marozzo.com

Ilkka Hartikainen

My name is Ilkka Hartikainen, and I am the editor of Marozzo.com, responsible for the upkeep of the site and its contents.

I have studied Historical European Martial Arts in the School of European Swordsmanhip in Helsinki, Finland under Guy Windsor since 2003, and since 2008 I have devoted most of my personal efforts on studying the rich martial heritage of 16th century Italy – namely the city of Bologna.

We know of at least eight teachers of swordsmanship from 16th century Bologna, of whom five left us written, detailed instructions on how their art was performed. It is from these sources that I pursue to rediscover how the sword was used alone, and with a variety of sidearms, both offensive and defensive; as well as the two-handed sword, polearms and combat with daggers.

The ultimate goal of this website is to provide material to promote the art, and to instruct others with similar interests in pursuing it. Besides this, my goal is to provide a video encyclopedia, where all the individual actions from the existing texts are interpreted and clearly displayed. This process is very time consuming, and more material will be added bit by bit.

Besides these functions the website serves as my personal blog, accessible on the home page, where I share my thoughts mainly on the Bolognese tradition of swordsmanship, but also occassionally on other subjects related to it: wrestling and various other styles of swordsmanship, such as longsword, rapier and classical foil; physical culture and training and the research and interpretation process that is needed in discovering the old texts and their meaning.