Mountain Axe at SCA Saxon Summer again this year.

I will be teaching a workshop on the mountain axe again this year at the local SCA event called Saxon Summer on September 12. I believe the event is being held in hubbard Ohio again this year but will post the address when I get it.
Should be a good time. Last year it was pouring [...]

Axe galore at the RV Weekend!

We got to play with all sorts of axes last weekend at the 5th annual Recreational Violence Weekend here in Northeast Ohio.
Medieval pollaxes, tomahawks, entrenching tools and our beloved moutnain axe were all featured in classes this past weekend.

Photo courtesy of Kirk Lawson
The first axe class was on the use of the knightly pollaxe taught [...]

Mountain Axe at the Recreational Violence Weekend!

Recreational Violence Weekend V
June 11-12 here in beautiful Northeast Ohio..we will have a variety of axe classes including a class Sunday on the mountain axe. I am picturing this as the most people ever swinging mountain axes in one place outside of the Carpathian mountains ever…or at least in a very long time. Should be [...]

Mountain axe at ISMAC

On saturday afternoon I taught a 1 1/2 hour course on the Carpathian mountain axe. While taught a shorter course at a local SCA event last year, this marks the first complete class of this kind ever taught by me using this material.
IIRC we had 12 people in the class…for a while it looked like [...]

Russian peasant in 1812 British Caricature

From wiki
A redrawn version of a Russian caricature (on Napoleon’s 1812 campaign in Russia) by British artist George Cruikshank. A Russian peasant holds a bloody axe above Frenchman’s head, ready to strike. On the ground are the bodies of two French officers, whose skulls have been split by the Russian soldier’s axe. British caricature. Dorothy [...]

Link: Hurstwic Viking Axe

Here is a link to a nice site that deals with Viking use of the axe…a bit off topic for us but don’t all of us axe swinging wildmen have to stick together? I mean it’s not like we are fencers or something. So vistit the Hurstwic site now!

Stara Basn

Stara Basn…When the Sun was God. Pretty nifty film. Definitely did not win any major awards nor should it have but still fun to watch for self styled warrior types who swing axes around:) 
Set in pre-christian times in the land that would become Poland…Stara Basn tells a familiar tale of greed and betrayal in an [...]

Zbojnicki Dance

 

The Dances of Podhale (Poland)

Joseph Needham
Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Dec., 1937), pp. 117-119

 

The Cornhill Magazine 1879

The Cornhill Magazine
By George Smith, William Makepeace Thackeray
Published by Smith, Elder and company., 1879
At one place we had to cross the river, and found the wooden bridge gone. The guides seized their axes—in this country every one carries an axe—and hewed down two trees long enough to span the stream, which they made firm by [...]

Another mountain axe clip

Threw this together yesterday at the end of our regular training session. After watching this it was evident to me that i am no good at pretending to have my axe knocked out of my hands…..I look like I throw it:)