roll those using a viking battle axe
you can turn you can pull and if it's
used against an opponent's
legs it can be pulled up there's lots
and lots of tricks
hi my name is team nielsen i'm president
of the norwegian gleema federation
and senior instructor at the academy of
viking martial arts in norway
today we're going to be looking at axe
fight scenes in movies and tv
there's different ways to hold a weapon
in single hand when you have two weapons
there's
a different thought process in this
situation i would use
the axe with my lead hand and maybe have
a
reverse grip with another weapon if i
preferred to use the knife
then i would hold the knife in my
preferred hand and try and cut as much
as i could
with the axe and follow up with the
knife either in a forward grip or
reverse grip
dual wielding vikings according to the
sagas
use two weapons sometimes they hit the
axe
behind the shield so as you grip the
shield here
you can hold the hat the axe and the
shield handle
here so it wouldn't be seen by the
opponent and if you drop your shield or
if it gets destroyed
you quickly have a another weapon in
your hand
this is very realistic he's using
basic strikes no sneaky techniques
no small direct cuts he's swinging with
that intention one of them could work it
only needs to connect with the guy's arm
or wrist
or fingers before you've created serious
damage
the way they engage is similar to
glimmer
techniques you try and trap the
hand that's being used against you if it
has a weapon you try and trap the weapon
or the arm
and you use that to control the balance
of the opponent lots of different styles
do similar things and my father-in-law
began to teach me gleamer techniques
which are based on the battlefield
wrestling from the viking age
these are passed down quite secretly
because norway has been
ruled by other nations and occupied by
germany in the second world war
so their means of fighting hunter and
combat
were held pretty close to the chest it
goes into grappling and the grappling
was great it was
quite brutal and i really enjoyed it and
seven out of ten
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it was a very tense and quite realistic
axe fight
you want to control your opponent's
weapon if possible
and by grabbing your opponent's weapon
especially
near the axe head you can use it against
the
opponent this is my favorite viking axe
the toe edge would have been a couple of
centimeters higher
and come to a lethal point and the heel
would
also come down to a point which would
have been also lethal
and it would have been very very sharp
this is a typical
viking axe and this is what they call
the bearded axe
because this part of the axe
they call the beard and it has an
elongated beard
and you can grip it here and use it to
shave or cut
and it can be deadly when you move into
this grip
when you close up anthropology
you can use it as a knife when in close
combat
there are many decorated viking axes
vikings like to decorate pretty much
everything
on the half they would be protected with
leather nails
or wrapped in metal there's some
examples from the sagas
this would protect the wooden hat from
any attack
not always because it's it's what it
would split
but it helps it would be great if the
producers get in contact with people who
fight in the style that their people in
the show are going to be fighting in
because there's a lot of
information and techniques there you can
use that as a platform to make
better choreography this was very
exciting
quite realistic and a great starter
for the whole show
rollo is using a viking battle axe which
is an incredibly dangerous weapon
the accent goes through the shield it
can be a dangerous move
but if the axe head gets stuck in the
shield
it can be used against you i have a
viking black blacks also called a dnax
and if you imagine my arm
is a shield you can hook over the top of
the shield
and pull it down and you can do it
really quickly
this is just a small axe head you can
turn
you can pull and if it's used against an
opponent's
legs it can be pulled up you can push
forward to open up the shield
there's lots and lots of tricks with
this you can use the
axe as a stick you can use either this
end
or this end or you can use it as a
stick weapon here and then turn
it's it's made to be
maneuvered around if you start here you
can deceive
a little and send it out quite a long
way
he uses it with technique strength
seven out of ten i i believe rolo and
the character from the show i really
wouldn't want to meet him
in a fight
viking boys growing up they get bored as
kids do and they would start
wrestling fighting with weapons every
one of them
we're quite good at throwing axes
throwing knives
when we're doing seminars we're not
instructing and we're hanging around
people throw their weapons they throw
their axes to throw their knives
it's a very natural thing to do i could
throw the axe
with pretty good accuracy i don't know
if
i would cut the ropes first time but i
would imagine
that that character could and would
and as he did 10 out of 10 because
he cooked the ropes
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i don't know anybody who would swing a
two bladed or two bit axe around their
body like this
it would be too easy to cut off your own
limb it could get caught in material
it could rebound it could be deflected
there's lots of things that can happen
unexpectedly
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i don't know the weight of the weapon i
don't know what type of material it's
made out of
but if you live in 6 000 years you've
had a lot of practice
you're pretty much invulnerable you
could do this if you're showing off if
you're building up
the energy the determination might
happen but i wouldn't recommend it
i think that this is based on the labrus
which is a ancient weapon
from crete greece it was more of a
ceremonial weapon than anything that
they would use in battle
there's a lot of discourse about the
pros and cons of this and
what it was used for in a sacred
ceremony it might have been used
to sacrifice an animal for example the
choreography is interesting
because she didn't cut off any limbs she
gets 10 ounces
hmm well i don't think anybody ever
wants to be put in the position where
they have to criticize the john wick
movie
it looks like they're using uh
woodsman's axe or
something about this size it weighs
between one half two pounds it's really
easy to swing around
and it's very lethal especially in short
distances and then a compact room the
way this is i doubt that they're
sharp if we believe the scene this is an
incredibly scary situation
he's doing really good techniques
blocking powering moving out of the way
i love it
you have to trap and lock it away you
have to
make sure that you're not at the
distance where you can easily be cut by
it maybe get inside the weapon
and glimmer there's an awful lot of
techniques we use to
intercept to trap to hold
to maneuver the opponent's body weight
in such a way that they
they don't have the best stability so
that they can use the weapon
i really can't find a fault or say
if you did this it would be better so 10
out of 10.
he's going to have to do something to
change the disadvantage of his height
into an advantage and this is a really
good way of doing it you can reach up
high
because he's using that weapon i would
suggest that he cuts more ankles and
legs
because that's easier and if your
opponent can't walk then
they can't run after you or attack you
the way he's using the axe is an
extension of his character
and he's trying to kill with every blow
he wants to
show that he's powerful with every
single stroke the problem with
swinging heavily every time is that you
drain your energy
which is limited you open yourself up if
you
bring it back in order to swing it
forward so
this is a regular modern tomorrow x
and instead of it being brought all the
way back in order to
go forward that would be a move
and this is quite sharp the tips are
quite sharp
it's heavy enough it's got this at the
end
and that would be doing quite a lot of
damage from here
you don't really need to do much more
than that if you understand
what you're attacking and when you choke
it
and the way he uses it and seven out of
ten
chris evans sells this so well
he's a good actor who can sell action
he changes hands he goes from single
grip to double grip
he has good turns and
good angles he changes levels
a good fighter will try and create as
much space around them as possible try
and use opponents
shields move around them in a way that
they shield
or block for you
the most difficult thing of all is to
keep your balance and then he does what
he should do which is attack the legs
and try and get out of there as soon as
possible
we don't play any defensive game on the
ground we don't fall
we're taught to land so no matter
what happens as you're going down you're
going down
with the intention to land in a way that
will enable you to move
out of danger as quickly as possible 9
out of 10.
if somebody has that much confidence and
swings it around
in such a way that it doesn't look like
they're going to injure themselves at
all
and you do not know where the attack is
going to come from
what happens is it's hard to see the
angle of attack
whichever way they begin the movement
there's many many tells
from the neck the shoulder the bicep the
tricep the elbow
there's lots and lots to tell us the way
they move the feet the way they move
their head
but when that weapon is already in
motion
you can't just attack or defend against
that angle
because it can suddenly change it's
intimidating
where you place your feet when i look at
technique you can see
what's happening just from the footwork
footwork is
a major part of any martial arts it's
often neglected because it's not as
exciting as
twirling your weapon around in your hand
but being able to move
at angles move forward move backwards
move as you change your height it's so
so important it's core balances
everything
they use their weapon to hook the
opponent's weapon and control the
opponent's
weapon and the opponent's balance if i
can just show here
the opponent's weapon you go over the
top
you can either pull and go forward or
just go to the top
and go forward you don't need these big
movements
so open the weapon force it in a
direction away from you
and that's all you need i felt it was
really well done and it was scary
and good technique eight out of ten
he leaves himself open because he's full
of
bravado but it works really well because
even though he opens himself up he knows
exactly what to do to close it up again
and attacking you
in this scene ajax cuts through a good
chunk of metal
with his axe it could happen maybe i i
haven't tried
these are dangerous weapons and they can
cut through quite a lot
i think this is based on a fireman's axe
i've never seen one
which is completely metal
there's different rhythms in a fight and
you can change rhythm in a fight
instead of getting dragged into a
readable rhythm you can break the rhythm
and then you change the dynamic of the
fight by
by changing the speed of one weapon
against another
and getting them in unison or working
apart
a delayed swing changes everything
i'd give this 9 understand i really
enjoyed it
i've watched this with my son many times
we really enjoy the scene the way he
moves is
impressive if your opponent can move
quickly if they know how to use a weapon
that [ __ ] that's a game changer
[Music]
the fact that you can use an anonymous
object as a
weapon or as a counter to these weapons
is
smart maybe going in and
smothering your opponent and trying to
strip their weapon away would
work but you also have a second attacker
coming in with a another axe there's no
sure way that you come out to this alive
but
as a scene it's inventive we do train
against multiple attackers
and multiple attackers with weapons one
of the basic principles that you have to
understand is that you
want to be able to control your opponent
and use that opponent
to control a second opponent use them as
a shield
use their weapon as a counter weapon or
the shield
i'd like to give this 10 out of 10. i
i just thoroughly enjoyed it
it is always enjoyable to see somebody
move the way she moves
in this scene i think this was one long
take she's elegant
she's determined and when you're using
weapons they should be an extension of
your body and
this scene really shows that part of
a fight
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i wouldn't recommend anyone fighting
this way
but if you're a person with these
capabilities
and this is your style then you can make
it work for you
i would not do this the style that i
train in and teach
is about making the best decisions in
the shortest possible time
i think she's using a fantasy weapon i
don't know what it's based on
but the vikings had a similar type of
axe where there's a long beard which is
used for carving or cutting
if it has a lung tank which means that
the the metal from the axe
head goes all the way through the handle
then it could be really well balanced
light sharp 9 out of 10.
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forest weapon stormbreaker could be
based on a
viking battle axe but looks more like a
polax
you have bladed end of the
the head and a hammer type impact tool
on the opposite end on the top of a long
pole
at its core it's believable it's just
gone into fantasy territory but it's
used the same way
there's many many strange weapons from
history not every axe haft
or a handle was straight there's lots of
curves and some of them
really long curves sometimes they use
the the roots of the wood the natural
curve
so that that curve was strong so the
opponent's weapon is being used against
them
and that's a really good thing to
understand that it's
it's not something you just want to get
out of the way of and
but you can turn it on your opponent and
they show this really well here
[Music]
maybe closer to the axe head in this
instance
use force maneuverability balance
technique whatever you can to try and
change the disadvantage into an
advantage there's not a lot of
impressive technique here but the core
basics are there so
five out of ten even in a street fight
people can get caught up in thinking
that this is a contest of strength
and they both miss each other
people can freeze there's lots of things
can happen