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Battle-Axe Bad-Assery by Mark Hatmaker

 


“Now just for fun we’ll each name what we place our trust in. I’ll choose first, and there are three things I place reliance on---one is my purse, the second my axe, the third my storehouse.”—Spoken by Glum in Killer Glum’s Saga, Ch. 14 

I may have nothing to provide in regard to your purse or your storehouse, but…that trusted item number two, well, there is much that I may have to offer. 

The good folks at FightFast have forged a fearsome battle-axe beast dubbed The Norseman. She is a rock-solid durable and formidable behemoth that conjures feelings of thew-driven power as soon as you hold it in both fists. 

The Norseman is solid and dependable, not a mere shelf-piece. Oh, don’t get me wrong—she is a beauty, with sinuous lines well deserving of display—but, The Norseman is more than your standard ornamental “weapon,” one of those designed to look good but stay away from use lest dings and swings dull blades, rattle shafts, and pit and curl “impervious” blades. 

I have personally put The Norseman through a car door more than a few times and she holds her line, she holds her edge, the haft does not move a whisker. 

Now that, is an impressive Beast. 

The FightFast folks knowing my penchant for in-the-weeds historical mayhem were kind enough to give me the honor and the privilege to put this Beast thru the paces and then present an A-Z of Combative Battle-Axe Destructive Berserker-ness. 

Being no Master Forger I cannot attest as to how this Beast was made but, I can walk you through the detailed woods of the use of this Man-Slayer. 

The accompanying instructional DVD runs 2+ hours in length. It is comprehensive to say the least. 

Without giving the cow away for free I can offer you a sampling of cream to taste. 

First… 

We must acknowledge that The Norseman, hell, any axe, is a piece of history that you can hold in your two fists. 

The axe was a primary formative tool of this species; it stands alongside the wheel, and the taming of fire for helping those who preceded us forge afar as successfully as they did. 

An axe was used to harvest fuel for fires, build shelter, craft other tools/furnishings, clear land, kill running game, and, our main area of focus, warfare. 

The instructional material draws deeply from axe-wielding warrior traditions the world over AND the deep woodsman/lumberjack culture that knew a thing or two about swinging an axe. 

We must never forget that as a tool, the use was constant and familiar to all and those who swung it more often than most [woodsman, lumberjacks, frontiersman] often have the most to offer regarding application. 

Side-Bar: The material presented is not specific to The Norseman. One can perform any and all training with an axe purchased at your local Home Depot, it simply won’t have the romantic heft or durability of The Norseman. 

We will go deep into the technical know-hows of battle-axe use and forgo the Game of Thrones choreography that in no way, shape or form resembles battle use in any axe-wielding Warrior culture. 

Myth-busting saves us time in combative training and allows us to get to the bone-rending realities that more than make up for loss of good camera angle flash. 

In other words, we want the nitty, the gritty, the accurate and the realistic. 

We want to know the brutal realities of the battleaxe inside and out. We want the speicalized knowledge that allows us to see as soon as someone lays a hand on an axe if they know of what they speak.  

We want to see someone carry the axe from Point A to Point B and decide if he is in our Warrior Wall or not. 

We want to see his Facing Line, we watch his wrist for Angle of Deflection. 

Yes, the Battleaxe warrior wants every wild-ass bondafide use that can be made of the fearsome weapon that is inertial steel, but the Wise Warrior wants every interface with the weapon from the casual to the Blood-Frenzy Fed Battle Usage to be fueled by proper mechanics from the first touch of hand to haft. 

An axe is more about accuracy and the finesse of the human who swings it than the steam-power of the human itself so—don’t skip the details. 

The Battleaxe Devil is in those details. 

“A manly attack, that!”—[Spoken by Kari Solmundarson after Skarphedin Njasson kills Thrain Sigfusson with an axe strike to the jaw.] Njal’s Saga, Ch.92 

Ready to start your own manly attack? 

Our store offers the instructional DVD but not The Norseman itself. For that honor, snag one at FightFast and you’ll get the instructional material as part of the package. 

But, if one wishes to get started while fattening their purse [the first item of trust in our opening Viking quote] then you can grab the instructional material from us and put your Home Depot stand-in through the paces. Click On to Snag!

Hell, since there’s no axe on our side, if you grab a copy I’ll kick in the 11-page Training Syllabus. 

The Black Box Warehouse

https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/

The Indigenous Ability Blog

https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/

The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast

https://anchor.fm/mark-hatmaker

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