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The study and practice of Bolognese Swordsmanship is slowly starting to get some proper form in Finland.

Formal training in the style will commence towards the end of this year in the form of a sister-school for Guy Windsor’s Helsinki school, where – at least to begin with – the main focus will be in the Bolognese tradition.

Future will show whether there will be other weapon forms practiced as well, but at least for me the main goal is to approach the Bolognese tradition as a complete martial art, so that the student-practitioner would learn to wield all weapons (as far as possible) in a “Bolognese manner”.

This, of course, assumes that the weapons in use are what they were in the end of the 16th century – no one learns smallsword fencing by practicing the Bolognese, nor do they learn how to shoot with firearms.

Part of the preliminary practice for me and the current small Bolognese study group has been a weekly session of free fencing, aimed towards getting experience, having fun and testing out the things we have learned in practice in an open and relaxed context. Part of this process has been filming all the bouts and uploading them online for anyone to see, basically unedited.

While we are planning on editing a shorter, nice compilation of the more stylish hits, the videos are already online in their full format. You can check them out at my Vimeo page.

Here is a video of some free-form exercise against a wooden pell. Similar to ‘shadowboxing’, but with a target to practice control, focus and distance.

The use of the pell is something that is beginning to be common knowledge in Western Martial Art circles, but for those new to the exercise, the idea is not to hit the pell hard, but rather to make sure that all touches to the pell are light and controlled. Anyone can hit hard, but to hit with precision and control takes practice.

Videoing such work is an excellent way of following your progress and spotting areas that need improvement.

Since someone is going to ask, the sword is a custom Darkwood Armory sword with a Del Tin blade.

If you have problems with the video, try the Youtube version.

To save myself from writing a more detailed follow-up, I’d like to direct all those who were interested in this subject to read a thread I started on Swordforum. Pay special attention to Mr. Tom Leoni’s posts where he addresses the issue.

For those without the patience, I’ll simply summarize that the word phrase ala traversa, in it’s various forms of spelling should be read as an adverb with a meaning similar to “obliquely”. The phrase ala coverta can be read as “to the cover” and the words are not used synonymously.

Browse through the book online, or download PDF.

Muscle chart from Allén's book

Recently I came across the oldest book on martial arts (wrestling) and physical culture published in Finnish. The book is called “Handbook in Wrestling and Athletics”, and it is written by Carl Allén in 1904. He published the book both in Finnish and in Swedish during the same year, and I am not 100% sure whether the Finnish version is a translation or originally written by Allén.

The book details a systematic progression teaching Greco-Roman, or French, or French-Finnish wrestling, includes a short history of wrestling (with some faults regarding the medieval era, which were corrected by another Finnish writer on wrestling only 8 years later in his book, where Fabian von Auerswald and even Dürer is mentioned. How well the author knew these works is unknown however) and a separate section of athletic training and physical culture including short advice on diet, bathing, sleep and such.

The attached image shows a map of muscles on a man holding up a heavy bell. I will post a full PDF of the work here later on, after editing it together. These maps are copied from Sandow’s System of Physical Training, published ten years earlier.

Allén’s athletic system is based on Eugene Sandow’s works (as Allén readily admits), and consists mostly of lifting Sandow’s grip dumbells, specified to be of 1,5 to 2 kilograms in weight. A 24-day program of exercising is also laid out, to be then repeated with heavier weights or sturdier springs. If someone knows where to get spring-grip dumbells today, please do let me know!

Interestingly, Allén also describes lifts with a barbell, explaining one-handed snatch and bent press, and the ‘almost-ancient’ form of three-phased clean and jerk, where the bell is first brought atop the stomach before being cleaned to shoulder level. He also did the jerk without squatting or splitting, but instead stepping back with one foot to make sure not to lose balance. Truly special, although technically inferior to a more ‘later’ way of lifting where the barbell is only moving directly upwards. Well, I’m sure Mr Allén still lifted more than I do, so I won’t go further to comment on his technique. It is still interesting to see how these were the times when this skill was so new as a science, and was bound to be refined and developed greatly during the next 50 years or so (after which all the interesting aspects, like one-handed lifts, had been dropped from Olympic lifting).

The wrestling style is typically old-style Greco-Roman, very heavy on neck bridging for both offense and defense, which at the time was considered to be one of the strongest aspects of Finnish wrestlers. The book also has a section on illegal holds, that do not include anything related to leg-takedowns, but show a face-lock stopping airflow through nose and mouth, a few choke-holds and a ‘stomach-twist’, which was supposed to prevent the opponent from continuing after a while, even though it didn’t immediately stop the match (the matches might have gone on for hours at a time, being slit in 15-minute rounds with 1 minute of rest in between). As pointed out by Risto Rautiainen, it is also important to notice that these illegal-holds were ‘pure’ of any ju-jitsu influence, since it is highly unlikely that there would’ve been any contact from Japanese fighters yet at that time, although this was to change very quickly after this book was published.