KDF Leeds
The Royal Armouries, West Yorkshire

Seminar 1.33


Sword and Buckler 2020
Lars Lind

Lars has trained and taught martial arts (WingTsun and Escrima) for more than 40 years.

European Historical Martial Arts for only 28 years. In 2007, Lars founded his own system, namely Weapons Combat Systems™ built on his years of experience in martial arts and interest in history, the system combines both the practical and historical side of armed combat.

Lars holds the rank of Grandmaster in Weapons Combat Systems and has schools or groups in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Mexico and Canada. He is as active as ever and instructs classes and seminars in armed combat and weaponry understanding all over Scandinavia and Europe every month.

Lars is also a KDF Chapter Master as well as a Member of the Society for Combat Archaeology.
Dean Davidson

Dean Davidson has over 20 years’ experience in martial arts and training in weapons combat, with a grounding in Tai Chi and historical fencing. He is the KDF International and EHCG Chapter Master at the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds.

He is also an active member of the Society for Combat Archaeology, an international organisation committed to the promulgation of systematic research and developed knowledge of the nature of combat in the past.

Dean has presented and run numerous workshops at conferences and seminars across the United Kingdom on European medieval martial arts and the traditions of Johannes Liechtenauer, most notably at the International Medieval Congress and the National Archives at Kew.
Sword and Buckler 2020
Sword and Buckler 2020
Luke Ireland

Luke is a practicing martial artist with 20 years experience and has followed a direct interest in medieval combat since 2004.

As a senior instructor with The Exiles, he is directly involved in their interpretation of Fiore dei Liberi and founded the Exiles Sheffield. Luke has given workshops throughout the UK on all aspects of Fiore, as well as Le Jeu de la Hache and Figuereido's Montante.

In addition to teaching 3 HEMA classes per week, Luke also owns and operates Valhalla Martial Arts and Axe Throwing in Sheffield.
Rolf Warming

Rolf Warming is the founding director of the Society for Combat Archaeology and the chief instructor of the martial arts organization Weapons Combat Systems. Rolf regularly gives workshops and lectures across Europe, both as a martial artist and an academic. He holds an MA degree in both Maritime Archaeology and Prehistoric Archaeology, and has undertaken a number of projects and studies about conflicts in the past.

Rolf is specialized in Viking Age weapons and warfare and is currently involved with two major research projects on shields of the Iron Age and Viking Age. He is also leading an experimental archaeology project for Trelleborg Viking Fortress (National Museum of Denmark) which is aiming to reconstruct the first fully authentic round shield since the Viking Age.

Photograph : Antti Suomi
Sword and Buckler 2020
Sword and Buckler 2020
Herbert Schmidt

Herbert Schmidt founded the Austrian club Ars Gladii in 1999 and has been its trainer since.
He began to reconstruct the art of the longsword in the Liechtenauer tradition soon to be followed by work on the I.33.

His aim has always been a faithful reconstruction of the sources.

Having published two books on swordsmanship and one on the buckler he is giving talks and workshops all over Europe, especially regarding his work on the I.33.

Herbert Schmidt lives and teaches in Austria.
David Rawlings

Dave Rawlings of the London Longsword Academy and Boar’s Tooth has over 15 years’ experience of teaching western swordsmanship and is a long time practitioner of I.33.

He’s been studying martial arts from the age of 5, and has over 15 years’ experience teaching Western Swordsmanship.

He is one of only a very few professional swordsmen and bases his tuition on his extensive research of medieval to Renaissance swordsmanship texts.

He is also the author of Obsesseo and two other DVD training guides based on I.33 and the use of the Sword & Buckler.
Sword and Buckler 2020
Sword and Buckler 2020
Konrad Kessler

Konrad is a historian and has 35 years of fencing experience.

In his early years he trained epee fencing for over 10 years. In the late nineties of the last century he started sword fighting.

Since 2003 he is teaching sword fighting at the sport centre of the University of Applied Science in Jena shifting his focus from re-enactment fencing to a martial arts approach. In 2007 he published the book “Kampf mit dem langen Schwert“.

Konrad is a KDF Chapter Master, Senior Instructor of Historical Weapons Combat as well as a Member of the Society for Combat Archaeology.
Adam Roylance

Adam has been involved with sword fighting for over 30 years, as training officer in the Vikings through fencing epee for his county into historical based combat.

He started his Nottingham club in 2003 and co-founded KDF in 2006 immediately adopting the 'small frame' approach of Thomas Stoeppler.
Sword and Buckler 2020