The Long journey back to Copenhagen

It’s a cold November evening in a parking lot in Farum midtpunkt, inside a small dirty glass room with no heating, and damp a damp floor to boot. We have to be constantly aware of not striking any of the walls, as they would surely shatter from an impact with one of our swords, but the training has to go on.

Coming from a large well-lit hall in the centre of Copenhagen to this far-flung parking lot in the middle of, well almost no-where, certainly felt like somewhat of a downgrade, but it also felt both liberating and exhilarating, being able to move forward with the ideas for what a Historical fencing club could and should be.

So, despite the less-than-ideal initial training location and facilities, and only being a small dedicated group of longsword fencers, we stuck it out and kept training and having fun all through a long and cold winter.

After roughly half a year training in this damp and dark parking lot we finally got in touch with an Olympic fencing club in Ryparken, who offered us a place to store gear and to use their halls on the weekends, and had a large open training area outdoors right next to it that we were free to use.

I remember driving by that area every day on my daily commute to Copenhagen and had long wished for the club to move there or a similar place, so I was thrilled when we got the offer and moved in at our new temporary training spot.

It was a great change for the club as well, we got a large influx of old fencing friends and new people from all walks of life who were eager to try out longsword fighting, and we spent much of the spring and summer happily enjoying the phenomenal weather we had that year, however all good things must come to an end, and come fall the shortening days and colder weather became a hinderance for our continued training outdoors.

Luckily one of our members were quick in finding a hall that had the facilities we needed for continuing training, located this time in Copenhagen proper.

So, we packed all of our bags once more and set forth for Korsgadehallen, a large modern sports hall with great storage space for our club gear and swords, a secluded section of the hall we could use for our training.

So roughly two years after leaving the old club behind, it feels great to be back training in Copenhagen, with a large and diverse group of likeminded (we all like hitting each other with swords) people who gather for both fencing and other social activities.

-          Jesper