, Milite Debec, who at one time I had been training officer for. Unfortunately, again I had a falling out, with one member (though I was not the only one) and decided to leave.

I then had a break from re-enactment for a year or so but decided to try it, again and joined The Vikings. I enjoyed the group but I had issues. I had been a good fighter at one point, the main reason being that I trained regularly. Unfortunately, when I started to fight with the Vike, I didn’t practice nearly enough and I was dangerous. I also had lost my fitness and in the only battle I did, I asked to be killed after the 3rd clash because I was knackered. I had become everything I didn’t like about re-enactment and along with having shoulder issues, I decided that I should pack it in.

I had some great times with re-enactment and met some wonderful people. I also met some ego maniacs and more often than not they wanted power. Even so, if someone wanted to join one of the re-enactment societies of that period, I would recommend trying it.

Below are links to the 3 different re-enactment societies.

Regia Anglorum

The Vikings

Joms Vikings.