Sword & Shield Fighting (Roland - Hammaborg) - Part IAre you interested in pretending to be an old thymey sword fighting guy?
Here's interesting lecture on good recreators' extrapolations of viking and saxon style sword and shield fighting. Almost none of this is provable, but I like their attempts to explain a lot of things. Like for instance, why are old round shields flat, instead of conical or curved like the roman shields that preceded them. When you test it, something like a conical shape stands up to a blow from even the biggest weapon of the period where as a standard flat round shield gets smashed to pieces.
Well, probably because they weren't meant to stand up to a direct blow from a dane axe, they were meant for basically shield fencing with your opponent like this, clogging him up and restricting his ability to fight you while exposing him to sword thrusts or slashes.
