Overview

For today’s historical-combat exercise, we are going to follow a weave of martial endeavors that begins with the American Frontier’s rough & tumble strategy of “Attacking the Buckler” and goes back to Viking archeology. From there we’ll move on to a “chicken or the egg” style debate about whether or not a French martial art came before a similar martial art born on the Emerald Isle. Finally, we’ll tie it all together and end with what all this historical and archaeological speculation has to do with modern day approaches to self-defense.

The American Frontier

We begin our journey in the wilds of the American Frontier. A rough and tumble land that sparked a fighting style of the same name—a fighting style that was all-encompassing and vicious in war, and was a bit more restrained (but still mighty vicious) for “friendly” competition.

The early days of frontier survival called for a ready skill with a musket, tomahawk, and whatever else was close at hand. In the case that no weapons were available, the violence fell to the hands themselves and the other natural weapons of the body.

The rough and tumble style was and is an amalgamation of boxing and wrestling styles from the many lands that made up the melting pot of the frontier, but it was also a bit more than that as necessity and exposure to different ways sparked innovation. One such spark was the concept of “Attacking the Buckler.”

What Is A Buckler?

A buckler is a small shield worn over the forearm of the off-hand of a sword, pike, or ax-wielding warrior. The lead hand took care of the offense while the off-hand took care of defense (although offense with the bucker was not off the table).

The buckler is held by sliding the forearm through a rope loop or leather thong in the center of the buckler and then gripping a second handhold towards the inside edge of the buckler. If one drops a buckler and adopts a mock “holding a buckler” stance with both arms you will then be standing in a very good approximation of a boxing stance.

Attacking the Buckler

When wielding a weapon against a buckler-wielding opponent, the buckler was not always ignored. Striking the buckler with force could occupy the opponent and/or upset the balance/base for the next offensive strike not aimed at the buckler.

When things went empty handed, this same idea of “Attacking the Buckler” remained. That is, rather than treat the empty-handed encounter as modern sportive applications do, where one must treat the defending arms (twin bucklers) as obstacles to be surmounted or worked around, the rough and tumble style saw them as viable and prime targets. (I cover specific tactics for “Attacking the Buckler” empty-handed in some of my material). “Attacking the Buckler” is a wise strategy well worth reviving, as is the opposite strategy of “Ignoring the Buckler” which we will discuss in a moment.

Let’s Talk Vikings

The sagas of these legendary Norsemen are filled with battles and gore, and if one is an ardent reader they will have come across more than a few tales of amputations taking place in the midst of battle. A fair number of these amputations were of the legs or feet. But the sagas are stories, not history. Just how accurately do the stories relate to what was occurring in Viking battle?

An Archeological Perspective

In 1905 on the island of Gotland near a town called Visby, Oscar Wilhelm Wennersten and Nils Pettersson began the first archaeological digs that revealed the aftermath of the Battle of Visby which was fought in 1361.

Approximately 2,000 bodies have been exhumed in the ongoing study of Visby and an examination of the wounds on the skeletons of those who were likely of battle-age has proven to be quite illuminating.

Wounds from cutting weapons (swords or battle-axes) occur in 456 skeletons. Of these cutting wounds, only 15% of the total are wounds to the arms. One would presume that the use of shields and bucklers is what kept this total so low. With that 15% in mind, does that mean that the head wounds took the lead? Not by a long shot.

Wounds to the lower extremities came in at 65% of the total. Although the sagas are rife with stories that depict shields and bucklers being chopped to bits, it seems the more effective and perhaps preferred method of attack was to “Ignore the Buckler.”

Ignoring the Buckler

“Ignoring the Buckler” can be taken to the unarmed realm (or as an adjunct to the armed realm) if we look at low-line kicking in combat, which is, in essence, an “Ignoring the Buckler” strategy whether it be used for better balance, the pragmatics of battlefield terrain, or the on-the-nose- strategy of choosing to avoid that which protects your opponent.

There are many references to low-line kicking in the rough and tumble of the American frontier, but let’s keep this on the other side of the pond for now as we follow Viking migration.

Viking Expansion

As the Norsemen raided, and in many cases intermingled, built allies, inter-married, and settled down along the coasts of Ireland and Scotland, we also see the “Ignoring the Buckler” strategy utilized by various Celtic tribes in both weapons-play along with the use of low-line kicking.

Speachoireacht

The Gaelic word, Speachoireacht (say “spacker-okt” and you’ll come close to the proper pronunciation) refers to a method of low-line kicking that both targets the shin similarly to the purring kick of Welsh and Cornish tradition, the oblique kick of Filipino Pananjakman, or the coup de pied bas of savate, and also uses the shin as the striking surface.

This is the “chicken or the egg” portion of the show. The mention of or allusions to speachoireacht stretch back to the Norse Invasions, whereas savate literature began its heyday in the 18th-century. Who borrowed from whom matters to many, but this is not my way of thinking. The wisdom of a wise borrow outweighs the dubious bragging rights of an “I was here first!”

It is revealing that while there was a form of speachoireacht that was practiced with two participants only kicking, it was primarily used in conjunction with boxing and wrestling, and one can easily imagine that in times of sword, ax, and shielded battle, it often came into play.

The Take-Away

It seems our bellicose historical ancestors on both sides of the pond did not see bucklers or defending arms as puzzles to be cracked, obstacles to be avoided, or thwarts to their attacks. They pragmatically and wisely chose to make a target of what was intended to be a defense or to go beneath the defense altogether.

So, whether our influence be rough and tumble, Viking ways, savate, speachoireacht, Muay Thai, or what have you, the historical lesson to be learned is not to focus so much on the “how” or “what” of a given technique, but to use the strategy of “Attacking and/or Avoiding the Buckler“.

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