Quotulatiousness

August 7, 2011

“When I used to do this I broke my hand 14 times, and I’m a banjo player”

Filed under: Europe, History, Russia — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 17:13

Poland’s answer to the Society for Creative Anachronism, Knights’ Brotherhoods stage their own form of medieval recreation:

Compering and judging the hand-to-hand combat is Krzysztof Ptasinski, the son of a Polish diplomat who learnt English from an American teacher in Addis Ababa and insists I call him “Redneck Chris”.

His hooded robe and summer gear make him look like a monk in flip-flops.

“Whoa dude! Ouch! In your face!” he hollers as two knights wearing full body-plate armour weighing 35kg (77lb) lay into each other with double-handed swords.

To progress, a knight has to reach five points, each earned by laying a clean blow on an opponent above the knee.

The swords are blunt, of course, but that does not mean it is completely harmless.

“When I used to do this I broke my hand 14 times, and I’m a banjo player,” he says.

“I’ve got two screws in this finger. I had a cracked skull.

“When we were fighting the Belarusian guys, I had my kidney displaced.”

I ask him what the appeal is.

“Whenever you get hit in the helmet you almost lose consciousness because it’s so loud. It’s a thrill,” he says.

I used to work with a guy from St. Petersburg who told me all about the replica medieval armour and weapons he had to leave behind when he came to Canada. It sounds like this is a similar group.

From this description, the group doesn’t have quite the same concerns about participant safety that the SCA and other North American re-creationist/re-enactor groups have generally adopted.

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