The Jousting Life: Arne Koets Comments on the Tournament So Far, Plus More TV News Coverage of the Grand Tournament at Schaffhausen

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Arne Koets Comments on the Tournament So Far, Plus More TV News Coverage of the Grand Tournament at Schaffhausen

Despite his busy schedule, Arne Koets, the organizer of Die Grossen Ritterspiele zu Schaffhausen took a few minutes to chat with me online. The Grand Tournament at Schaffhausen is a grueling 10 days long, with jousting and mounted melees twice daily. Arne owns two jousting horses, Maximillian who is a grey Andalusian gelding and Sultan who is a Lusitano stallion, and is alternating which horse he rides during the tournament in order to avoid tiring one horse out.

Arne Koets on his Lusitano stallion Sultan faces Joram van Essen on his Murgese stallion Zogo during a mounted duel at the Grand Tournament at Schaffhausen 2014
(photo from The Wallace Collection)

Here is what Arne had to say about the tournament so far:

"The tournament is a real challenge due to the weather and the 20 performances we are riding. Yet the riding has been really good. The Sunday night ride was the best so far I think. We had many broken lances, and many broken clubs as well. It has been extremely well received, to do a truly museum-based event where we bring back an actual tournament with all its parts.

"As you might gather from Toby's blog, it is meant to show authentically how the event would work, and we structured it to fit the precise history and persons rather than as a sporting event. Yet the combat is real and unscripted, using historically shaped solid lances, wooden clubs and steel rebated swords. It has attracted academics from all over the world, and they are loving it. Hopefully many good things will come of it.

"It seems to be supporting serious knightly combat in the German speaking world. We really are doing the 'turnier' and the 'nachturnier'. The turnier is the fight with clubs (mounted melee) and the nachturnier is the crest melee with swords. We are being taken very seriously by all the curators and museum directors, and we have had visits from the Landshuter guys, Wien Museums, Philadelphia, Georgia, Coburg, Munich, loads of academics.

"Noel Fallows [the author of Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia], also came to the tournament. It was quite an honour to meet him." – Arne Koets

And of course, there is still more TV news coverage of this spectacular tournament/historical research opportunity. (Again, I had to download the video from the SWR Landesschau Baden-Württemberg website and upload it onto YouTube because the SWR site allows downloads, but not embedding.)

TV news coverage of The Grand Tournament at Schaffhausen from July 16
(video from SWR Landesschau Baden-Württemberg)

Die Grossen Ritterspiele zu Schaffhausen has even been featured in a 30 minute long Swiss cultural program, though other cultural events are also included in the episode. After the introduction, the segments about the tournament come at 7:45(living history displays), 16:15(interview with Arne) and 24:50(jousting and mounted melee).

Kulturplatz an den grossen Schaffhauser Ritterspielen(video from SRF TV)