Spoiler alert: I’m not either of the men in that photo. I took the picture! But this is a picture of my favorite activity in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA): rattan fighting.
So what is rattan fighting? Well, we fight. There are melees with anywhere between ten and several thousand participants. There are one-on-one tournaments. There are practices, training camps, duels, and challenges. There are battles that attempt to recreate a particular scene or time from history, such as the Norse invasion of Ireland or Boudicca’s rebellion against the Romans.
How does the fighting work? We use a system based on blow acknowledgement. If you hit someone too light, they won’t take it. Too hard and you may injure them. Finding that sweet spot of perfect calibration takes training. Blows to the head or torso are lethal and blows to the arms or legs disable them. It is possible to lose all of your limbs and have to sit there looking like the Black Knight from Monty Python.
In terms of equipment we use mock weapons made of rattan, a relative of bamboo. Rattan is fairly cheap, easy to shape, difficult to seriously injure somebody with, and it doesn’t splinter. It can definitely cause bruises, broken bones, and concussions, however, so we have armor requirements. Armor must protect the head, face, throat, hands, elbows, kidneys, groin, and knees at the bare minimum. Even though it’s a full speed, full contact martial sport, I’ve seen more injuries from exertion than from the actual fighting.