Fight Like A Knight: Historical European Martial Arts in Reykjavík

About three times a week, the clang of heavy blades fills the halls of Laugardalsvöllur as the local knights of Reykjavík, also known as HEMA club members, don their fencing gear and train to fight with longswords, rapiers, sabres and more. Readers rejoice, for we have once more delved into the fanciful field of fascination to find the fiercest forms of fun for your free time! This time we have spoken to Rúnar Páll Benediktsson, the head coach of the Reykjavík HEMA club.

“HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) is the study and practice of swords, sword fighting and a lot of historically adjacent sports,” Rúnar explains. “There are specific time periods, styles and ideas but the range is anything from around the 1300s up to military sabres from the 1900s or even early Olympic sabre stuff. We mostly focus on fifteenth century longswords.”

The structure is fairly simple: one of the old fencing masters and his writing is selected, such as Johannes Liechtenauer of 14th century German fencing fame. Going off the translated manuscripts, the old training techniques can be read, interpreted and practised. They are often added to, re-interpreted and critiqued by other masters and authors over the centuries, such as Joachim Meyer and Peter von Danzig. As a result, HEMA today has multiple variations of common sources. Thankfully the training gear has also been updated over time for added comfort and protection.

As for an actual training session, there is a direct line from theory to practical application.

“It is more than playing with swords. We are creating a martial art.”

“Danzig breaks fencing down into 12 grounding principles and I often decide which principle we focus on for a practice session,” Rúnar says. “I explain it, we run through it, we can do a lot of theory crafting or just drill it out and see how it looks. Then I like to step it up to heavy drilling, testing the technique with a bit more resistance and pressure testing it by sparring in full gear.”

In terms of the appeal of the sport, Rúnar’s initial answer is quite simple: “It’s fucking swords, man.” But upon further elaboration, we end up discussing the multi-faceted allure of HEMA.

“It is more than playing with swords, of course. We are creating a martial art. We are creating a sport here in Iceland,” Rúnar explains. “There is so much content, there is so much stuff to explore. I have never found myself in a sport until I really discovered HEMA because it has something that tickles everything. It’s got nerd stuff (swords), but it’s also an intense workout, while having a lot of thinking involved. There’s a lot of reading involved, and so many ways to find your own expression.”

The club as it stands today came together in 2019, initially bouncing around locations until eventually finding itself in the fencing centre in Laugardalsvöllur, and growing ever since. As Rúnar tells me, “Our official main weapons are longsword and rapier but I have also started training up a coach in sabre and another in Italian fencing with her main focus on sidesword. We dabble in basically everything HEMA has to offer.”

“We’ve really enjoyed how far we’ve come as a club.”

The HEMA scene itself is also rather widespread with large events and tournaments all over the world, from Finland and Slovakia to Canada and China. The Icelandic HEMA scene provides a small but heartfelt contribution to the playing field — and it’s expanding every year, with one offshoot already taking root in Akureyri.

“We’ve really enjoyed how far we’ve come as a club and we continue to grow to this day,” Rúnar says. “We have a whole bunch of events here and there, we’ve started a kids programme, we even started hosting our own annual tournaments. I also want to do workshop events in the future — anything to let this little club grow.”

Read more from the fringes here.