Just a small report on this weekends first ever Vardhald Training session.
Vardhald is a small group consisting of members from Nebraska and Iowa. They used to be the other ‘official’ group of Midherr but since they are becoming official members of The Vikings next month, we have dissolved Midherr and planned to focus on increasing the activity and membership of The Vikings in the Midwest.
Per a promise I made several months ago Snorri and I traveled up to Omaha for a day of arctic summer training and IMO it was a very productive day.
We arrived at about 7:30 am and the site was beautiful. It was a shaded park surrounded on three sides by a lake. Then we stepped out and had to look at the calendar in my planner, it was August in but 54 degrees!
We were the first there so I went ahead and got into my clothes and set out my weapons and stuff. I had told Snorri that the day was a ‘garb optional’ day so he didn’t bring any but quickly dawned an extra tunic I had brought to take the chill off;)
Mikjal joined us soon after and in a short time Camy, Andie and Byron showed up too.
After packing chests, food and other random items, the first thing we did was sit Byron down and thru the miracles of technology (and a need to keep our children happy on long trips) we had him watching parts of Phil’s training video on Mikjal’s portable DVD player.
After watching the parts on stances, blows and blocks we took Byron out for his first EVER experience with weapons training.
Vardhald is a new group and they hadn’t been able to obtain steel weapons yet so for training purposes they had bought wooden boken to work with until the can obtain them. I had brought extra weapons and several lengths of rattan also but I picking up a steel weapon for the first time seemed intimidating to Byron (which is understandable IMO) but we got him used to the idea and he was swinging steel by the end of the day and seemed to love it!
We spent most of the day working with him on the basics and for someone who had never picked up or swung a weapon he is coming right along.
Myself, Snorri and Mikjal traded off working with him and also spent some time working on our own training. We learned several things. The two important being:
A) Show fighting is easier to do in front of a audience and,
b) Bird crap etches steel! (I left my BRAND NEW Paul Binns lay on a picnic table while we ate lunch, while we ate a bird crapped on it and left two nice little stains on the blade!, Paul needs to add a warning to his page, These aren’t bird crap proof!
Eventually another of Vardhalds members, Lawrence, showed up. He was late but he had a damn good excuse, his wife had just given birth to a bouncing baby boy THAT MORNING.
Lawrence had previous experience with another combat related group and picked up very fast!
I am sure that both fighters will make an excellent addition to Vardhald. Both should also be able to take what we gave them and build on it, hopefully passing it on to many of the other fighters they have currently and/or recruit in the future.
I was also pleased to hear that the group meet Sunday and Byron and Lawrence passed on what they had learned to a couple guys that weren’t able to make it Saturday. Adding to my pleasure was the fact that they agree to meet weekly in the future to train, this will increase the training curve for them IMO.
Lots of pics were taken too; you can see some of them at http://www.vikingsna.org/gallery/Vardhald
Thanks to all of the Vardhald folks that hosted and feed us! We look forward to coming back soon!
We also look forward to working with you all in the future on many of the projects we have discussed both before this weekend and the new ideas we came up with on Saturday!
Halvgrimr and Norsa