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 me and Matias Parmala engage in some friendly and relaxed free fencing after a session of (relatively strenuous) training, using ‘sideswords’, or what we should perhaps call Bolognese swords, or even play swords after ‘spade da gioco’. The video ends abruptly with me being disarmed and knee-stomped in the diaphragm. It remains unknown to me what malice I must have committed towards Matias to deserve such a manhandling.

It didn’t hurt, though.