What about a flail? You can use it as a swinging distance weapon, or you have the wooden handle for defense? I was trying to think of that weapon that is two daggers connected by a chain.
A shortbow would probably make the most sense, if you're looking for a common weapon that would be easy for her to use. An ax would be even easier for her to find.
I personally love swords - I much prefer them to guns and whatnot. But if you are trying to avoid using a sword a staff or something would work. Very basic but could be used for a lot.
Hello, I am a martial artist and researcher with the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (www.thearma.org). Our organization's primary goal is the legitimate reconstruction of the martial arts of late medieval and renaissance Europe. Having studied the fighting arts, weapons, and martial culture of the medieval and renaissance for some time, hopefully I can be somewhat helpful in answering your question. The degree to which swords were expensive or not varies considerably depending on time period. In earlier time periods such as the anglo-saxon period swords were indeed quite rare and expensive items. In the late medieval and renaissance the availability of swords went up due to greater availability of resources and higher yield production methods. To compare the relative expense of a sword with a comparable expense in the modern world, I once examined the tax records of a 16th century English village, and noted the mean annual income for that village. A church record from the same town and time period denoted an expense to outfit an individual with a sword. I compared the cost indicated in the church record with average income of the village as shown in the tax record. I derived the percentage the cost of the sword was as a percent of mean annual income for that village. Taking the same percentage of annual average income for the modern United States I believe I estimated the cost of the sword in modern terms to be somewhere in the range of $600-800 dollars. Since this is your world you have the option of deciding what technological level your society is at, and how available swords are or not. If you wish to go with the earlier time period's costs and availability a sword may well be out of her reach. If you wish to go with a later time period's availability it might not be. It may also be useful if you do decide to go the route of your character owning a sword to point out that there were children's sized longswords that had the same proportions of longer longswords for adults but on a smaller scale. Some of these have even been preserved in museums today. It is also worth noting that there is no reason a 15 year old girl cannot wield a full sized longsword. They aren't that heavy and I've seen them do it. Longswords are only going to be in the 3-3.5 lb range or so. An athletic 15 year old female can be a skilled swordswoman. If you decide that a sword is out of your characters reach, I feel the most likely go to weapons assuming your character is of the peasant class would be a stout stick or staff as mentioned by somebody else above, or a hauswehr or grossemesser or similar large bladed knife. What is a hauswehr or grossemesser you might ask? Large single edged curved knives (and when I say large I mean sword sized) were some of the most common household weapons of the medieval and renaissance Holy Roman Empire. A hauswehr (literally house weapon) also known as a bauernwehr (farm weapon) is basically a very large, long bowie knife looking weapon. The longer cousin of the hauswehr/bauernwehr is the grossemesser (literally just means big knife). The even larger version of the grossemesser is known as the kriegsmesser or "war knife" this is probably a bit big for her. It was quite common to refer to all of the above, simply as a messer or 'knife'. In medieval Europe 'house knives' would have just been lying around somewhere in most peoples homes. At least in the Holy Roman Empire which is one of the larger European kingdoms of Med/Ren. Europe. Additionally, people of the peasant class, besides having access to all kinds of sword sized "knives" would have had access to a variety agricultural tools such as sickles, axes, flails etc. As somebody else mentioned above she might also have access to ranged weapons such as slings/bows. Large warbows however will be far out of her strength range to use. Medieval and renaissance warbows have draw weights beyond 100 lbs. So she would have to use a smaller bow. The hauswehr probably would be more common to carry around and not look weird doing so, but there is no reason she cannot carry and use a variety of tools and weapons. You also get to set the societal and cultural expectations of weapon carry for your fantasy story so you get to choose how "weird" it is to walk around or not with certain weapons. Hope that helps.
Well, if your main character isn't particularly strong I wouldn't recommend for her to go for a bow. I've shot enough longbows, recurve bows and compound bows to know for sure that a bow that is effective against the type of armour used in the middle ages would have to have at least 40-50 lbs of draw weight. That sounds little, but pull that bow 20-30 times in total and your shoulder and arm is going to be dead if you're an average strength man or woman. So a below average person, wouldn't do very well. That would probably count as a recurve riding bow, I assume. Take an English longbow with the drawweight of 200 lbs and she would never be able to pull it, let along fire it effectively. Actually, the skeletons found from that era have been larger than average men with malformed drawing arms and shoulders, also elongated fingers, due to the heavy drawweight. So claymores and longswords are out of the question. But broadswords weren't actually all that heavy. Think 1,5-2 kg at the most. A 30-35 cm long dagger is very light and can be swung by almost anyone with deadly effectiveness, trust me I've held several replicas of swords. Including one broadsword made in the traditional way with near identical steel. Also there's rapiers and such. Think "Needle" in GoT, wielded by Aria.
Hello, I would like to provide some clarification to some statements made above. While I can't comment in detail on the information about bows, as I have no experience with historical archery. I would like to address some viewpoints in the above post related to swords which I feel are common misconceptions. Firstly, I would like to address what a broadsword is, and what a broadsword is not. Broadswords were 17th and early 18th century basket-hilted weapons. This is a broadsword: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Schiavona2-Morges.jpg Here is another image of a broadsword: http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/10387/11083393_2.jpg?v=8CE3CDC7AB9FEA0 The following article can provide some background on what broadswords are and their place in history: http://www.thearma.org/essays/broadsword.htm#.U8BJirGAGc4 additionally, wikipedia's article on broadswords is fairly accurate and worth a read. Medieval swords such as this: http://i1337.photobucket.com/albums/o673/AlaeSwords/12thcenturyTypeXii_zpsc6df1635.jpg or this: http://i1337.photobucket.com/albums/o673/AlaeSwords/christensenmedievalsword2_zps8039cc73.jpg are not broadswords, and never were called broadswords by anybody up until the modern age wherein Dungeons and Dragons began referring to these swords incorrectly. This began to creep into modern usage in role playing games, video games, and other popular culture. The proper term for a medieval single handed sword is arming sword. I would also like to address the weight of medieval and renaissance longswords and whether or not they would be able to be wielded by a young female such as the main character of this story. Generally speaking, longswords weigh between 2.5 and 3.5 lbs. They are not heavy nor do they require massive amounts of physical strength to wield. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2006.564 As you can see this longsword (the term hand-and-a-half sword is term coined by modern museum curators and generally refers to the same swords that in the historical manuals would be referred to as longswords) in spite of the fact that it is 49 inches in length is only 3 lbs 7 oz. This very accurate recreation of a 15th century Italian longsword is 3 lbs, 4 oz (1.47 kg). http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/johnsson/sword-museum-brescia.htm I would strongly disagree with anybody that says a young athletic 15 year old female cannot wield a longsword given their relatively limited weight and agile handling characteristics. 15 year old girls may not be as strong as well developed athletic males, but they are strong enough to wield a 3 lb object. Even the Scottish greatsword, the claymore, is going to be under 5 lbs. http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/albion/nextgen/sword-scottish-chieftain-xiia.htm Again, this very accurate recreation weighs just barely under 4 lbs. In my opinion there is no reason whatsoever that these swords are "out of the question." and definitely could be something the hypothetical female character could use if she chose to or if the circumstances arose. Yes, perhaps not as effectively as a more powerful individual, but capable nonetheless. I would also briefly like to touch on the notion that rapiers are somehow lighter than other sword types. Being that historical rapiers from the 17th century are very very long. Generally in the 40+ inches range and in some cases even approaching 50 inches, these very long and thrusting-agile weapons typically are not actually significantly lighter than other single handed swords. They are essentially the same amount of metal drawn out into a longer narrower shape. As such, they tend to be in the same weight range (1.5- 2.5 lbs) as other single handed swords.
@ARMAScholar i have to say kind sir, that that post was extraordinarily informative, even for me, as i am writing in swords as part of my epic fantasy tale, thank you!
Glad you found it helpful. Feel free to ask any other questions you may have related to medieval and renaissance martial arts, martial culture, swords, swordsmanship, or similar topics.
Thanks to Hollywood, many people think swords, especially longswords, are incredibly heavy, which, of course, makes absolutely no sense: it's a weapon, i.e. it's supposed to be quick and agile. Much to my shame, about a decade ago I too believed in the Hollywoodian bs before I met a local HEMA instructor who let me handle a bunch of longswords, dull and sharp, all meant for contact (no wall hangers). They were all light enough that your average 12yo girl could wield one without any trouble from the weight. In fact, one of his students was a small, skinny 13yo girl who wasn't particularly athletic yet she had no trouble wielding a full-size longsword side by side with the men and women of the group. I would hazard a guess (since my exposure to longswords is limited to that one session) that a longsword actually takes less strength to wield with two hands than some one-handers. E.g. a thick, heavy kukri is a nice blade but difficult to handle effectively unless you have strong hands/arms. I'm 6'1/170lbs and pretty athletic, but even I would benefit from more strength if I wanted to get the most out of my Gurkha kukri. @ARMAScholar, any truth in this hunch? What about arming swords; could they be wielded effectively with one hand even if the wielder is, say, an average teenage girl? Or would she be better off with a proper longsword? If I'm right, it's pretty similar to firearms; unlike what many folks think, handguns are significantly more difficult to handle/shoot accurately than rifles/shotguns even though (because) they're much smaller.
it's not really about weight at all. The problem is a 5' girl swinging a 3'6" sword is going to have a much harder time then a 6' tall man.
Length might become an issue at some point if the weapon is too long in comparison to the wielder, but from what I've seen, usually uninformed writers focus on the weapon's weight as the reason why a weaker individual couldn't use one which just shows ignorance/lack of proper research on the author's part. In any case, the 15yo girl needs to be really short to be too short to wield a longsword; most girls don't grow much height at that age anymore (e.g. @KaTrian reached her full height of 5'7 by the time she was 13), so the 15yo in question should be really quite tiny.
tl;dr Have you tried a rapier? It is lighter than a regular long sword due to having a thinner blade. It is designed for thrusting, but there are variants that can slash as well. Not all rapiers have to be long either. It might just work for you.
Holding a ridiculously long sword will make it feel pretty heavy, which was why I mentioned a short rapier. Well, I suppose if we are being detailed about swords, a rapier would not be accurate for the type of sword I am trying to suggest. Just think of any variant of a short sword with a very thin blade, like a Kris, but straight instead of snaked. Actually, a kris would not be such a bad idea either.
They were used in battle in the past. They just needed to be repaired a lot because they were not the best when it came to durability. Like the rapier, they were primarily a thrusting weapon. It is only in modern times that they have a more ceremonial use, but such is the case with most swords these days.
Aside from the fact that you're wrong and they were not, you've just summed up the best reason not to use one.
In that case, can you quote a source stating that they were historically strictly ceremonial? Even from a logical standpoint, it is pretty strange to celebrate a weapon if there were no roots in combat or the likes. I can agree with the durability problem, but the original post did not ask for an extremely durable weapon.
A pike (google it). Based on the descriptions it is similar to a quarter staff though this is the name given to it by the celts.
Well, if we are quoting wikipedia, Clearly, if we are going off of wikipedia, then they were used in battle.
Let me just bold this up again. Used in battle or not, the Kris is about as useful a fighting weapon at the titanium spork.
Have you ever faced an assailant armed with a titanium spork? Because, if yes, I want your autograph!
