 Viking Martial Arts. There is a ton of media and research out there depicting how the Viking actually engaged in combat, but how much of it is accurate. We have two very special guests joining us, Dr. William Short and Rainier Oskarsson. Together, they represent the organization HERSFIC, as well as co-authored the book Men of Terror, a Comprehensive Analysis of Viking Combat. Now these guys have done some serious research and they're going to challenge everything they knew about the Vikings, and today they're going to share what they uncovered in a decades-long research project and tell us a little bit more about the real Viking Martial Arts. So I'd like to start off, first of all, by thanking you gentlemen so much for taking your time to join us in this chat and share your research with us about Viking combat. And, you know, we're going to get to more into details of the actual combat itself. But first, I'd like to start from the beginning. Can you tell us what HERSFIC is and what is the goal of the organization? HERSFIC is an organization that researches Viking combat. You know, we're interested in all things Viking, but our main focus is Viking combat. We're trying to understand as deeply and as carefully as possible how it was that Vikings fought. I really have no martial arts background. My background is technical, and I worked in a job where I was working on audio, acoustics, human hearing, and I read these things called Saga's, these stories set in Viking Age Iceland, and I read one and liked it, read a few more, really liked it, and decided to learn more by taking a summer course at the University of Iceland. That was 25 years ago. When I got back, I really wanted to do more, and I found this group called HERSFIC that was starting to just get formed, and they put me in charge of the weapons training because they just had a very serious injury, and I wanted to make sure they didn't do that. And so no one was really doing this kind of research that long ago. There was really nothing. But I did find a local museum, the Higgins Armory Museum, that had quite an extensive medieval and Renaissance collection of arms and armor, and they were just starting a group that was basically doing HEMA research, historical European martial arts, so based on some of the manuals. And I thought that was at least a starting point, and that's really where HERSFIC started. Eventually we separated, we got our own training room, and the focus has really been on Viking weapons and Viking combat. I'll add a little bit to it. So firstly, question of what is HERSFIC, we are just really peculiar super nerds, really interested in some strange, strange science. What was it, about 12, 13 years ago? I met William by mere chance. I had no interest in Vikings at all, and he poisoned me, polluted my brain, and somehow it took over. I was a martial artist before, but Vikings just, it became too fascinating to research it. I just turned it to a nerd. I probably was never cool, but I turned it to a nerd. Now you mentioned that you were a martial artist prior. What artists did you study and had that affect your perspective going into this project? I tabled in many things, but my main focus was Taekwondo, cheat kondo, and I played a little bit with mixed martial arts as well. And what I saw especially was when I, so I came from traditional background and into something else. It started with the cheat kondo, where it really broke the pattern of how you should think. Somewhat different than the traditional martial arts, as in they had a goal, and their, their method was just to attain their goal, now in their own way. And then I went to mixed martial arts as well, but nothing, nothing serious or, or important, but they had a different goal, and they tried to attain that goal differently. So they broke the pattern of how you should do things. And that's what I would say I brought to the table of first thing. Studying medieval martial arts, specifically Viking combat, had been a path that many had gone before me, but I had no connection with it. I just thought, okay, that's the goal. How do we attain that goal? And William was a scientist, so I thought, no, no, we'll use your scientific background. We don't need to go a path that somebody else is gone. As if Vikings weren't already badass enough, it's worth highlighting an elite and even more intense warrior, the berserker, meaning bearskin, these warriors were frenzied, wore animal skins and utilized intimidation tactics such as chewing on their shields. In recognition of this history, we have added the Viking berserker warrior into our colors of combat shirt collection. If you enjoy the content on our channel, we invite you to our website to check out this and 22 other colorful art designs. We thank you all so much for your support and for helping us to continue making these episodes. Any other key players in the organization that we should know about? Yeah, certainly we have a range of instructors in our organization who have reached some level of competency in this, not only in combat arts, but also in terms of the research and what they have accomplished. When we got this core group, they had specialties that were immensely important to us. One of them was a special forces soldier. So you could tell us this is not how combat is done, or this is the difference between modern combat, what I would do and what Vikings would do. And we hit that point very often. It doesn't matter what we would do, because we have to figure out what they would do. And that is totally different. And I have a prop next to me. I hope you can see it. So this one here, for example, is an axe that we made specifically for our research purpose. We wanted an axe that we could hit with and would leave impact, but no bones broken. And we could hook with as well. So it's made from whatever material our maker, Barbara Vector, made it from. But as you made it specifically so we could do research, and we had to invent a lot of training tools and apparatus to do our research. We are super nerds then. I assume that comes clear. Oh, that is awesome. That's even better. And I definitely want to get back to the weapons, because there's a whole fascinating aspect to that, how you guys approach that. But one of the things I want to ask right now is, when you started this project, what led you believe that there was aspects of Viking martial arts that hadn't already been established? When I met William, these 13, 40 years ago, I attended one of his lectures, again, not interested in Vikings at all. And I thought, this doesn't make sense. So I live in Iceland. This is the place where the stories were kept, where the culture was kept, not that it wasn't kept in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and so on, but it was just intently kept here. I've been hit in the nose before. So what I saw William do is I thought, oh, everybody has planned to their hidden nose. And that's sort of what I saw William was doing at that time. So I questioned it. Yeah, he, Rainer brought reality to what we were doing. I mean, up until that point, it was mostly book learning with some, and correct me if I'm wrong, but mostly book learning with time spent in the training room. But none of us has been, you know, basically punched in the nose. So Rainer brought that level of seriousness and experience with other arts to what Hearst was doing and brought us up to a whole new level in our research and a whole new level in our training. Can you tell us what the I-33 manuscript is? Sure, it's a Royal Armouries I-33 manuscript. It's thought to have been written in what is now the northern parts of Germany in around the 12th century, 13th century, 13th century, I think, early 13th century. And it covers using sword and buckler. And many people believe that it's a good basis for doing Viking sword and shield. You know, pretty quickly, Dan, we had to drop that because the weapons really are so different. A buckler is nothing remotely not like a shield. And that really got confirmed for us by a passage in Eastlendinger Saga, one of the Zürtlinger sagas that are contemporary histories. And the author of that saga actually participated in a lot of the fights he describes. And he writes about swords and bucklers being used in the same fight in Iceland in that time, which was what, 13th century. And he clearly describes a buckler being used the way a buckler is used. And he clearly describes a shield being used in the way that a Viking shield would be used. So at least at that point, they understood the differences between the two weapons and understood that they were used very, very differently. You know, so with that backing up our practical tests in our training room, we really had to discard using not only I-33, but pretty much all the manuals. They're all much too late to be very useful to us. As we did our research, we found out that there are three pillars to understanding Viking combat. And one of those pillars is mindset. That goes for every fighting system. And I will give you an analogy from medieval Japan. If I took two warrior, an Inje and a Samurai, and I asked them to fight to the death, noon tomorrow, high noon. The clothes will put no clothes on, and you will receive a weapon you've never seen before. So I give them a Tamican and a three-piece suit. At noon, the day after, I can sort of guarantee you the Samurai, we standing really proud and tall on a hill, stating his clan, stating his shooting the challenge, while the Inje with just a ratatata in the back of his head. So that is the mindset. And mindset dictates behavior. So we had to dig really deep into the mindset. We coined narrow sources. So narrow sources means the source must be about Vikings. The manuals might be really good for many, many things. But to us, they're not about Vikings. So I saw on your site that you mentioned that you had to take the stance of separating contemporary martial arts, ideals and mindsets and combat styles from what would the historical sources be. How did you go about making that division between the two? When William dragged me into the organization, I was super scared because I could see that William really was a genius. He really knew what he was talking about. Super clever human being. I was just really scared that anything I would put to the table would be polluted. Strikes like something from a Japanese art or suddenly they would be doing spin kicks from Taekwondo or who knows what. It's really easy to pollute it, really easy. We agreed. Instead of using some martial arts, I would use maybe training methodology or testing methodology from martial arts. But at any technical aspect or movement aspect or something, we would refrain from. When we were doing our simulant combat, we saw opportunities to give a punch or a headbutt or knee. Really luckily we asked the question, did Vikings hit? Did they punch? Did they headbutt? Did they knee? And the really short answer is no, they didn't. What makes most sense to me has no relevance to what makes most sense to Vikings. And that comes back to the mindset. If you understand the mindset, then you can start to see how they thought. And that's the perfect segue into your sparring experience. I really enjoyed reading about the different stages of sparring that you guys do and how you consider that the laboratory for this project. So can you tell us a little bit how you guys approach sparring and how that plays into your research of how the Vikings combated? We call it dynamic combat simulation or force-on-force simulation. Now there is a big problem. What we are researching is sharp blade combat. And we really need to respect that. That's what we're testing and researching. So our approach to the simulations was to understand that there's a missing part and try to make a holistic picture by doing it in many different ways. So we would use super light weapons. Because then you would get the sort of incorrect biomechanics. And they could punish you so hard that you don't like to be hit that hard. But then we would use steel weapons. And you know when you have a two-handed steel axe, you'll have to pull back. You'll have to pull back on strike. Otherwise either I'm trying to injure you or you will be wearing so much protection that we're going back to this is not how a strike was done because you're wearing so much protection. You would not have the same effect on you. It changes the dynamics. A shield against the blunt weapon usually doesn't break. So we created fake shields that would break to a blunt weapon. So we could get the same dynamics in the fight. So we had to just when there was a part missing we tried to add it in by changing some element in the in the simulation itself. You know to answer the question we just had to do crazy many things and crazy different things using the scientific method which means we try to falsify our theory. We say didn't Vikings do this and then we try to falsify it. And we do that by you having massive amount of different tools. Maybe one of Hersterick's great strengths is our ability to improvise on that and create training weapons. If we want to do an experiment and we don't have a training weapon that seems like it's going to be safe that seems like it's going to replicate something that the Vikings used and seems to have the right capabilities not only offensive capabilities but also defensive capabilities so it's going to react in many of the same ways. If we don't have that weapon we'll try to make something. So Barbara's axes are the perfect example of that. We needed an axe that we could hit with and not break bones or kill people. And Barbara came up with something that was really clever and it has that necessary defensive element of actually being able to hook a use of the axe that Vikings took advantage of hooking people or hooking shields hooking other things. But one of my favorite exercises that we did with these sorts of improvised weapons you know sometimes weapons break during a fight. And so I rigged up a whole bunch of weapons which unknown to the participants in that day's training would break very easily. So they thought they were just normal weapons but they were rigged so that they would break and it was funny you know one person's spear broke in the middle of a round and took them a minute before they realized they had only half a spear left because people get so excited so into the into the fight. So how did these sparring tell us about how these sparring sessions progressed from just being indoor in the laboratory and actually outside to the weather and the elements of different trains. How did that add more dimension to your research? Outdoor simulations they gave us new view because we could test new scenarios and we could test an ambush hiding if needed to ideas about the footwork. You know most often combat training is trained indoors on an even floor and outdoors that doesn't happen very often if you at least in the Viking age. But we had the basic sort of down how they fought so this would be just a slight adaptation. And I will add an example of that you know one of the environmental situations that we set up to spar on was on board a Viking ship and I remember I didn't think it would matter that much but wow what a difference the rocking deck of a ship and combine that with all the stuff that is on the deck of a ship that gets in the way of a fight really changed the dynamics of the fight and opened our eyes to how complex that could be. Fascinating I love the authenticity to your approach because it's more than just reading a few passages reading some textbooks and coming up with a theory. You guys are actually out there testing and testing and being as authentic as possible in Rainier. I know you told me about something about you guys were the first people in 700 years to make iron like actually out in the elements. Could you tell us about that and how that changed history? Yeah we got Dan were interested in everything related to Vikings not just combat and one thing that fascinated us is the iron. You know how iron was made in Viking Age Scandinavia. People have been studying that that's pretty clear but what was really interesting was how was iron made in Viking Age Iceland and I think Rainier can confirm this but for decades if not longer everyone has believed that the iron made in Viking Age Iceland was just utter crap that swords made out of this stuff would bend during a fight needed to straighten it out under foot and it's that's something that appears in the sagas a couple of times and so the general belief was that this stuff was just rubbish but then I don't know a few years ago I was visiting some friends in Iceland and we visited this this site and there were these mountains of iron slag there from the Viking Age and I looked at the archaeological report and this this farm made something like 1,000 tons of iron in the Viking Age I mean that's way more than the farm needs way more than the district needs way more than that quarter of Iceland needs what were they doing making all that iron if it was really crap and that was only one of multiple sites that made lots of iron in Viking Age Iceland so we were curious what was the quality of Viking Age iron in Iceland so we decided to start a research experiment to find out and we brought in a whole bunch of experts like geologists that could tell us about the raw materials available in Iceland and we needed high temperature experts who could tell us about the necessary materials for making the the furnace where the smelting takes place and we had wood experts in the Forestry Service of Iceland helping us out and probably others that I can't even remember at this point and we put it all together we did this research we tried to use the scientific method to understand it and we did a whole lot of smelts here in the United States basically to to get the fundamentals so that we understood the basics and then we went to Iceland we had a festival we used all Icelandic materials and made good quality iron and we think it was probably the first iron made in Iceland in many centuries probably 700 years and importantly the thing that that you know broke everyone's mind was this wasn't just good iron this was excellent iron this iron was more than adequate for pretty much any tool any weapon that you might want to make it was first quality iron and so we sort of rewrote history by doing this experiment I often hear Gleema associated with with Viking combat how much does that actually play into your research and how like how authentic is that to their method of fighting so first of all then be super careful of the internet there is so much rubbish nonsense about Gleema flying around everywhere either check what we have done which has been recognized by the Gleema Association of Iceland the only authority of Gleema or go directly to them Gleema.is we started taking our our results together and put them in a book form I wanted all the highest authorities to check them out to falsify them to tell us no no this is wrong so one of the authorities I went to is the Gleema Association of Iceland and Gleema just for your audience if they don't know Gleema is the wrestling method of Vikings and the empty-headed combat method of Vikings and today is the national sport of Iceland and we have an association of Gleema here in Iceland so I went to them went to the president and I just fell in love with it there is a direct lineage from the Viking age till the day today there is evolution there's changes but there is a direct lineage and it is yeah it has it had immense influence because it is a direct lineage and we can train it today we can speak to the people and so it's a living comparative activity of Vikings so if you understand the Gleema of the day you can walk down the path all the way to the Gleema of the past and if you understand the Gleema of the past and the Gleema of the day then it's really easy to look at let's say a sword strike and say no this does not fit into this holistic picture because in I think in every single culture armed combat and unarmed combat go hand in hand oh absolutely and I love you shared some photos with me you were doing some some grappling on ice um I love again another aspect that a lot of people probably don't think about but what was that experience like and how did that add to your research we do research and we admit to being super nerds in Viking combat that means we have to do many scary scary things like where you think what the hell is going to happen now is something going to break or am i going to drown and this was one of those experiments so we we entered a ice rink with wrestling shoes on and they are in some ways very similar to Viking shoes and we did Gleema I took one of the best Gleema fighters in Iceland and yeah just had them try to heal me gently and I'm still alive today I don't know how but it is super scary and we know that and I did this because again everything must fit there must be a holistic image so sword strike must fit with the with the Gleema the Gleema must fit with a mindset now if we say if we find out that they did Gleema on ice and that does not fit with the Gleema we know then we know something is off so that's why we had to do it because we know in the Viking is the Gleema on ice and I think the last source I have found of doing Gleema on ice is 1900s but we have done scary things before and it doesn't make me any more manly or courageous just makes me scared every single time so this holistic approach you're talking about this is the image of the way they would have fought in authentic combat there was a quote on on on the website where you mentioned that you wanted people to be able to look outside through a window into the room and see you guys wrestling and forget about the weapons and forget about the the the costumes you're wearing and look at it go okay yes that's Viking combat how what did you find in your research that makes that kind of distinction how was Viking combat different from other types of martial arts if you looked in the window and saw two people I don't know dressed in Boy Scout uniforms hitting each other with a stick you'd know there are Viking fighters because of the way that they were moving the way that they were using those tools and that's what we're trying to do in our training room and it has to do with the mindset and I think it's the third pillar that we're talking about that it's all power-based it's a power-based activity and the goal of a Viking fight is simply split into whatever is in front of you and so if they are doing something that involves a tap or a jab or some low power attack we're probably going to say nope that's probably not how Vikings would have done it because everything points to this power-based attack yeah I'll give you I'll give you a little bit a little bit more of the same the same point of view and I won't go really deep into it there are three pillars of understanding why one is glima and glima is a power-based system it is about who is the strongest that you take down your opponent and in Icelandic we still have in common phrases it means you throw them down and you take a superior ground position you finish him off it is just get it down finish it then we have the idea of the mindset and that's a little bit complex so I'll give you just the short version that is about two things it's about number one is about Ørstir and Ørstir means word glory it means that your that your name is spoken after your death this is the eternal life how do you get that word glory you do that by being a trinket and a trinket is not easily translatable a word it means it is sort of trust infused honor and the third pillar is adaptability and improvisational skills like in the use of rocks it use what you have so the idea is you take down what is in front of you with brute power just sleeve it into and that makes sense because then people will talk about you but when Dan slew the the ogre William and the evil bastard reigned it he cut them in two and then he broke William's back people will talk and that's what was the key important then you must be a man who is to be trusted so you don't do anything underhanded you don't sort of assassinate me or anything like that so there's a difference between killing and murdering you know in Viking mindset killing someone that is okay you already take the consequences you killed someone and claimed the kill murder someone means you did in a secret you didn't tell anybody and that is the lowest of the low so you partially answered my question with this because i was going to ask another question i was i'll look at some of your research about the that heavy chopping blow with the axe these heavy axes and looking at the photos of the viking with the axe up in the air coming out for that swing what i couldn't help notice was how vulnerable they looked in that moment so when when they were doing those kind of maneuvers did they have any specific defensive tactics to kind of protect themselves or was it all risk be damned or were these mortars finishing moves that they did not even care about the defensive side of that you have to you have to look at it from a different eye than the eye of a typical martial artist they who knows like this is first happening then this and you need to be prepared for this are they vulnerable yeah it's a it's a big axe but our research also says that it is a meteor it takes away anything that goes in front of it so the psychological element of what the hell is happening with this big blade coming at me it's not like yeah i'm tactical thinking because here in our assume meeting we can assume many things yeah i would do this and this and this but when i go ahead and access coming at your full speed if your pants are clean i mean that's good enough you die an honorable death and the other thing that i would add to that is you know i saw that picture and i think i know which picture you're talking about and there's quite some distance between them so mike has all the advantage of of range that against barbers sword and shield and barber can put her shield up but the axe is going to go right through that right through her helmet and right through her head you know we've done those tests what about any empty hand fight like striking arts punches kicks they have anything distinctive about the way they fought empty-handed our sources all point to they did not strike if this if they struck then it was in anchor or or out of control situations and my theory was widen the strike with the bones of the hands are fragile and this is a weapon based system so you can imagine if you have to use your hand gun day in and day out or you have to always be prepared to use it even though you don't use it day in and out and then you break your hand then things are not as easy this is your safety of life so that was my theory at least and that's only a theory because i see nothing about it but i see they didn't understand really about their their fighting style was mostly just power based in get a grip around the lower back of the opponent and then you continue on from there you might sweep his leg you might break his back you might lift him up and crash him down and from there they would if that didn't do the job and if this was calm but because they had supportive glima and they had combative glima and they are nearly identical apart from the intensity of the throw itself and the follow-up which is this superior ground fighting position and please remember this is like Havenman Brazilian jujitsu like it was a a brutish power based honor based system about eternal life that people want to talk to you forever because you are a warrior what was the role of the knife and why did the vikings consider themselves unarmed even when they had one i'll try to answer that we don't think that they considered the knife to be a weapon i mean that was sort of the last resort everyone carried a knife on their belt all the time or around their neck and if you truly had nothing else the knife would have to do is the weapon or it might be the finishing weapon once you had the superior ground position but the the typical weapons would be you know sword axe spear sacks things like that and the knife would just be your everyday tool so tool more than a weapon and my theory is that weapons had single purpose so you have the you have the axe the normal everyday wood axe or axe or whatever that makes a wet shape like this so if you stick it into a wood you can pull the back out as an example of our tool axe the weapon axe was really thin and if you cut wood with it it would just get stuck but if you cut a limb with it it was perfect so i i think the knife was a so multi-purpose tool but i think the weapons were pure weapons so at this point um all your research has led to you guys releasing your new book men of terror um what are some interesting things that readers can expect to learn about in this book what was most interesting to me and where things sort of fell into place and started really making sense is when we came to this realization of these three pillars that define Viking combat and once someone has an understanding of what those three pillars are how they combine and and what it all means then the general concept of what Viking combat is all about really falls into place and makes a lot more sense the other aspect that's in the book is there's just this really wide and deep scientific research going on so the book is not only got the photographs of the weapons photographs of some of the moves but a lot of scientific data so graphs and plots of some of our tests that help support some of our ideas about how the fighting was conducted did you encounter any resistance at all from the academic community when you started this project and how any pushback towards what people thought they knew about vikings yeah dan yes and no so the no part first first of all it seems like a lot of what we do is somewhat under the radar in the academic field and yes we get a lot of pushback once people are aware of what we're doing which i think reiner can probably talk about much better than i can as you i assume no in the martial arts circle uh eco is rampant but later on i learned that uh a lot of the viking world especially it has just is more vibrant than with the eco than even the martial arts so with the academics no they didn't pay much attention to us in the beginning and press the site in the beginning now that has changed quite a lot i must admit and i respect that i mean we do not come from the academic field of vikings but still we are respected and accepted by by many academics now now those who don't know us of course not they they assume that we just dress up and pretend to be vikings so where is your research taking you now what are your next steps in this project uh dan that could be the basis of another one hour chat we have a lot of interesting projects on tap i'll talk about one that's really got me fascinated and it's it's pretty nerdy and that has to do with the physics of viking weapons truly understanding how it is that the warrior moves to move his weapon such that the weapon hits the target and delivers destructive energy and uh we've started on that several phases are now well underway in that so for instance we've done motion capture of of uh hitting striking with uh viking weapons to understand exactly how the warrior's body is moving and where the power is coming from and when it is being delivered and and how it all comes together to that one point where weapon hits target and how much energy is put into the target and we started doing like 3d scans of viking weapons so we have excellent models of these historical viking weapons to use in our modeling so it's still underway it's still ongoing but we're excited about where it may end up so if yours were also going to take one idea and walk away with one idea from this video what would you want that idea to be yeah the idea would probably be in all realms be that in martial arts be that in researching viking speed that in studying anything or interacting with the human being at all there is no reason to do something just because somebody said so you should look for falsifying especially if you're learning uh especially with the martial arts and and that is the school I come from so that is the school I see that has influenced the martial art as well that uh because the instructor told me therefore and you think no no no we use the falsifying process where we test it and so on so forth and you should well the data is here or something of those things and Dan I come from a background a technical background and the scientific method is is ingrained into into my whole being and I think what we discovered is that science can be applied to any of this stuff including viking combat and by applying science to our research in viking combat we can make startling breakthroughs uh really understand this in ways that it has not been understood before and so using the scientific method in places where you wouldn't think the scientific method would apply has been very valuable to us it just is too interesting and too much fun I had no idea that uh martial arts could be so adventures where you can just test things and test things in the most open way possible like I told you uh doing gleam on ice or or jumping from the deep end of a swimming pool in a chamber checking if you can swim it's just it somehow brings a quickness to your heart yeah well I personally had a blast reading through your website like when you when we first talked about it you know I thought this would be interesting just you know get some concepts of the martial arts but when I really saw the type of experiments you're doing and and the lengths you're going to to make it as authentic as possible it it'll put up a lot of ideas that I never even thought to think you know if that makes any sense is that there's so many so much things to look at and I just absolutely admire what you guys have done and the work you've put into it and just like you said falsifying everything make you know you're holding everything up to a standard and then you're recreated and you standard holding everything up to that so I think that's extremely admirable um I think it's fantastic research I cannot wait to see what you guys do next this is this is fascinating thank you dance so that was a peek into the world of Viking martial arts I would like to thank William and Rainier today for their time and for sharing their passion and knowledge with us their book men of terror a comprehensive analysis of Viking combat goes into much greater detail and I highly recommend picking up a copy it helps support the research and you can find a link to the book down below in the description now if you're interested in breaking common narratives and learning true history then let's talk about the real origin and history of Brazilian jujitsu BJJ and MMA competitor Robert Drysail joins us and he challenges everything you think you know about the art