Hear ye, hear ye: The young people finding connection in historical role play

Every Wednesday for the past two years, Zachary Bessemer, a 20-year-old geology student, travels back in time some thousand years.

Bessemer is president of Monash University’s Medieval Club, which he joined after coming across their stall during orientation week.

“They had a bunch of shields and helmets and recreational activities like arts and sciences...and I thought they looked like a bunch of nerds who are similar in what I like to read and look at online,” he says.

And so began Bessemer’s love affair with all things medieval.

“I love how they look, how they act, how they express themselves. I love the way you can use skills that you would regularly use in everyday life and express them through that medium,” he says.

Members of Monash University’s Medieval Club (left to right): Massillon Fetherstone-Haugh, Runfrior Keillselgr (not their real names), Megan Burton and Zachary Bessemer. Credit: Wayne Taylor

Indeed, while the period of Bessemer’s fascination may have taken place long ago, many of the skills the club teaches still apply to modern times.

He has learned to sew and is currently making a Roman tunic and an Iron Age Celtic tunic. As a geology student, Bessemer says these skills come in handy when out in the field, and his clothing has ripped.

In addition to practising medieval combat sports like sword fighting, Bessemer has learned to cook. He’s made bread and stew, brewed beer and constructed a Medieval version of lasagne, although not all have been tasty by modern standards. “Some is good, some is bad,” admits Bessemer.

But most of all, Bessemer loves the community of like-minded people the club has brought him.

“As a university student, there is constant change in your life. [But] I am just about to reach two years of meeting up with the same people every week, and they are definitely the closest friends that I have,” he says.

In popular culture, the aesthetics of the medieval period have been brewing for some time – although often with little regard for historical accuracy. At last year’s MTV Awards, queer pop princess Chappell Roan showed up with not one but three medieval looks. Others, like Zendaya and Julia Fox, have also indulged in the aesthetics of the time.

Medieval-inspired fashion: Chappell Roan, Zendaya and Julia Fox.Credit: Getty Images

But these celebrities are mere tourists when it comes to the Middle Ages: drive-by voyagers in drag.

Across Australia, history enthusiasts like Bessemer are having serious fun with the medieval period through dedicated clubs, and finding friendship and valuable life skills in the process.

Swords, friendship and the ‘romance of it all’

Emerald Hendry, 41, is the founder of The Old Sword Club, a historical fencing group in Sydney. Its members recreate swordplay from European history by reading primary sources from the time and practising the techniques described.

Hendry’s passion for fencing was sparked while studying history and politics at university.

“I’ve always been interested in history as well as martial arts, so the hobby was kind of a perfect kind Venn diagram overlap of those things,” they say.

Emerald Hendry, founder of Sydney’s Old Sword Club.Credit: Wolter Peeters

So fierce was Hendry’s passion for the sport they even went on to complete their honours thesis on Alfred Hutton, a British fencing master from the Victorian era who sought to keep the art of historical fencing alive.

While there has long been interest in Historical European martial arts, or HEMA for short, Hendry says this surged in the early 2000s when “a lot of modern fencing organisations made the decision to try rebrand fencing as this very modern, high-tech, sleek sport”.

“There were a lot of people who would have been interested in the romance of it all, who weren’t really getting that from modern fencing, so instead, they started looking to historical fencing,” they say.

Today, the Old Sword Club has around 30 members and holds twice-weekly lessons as well as monthly sparring sessions. Its youngest member is 17, and its oldest is in their 70s, but most are in their 20s and 30s.

And most members, Hendry says, are actually “very physical people” but are put off by the relative machismo of other combat sports like boxing.

“We talk about ‘PDHPE PTSD’, where school sport was so horrible that you basically didn’t want to do anything physical, and then you pick up a sword, and you’re like, ‘Oh, moving my body is amazing,’” says Hendry.

The social aspect, they add, is another important part of the group, where its members bond over a mutual love of history and related hobbies like Dungeons & Dragons and Live Action Roleplay (more commonly known as LARP-ing).

“There are a lot of people where their primary friend group is the club,” says Hendry.

The Old Sword Club, which dubs itself “the nicest HEMA club”, has a strong emphasis on diversity and inclusion. It offers discounted fees for students and low-income or unemployed people and can lend equipment to those who cannot afford to buy it outright. It also regularly holds events that celebrate specific communities, like a queer sword fighting day.

While Hendry says most historical re-enactment clubs are still dominated by straight, cis men, the community as a whole is far more diverse compared to other combat sports, with The Old Sword Club one of several in Australia that emphasise non-binary and queer members.

Hendry thinks “play-based hobbies” for adults have historically carried a stigma, but things are starting to change.

“I’m old enough to remember when being called a nerd was a premium insult, and it’s only really in the last 10 years that there’s been a lessening of cultural taboos around hobbies explicitly based around imagination,” they say.

Members of The Old Sword Club at a weekly practice session.Credit: Wolter Peeters

‘We want as many different people as possible’

Megan Burton, a 22-year-old chemistry and zoology student, is Monash University Medieval Club’s arts and sciences lead. She helps organise the club’s weekly workshops that teach everything from painting to clothes making to leather work and heraldry (designing armour).

The group’s 25 or so members include many different types of people.

“The club brings together people from across campuses and degrees, so we have people doing history degrees, but also English degrees, science, engineering ... it’s people you wouldn’t normally meet,” says Burton.

Megan Burton and Zachary Bessemer both say being part of Monash University’s Medieval Club has taught them valuable life skills.Credit: Wayne Taylor

“We’re always trying to be welcoming and create an inclusive environment where everyone’s needs are met so they can love the club and love what we do ... we want as many different people as possible,” she says.

Bessemer adds that while most people think of Western Europe when they think of the Middle Ages, the club also studies those from Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), Japan and China.

‘We’re all a little bit bent one way or another’

Richard Halcomb is a founding member of Sydney’s Medieval Archery Society in Sydney. In 2013, Halcomb, a lifelong history lover, started the group with some friends involved in a theatrical sword fighting club.

The most intriguing facet of medieval history for Halcomb? “[It is] the way the longbow made the average peasant the equal of the big man on the horse. All of a sudden, peasants are able to take down knights. It’s an interesting societal shift,” he says.

Halcomb, in red, with members of the group (his daughter Rebecca not present).Credit: Sarah Metcalfe

The group currently has around 20 members, aged from their early teens to early 60s, who meet monthly in Campbelltown. With a $10 fee for entry, which goes towards the cost of renting the grounds, and a $10 fee for equipment hire, it’s a relatively low-cost, accessible sport.

Like fencing, archery is an incredibly physical endeavour, and the kind practised by the club is quite different to modern-day archery. Halcomb’s bow weighs about 36 kilograms and takes 40 kilograms of force to fire. The technique, he says, is similar to that of a deadlift.

But even those not interested in firing a bow and arrow have a place in the club.

“We’re all a little bit bent one way or another, or broken, so we tend to look at what people can do rather than what they can’t,” says Halcomb.

Richard Halcomb demonstrates the technique of firing a bow and arrow.Credit: Sarah Metcalfe

Some of the Medieval Archery Society’s members are interested in textiles and weaving, while others have taken up wheat grinding and cooking.

There is something primal about these things, Halcomb thinks, that strike a chord with people from all walks of life – whether it’s the straight “point, draw, shoot” of traditional archery or grinding wheat.

“Biologically, we’re exactly the same people as the ones who first developed agriculture 10,000 years ago. We have the same minds, the same bodies; it’s unsurprising we feel a bit of an urge to do this stuff,” he says.

Halcomb’s 20-year-old daughter, Rebecca, grew up embedded within the historical re-enactment community. She received her first wooden long bow at 11, but had been practising with fibreglass versions since she was a child.

“It’s definitely a unique experience,” she says.

Now a vet science student, participating in community events remains an important hobby.

Like her father, she says humans haven’t changed so much since medieval times.

“You look at the intricacies of how culture works, how people spent their time, how they interacted with each other, and it’s so similar. I find that really fascinating,” she says.

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