Henry Fleck: Weapons up! Lay on!
[nat sound of practice]
That was the sound of Belegarth Medieval Combat Society. At this moment, they’re doing a practice exercise, with three club members against three others. Every time one of them dies, they switch to the other side.
But let’s back up for a second. They’re not actually dying, or losing limbs, and that thwacking sound you’re hearing is the sound of foam weapons, called boffers. Here’s club member and graduate student Sophia Boksenbaum explaining the rules.
Sophia Boksenbaum: The rules are very straightforward, in that you have a sword, you hit someone with a sword, depending on where you are hit, certain things happen, and that is kind of most of the rules. If you are hit in an arm, you lose your arm. If you’re hitting the leg, you lose your leg. You either crouch or just have to plant your leg. And then if you’re hitting the torso, you die. If you lose two limbs, you also die.
[lots of nat sound]
Northwestern Staff Member Tony Smith is the club’s advisor.
Tony Smith: I’ve been fighting for over 10 years.
I guess my claim to fame is this past fall. I was actually the head like, referee. I was in charge of running. Big fights at 1000 plus
Like many current club members, he first encountered Belegarth at university.
In 2015 at my freshman orientation in college, at Columbia College.
Belegarth started at Northwestern this year, due in part to Smith’s efforts.
TS: I got us a slot in Norris at Night. Oh, got it to just let people try it in general. And then collected names of interested students and then coerced them into starting an org, doing all the work themselves.
The club, which started officially this winter quarter, used to practice on Deering Meadow, a central location on campus, but they’ve since moved, according to club president, sophomore Henry Fleck
HF: And Deering is also just so big, especially in a sword fight, you find out you can just run away. Yeah, it’s an option, yeah.
Belegarth may be new to Northwestern, but it comes from a much bigger world of combat-based role-play-ish sports.
TS: The sport exists outside of colleges as well. Okay, that’s an organization that for adults in Chicago that encompasses clubs, by the rule of the LLC of the sport can take up a 20 mile radius. So, so there’s a club that controls, like, all of Chicagoland.
Its original inspiration is Lord of the Rings-style fighting, albeit with sports rules and foam and duct tape weapons. The original Belegarth club is called Numenor, and Belegarth itself is supposedly an Elvish word. But, Smith pointed out, people come to Belegarth for a huge variety of reasons.
TS: Different people take it for different reasons. So, like, I take it pretty seriously. I fight in tournaments, like, I don’t role play at all. But when you go to the large events that exist out there, there are many events out there, like 1000 plus attendees, where people can’t. Out for a week. Whoa. There are people that just like, dress up like a goblin and pretend like they’re a goblin the whole week. And then there’s just me who is, like, jotting in my journal different, like, skilled sword fighters that I want to just like, meet.
[nat sound]
Smith mentioned those huge gatherings of people, and found a video online; they look like a massive gathering in a field of fantasy time travelers. It’s like a Renaissance Faire exploded and then armed itself.
TS: The most popular style that’s getting these days is you have the main field fighting, which you can have, like, literally, 1000 people going out at the same time on two teams, and there’s, like, different scenarios and stuff, and it’s just crazy. And then there’s the tournaments, which are, like, officially managed. There’s different categories. So you have one v1 you have 3v threes, 5v fives, with the different weapon types, because we have more than just swords. And then what’s being fondly referred to as night fighting, because it only happens at night.
Belegarth isn’t just a sword thing, as you can probably tell. Weapons are color coded; blue is a typical single handed sword, and red is anything that takes two hands to hold, including weapons like polearms, spears, claymores, and larger swords. You can fight with shields as well. There are also more idiosyncratic weapons, like arrows (with blunted tips), and—
TS: And then there are range things as well. There are rocks.
Many people: Rocks?!
“Rocks” are basically any round, soft object, from Squishmallows to bean bag chairs. Smith emphasized that although Belegarth can have an overwhelming amount of rules and structure, it was created for people to have fun.
TS: at the end of the day, I do just refer to it as wacky bats, though, wacky bats all it needs to be the end of the day, a lot of people can take it too seriously. Take it too seriously, but you’re just kind of having fun. It’s supposed to be recreational.
That variety in approach is reflected in some of the club’s members.
Jake, Houston, I’m a freshman. And how I got into this, I went to the Norris at night thing and I got and I, like, they had this thing where it’s, like a group of, like three people versus three people, and like, my group stayed in for like, five rounds. So I was like, Okay, maybe I’m good at this. I joined. It turns out I’m not good at this, but I want to get good at this. So, you know, okay, I also like Star Wars, so that was a big draw.
Senior Jessie Sheflin was walking with Boksenbaum on Deering Meadow when they both saw Belegarth. After one practice, she was hooked.
Jesse Sheflin: I thought it was super fun to sword fight. I like that. It’s a full contact sport, which is a fun fact, I guess, but it’s definitely fun. Like, when you’re out in the grass, you can shield bash people and, like, grapple, and we don’t really do a lot of that in here, but I thought it was super fun… I’m a huge Lord of the Rings fan. I’ve read like The Silmarillion. [Me: Oh, wow.] So it’s relatable because they use a lot of swords there where it might not be historically accurate. So it’s fun. Like, for a while I memorized the Aragorn today is not that Day speech. So that’s kind of what I feel like in here.
Boksenbaum likened the club’s style of sword fighting to a video game.
SB: it’s most like playing Super Smash Bros or something, or fighting games where there’s like a level of technical skill, and like, timing and ranging are all relevant. And there’s also quite a bit of mind games at play, and that part is super fun.
Belegarth has its roots in Lord of the Rings, but it can also function as an affordable alternative to those who are interested in Historical European Martial Arts, or HEMA.
HF: The problem with Hema is that it’s very, very expensive, because we need steel swords usually, and it’s just a very prohibitive cost barrier. So Belegarth was created a number of years ago, and forget this specific number, U of I actually because there were some students who wanted to do Hema, but they decided to come up with a cheaper, safer alternative. So that’s Belegarth
In Chicagoland, places like Forteza Fitness also offer classes in HEMA. There are also a whole host of other swordfight-y sports – Jugger, which is kind of like Capture the Flag with swords, and Dagorhir, a roleplaying game with full-contact sword fighting.
Belegarth is a part of a huge family of what Smith would call “whacky bat” games; an amalgamation of people who come from historical martial arts, Lord of the Rings, and even Star Wars. It’s admittedly very nerdy, but most of all, it’s fun.
you see people doing Belegarth out in Deering or on Norris lawn, and it’s going to turn your head maybe, but it’s sort of a little off putting, which I get, you know, so it’s a weird thing to be doing, but although I do think that’s the fun part of it,
Fleck told me that his favorite part of Belegarth was that it can really become whatever you want it to be.
It does make it a little confusing to explain in a context like this, but that’s also kind of the beauty of it, because I think even within our own small club here, we’ve got some members who are more interested in, sort of The Lord of the Rings, the lore of it all, and some members who are more interested in the history and sort of connecting it to Hema, if they can. And then other people just, you know, want to run around and fight.
So next time you see people hitting each other with foam swords, consider joining in on the fun.
For WNUR News, I’m Mika Ellison.
