Highland Sword Fighting Guild - Historical European Martial Arts HEMA

12/11/2025

Before I started this group I’d been training for about a year or so.. So almost 12 years of HEMA! I can confidently say that it’s been the single most important thing I’ve been involved in to help me evolve and grow as a martial artist and as a human. Looking forward to 20 years 😎👍.

12/10/2025

we finally have a website!

highlandhema.ca

08/10/2025

Always a funny one 😂

07/14/2025

04/25/2025

02/01/2025

😯

By Maxime Chouinard For years, the identity of the author of the 1790 broadsword manual “Anti-pugilism”, retitled “Cudgel-playing” in 1800, had puzzled researchers. The 1800…

01/31/2025

Excellent !!

The Art of Defence on Foot, with Broadsword and Sabre is one of the most important and influential sources on British military or sabre swordsmanship. In thi...

12/19/2024

Yesterday marked the anniversary of Capt. Alfred Hutton’s death. He studied many weapons but initially learned foilplay from the Angelo dynasty, as did his father, as a youth in London.
He would go on to maintain fencing in the popular imagination in Britain, eventually founding the Amateur Fencing Association which led to the modern Olympic sport, as well as writing several texts that would inspire the historical fencing movement in the 1990s

09/20/2024

The ultimate boarding sword?

Remembering Scottish Pirate John Gow:

John Gow, the Scottish Pirate (1698 - 1725). Propably born in Wick, Caithness, in the very north-eastern corner of Scotland, later raised in Stormness on the Orkney Islands. The only account on his life and short, but violent pirate career is within the compendium "A General History of the Pyrates" by Charles Johnson (1724). Also writer Daniel Dafoe wrote one account on him and Sir Walter Scott used his story in his novel "The Pirate".

Besides wikipedia you find a quick biography of the scottish pirate here:
http://www.scotclans.com/orkney-pirate-john-gow/

The picture attached is an interesting web find, claiming to show John Gow, obviously in tartan trews and plaid and holding a basket-hilted Sabre or Turcael/Cutlass (or Tessak/Dussack) next to a round-shield, which could be a big Buckler, but I believe it is showing a Targe, the scottish round-shield.

If this picture is just pure fantasy trying to show the stereotype scottish heritage of John Gow or if it has any realistic source is not known. However, it is cool to see a scottish pirate being shown adopting his traditional arms to naval combat. Which, in my opinion, would be a good idea for boarding action ;-)

09/19/2024

😯