Bighorn Historical Combat, a recreational martial arts club founded in January of this year, is hosting Hornfest, a historical sword-fighting tournament at the Airdrie Martial Arts Centre on July 13 and 14.
Hornfest will feature attendees pitted against one another tournament-style in longsword combat. A cutting competition will be organized to judge the quality of attendees' cuts and technique, and tournament organizers are hoping to run an under-represented genders tournament on Sunday.
The tournament is an Airdrie first. Bighorn, a club practitioner of Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA), is new to the local scene, but the sport of historical sword fighting has grown in popularity the last couple of decades.
Julian Schuetze, the founder of Bighorn and organizer of Hornfest, has been involved in HEMA events for the past 14 years. In British Columbia, he founded four different historical sword-fighting clubs before moving to Alberta.
"I don't know a single boy who has not played knight with sticks in the backyard when they were five-years-old,” said Schuetze. “I've always loved swords and armour and the main reason I started was for fitness. It was a very fun alternative to going to the gym. If anything, now I go to the gym to be better at sword fighting; so it has kind of created its own motivation."
Schuetze said historical sword-fighting clubs have grown both in popularity and in maturity. The sport predominantly features physically fit people swinging longswords at one another, but technique and safety have also come a long ways. According to Schuetze, it’s not a “barbarian sport” where you just hit people with swords.
"I remember when the biggest tournaments in this sport were very fledgling,” Schuetze said. “People would travel all over North America to go to a 15-person event. There was an event in California recently with 800 participants. It's definitely growing massively, and it’s great to see the variety of reasons that people are participating."
Historical sword fighting is unique, as far as sporting tournaments go. It’s not the basketball, baseball, or hockey– widely known and almost universally played in across the country. But the engaging aspect of historical sword fighting, said Schuetze, what has made it popular and beloved among those who participate, is the exchange of cultures and ideas that have metamorphosed the sport.
“Every sport will have its own sort of niche,” he explained. “Some participants will get really good at a certain thing and they'll go out and, if they can apply it, it works really well and everyone learns from it from other people. You'll have a lot of people who take it very seriously and genuinely treat it like a martial art…you have an opponent and they want to win. You have to find ways to counter their knowledge set or maybe their technical applications. It's a lot of fun."
Schuetze said the tournament this weekend will be a mix of fun and high-energy competitiveness.
“Combatants should still be coming out to put [their] all into it,” he said. “But with a very friendly atmosphere where the main goal is for everybody to just have a good time.”
