Canterbury Historical Fencing Club

We have increased the available longsword spaces at Unicorn Fight Club 2026 - Open HEMA Tournament to a total of fifty fencers.
If you had previously missed out, sign up here:

Unicorn Fight Club 6 Unicorn Fight Club open HEMA tournament is back for our sixth year! The following tournaments are available: - Longsword, Tiers A&B -...

At long last, we've started loading Dr. Rebecca L. R. Garber's translation of Joachim Meyer's 1570 treatise, 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘦, 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘪𝘤, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘕𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘍𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘨, onto the wiki!

I just finished getting the introduction and sword section formatted and loaded onto the Meyer page, and you can find it here:
https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Joachim_Meyer

It now joins Michael Chidester's transcription of the 1570 and Hans Christoff Stimmer's art from Leipzig University's lavishly-painted copy of the book. The dusack section is coming next, so stay tuned!

I've also removed the old presentation of the Third Part which included the Lund sword section, cleaned it up and plugged the new translation into it, and placed it on this new page:
https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Joachim_Meyer/Lund-1570_Comparison

The Meyer article also features transcriptions of the Lund and Munich manuscripts by Olivier Dupuis and Dierk Hagedorn and English translations by Kevin Maurer and Jordan E. Finch. The overlapping parts of the Lund and Munich manuscripts can also be studied side-by-side here:
https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Joachim_Meyer/Manuscript_Comparison

Dr. Garber's translation was crowd-funded in 2021 and completed in 2023 and published by HEMA Bookshelf. Part of the campaign was a promise to donate the translation to Wiktenauer for free use, but we haven't had time to do the formatting and posting until now. The translation is also still available in print here:
https://www.hemabookshelf.com/meyer-translation

Enjoy!

Exciting news from our good friends across the ditch!

Send a message to learn more

Early-bird tickets are now available!

Unicorn Fight Club 6 Unicorn Fight Club open HEMA tournament is back for our sixth year! The following tournaments are available: - Longsword, Tiers A&B -...

There's been a lot of international interest, so ticket sales for UFC6 will be opened up a lot earlier next year to help offset travel expenses.

The dates to put aside are:

29th May - Airport pick ups & social fencing. Gear may be stored onsite for the event, as we have the entire venue booked out for the duration.
30th May - Gear check & briefing. Longsword "B" tier, longsword "A" tier.
31st May - Sabre "B" tier, sabre "A" tier, + 1 additional event TBC (messer/spear/smallsword/ringen).
1st June - Open Sidesword, Open Rapier & Dagger. Social fencing. Airport drop offs.
As per the previous event, referees will be paid a decent wage for their time; should you be willing to referee an event, please get in touch so that we may help take care of your travel expenses.

2026 Unicorn Fight Club.
May 30th - 1st of June.
Same location.
Come get some.

Q***r people, both out and still in the closet, have been integral to the development of HEMA from very early days, and have shaped both the community at large and Wiktenauer specifically. Thank you!

June is a month for celebrating our achievements in a world that tried to erase us many times in the 20th century, and that still includes many who want us to disappear or stop being alive.

This year, when the very existence of q***r people in the USA has become even more politicized, when violence is on the rise and q***r lives are being lost, and when trans HEMAists in particular have been targeted by fringe elements who imagine they can remake the HEMA community in the image of their own ideology, our message to trans fencers and to the whole LGBTQ community is this:

We're glad you found your way here, you belong here, and we want to support your journey through historical fencing however we can, in June and every month. Please stay and please thrive.

Help us build amazing new things.

(Sorry I missed the start of pride month, I'm easily distractible.)

Another Unicorn Fight Club done and dusted. Thank you to everyone that helped make this such a fun event to host!

So far, we have 39 fencers from 11 different clubs attending Unicorn Fight Club 5 with room for more.