The Jousting Life: Tobias Frin Talks About the Riding at The Grand Tournament at Schaffhausen

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Tobias Frin Talks About the Riding at The Grand Tournament at Schaffhausen

Tobias Frin (whose birthday is today, Happy birthday!) was in Schaffhausen acting as part of the living history displays in association with Die Grossen Ritterspiele zu Schaffhausen and the exhibit of historical jousting equipment at the Museum zu Allerheiligen. He was kind enough to direct me to several videos of the jousting tournament and to offer his commentary on a video featuring one of the mounted melees fought during the course of the event.

"Here is a clip from the Schaffhausen Turnier. Please have a look at the first part. For most people, it seems that the horses are lolloping around tiredly. But it is actually a highly collected canter, sometimes changing into a redopp or terre à terre with gallop pirouettes and such stuff. This is exactly where the academic art of riding comes from, and it is the art of riding that you are seeing!

By the way... What I didn't realize before: The words 'tourney' and 'tournament' come from the French 'tour' which means turning. You can easily see why." – Tobias Frin

Ritterspiele Schaffhausen 2014(video by Felix Walder)

The video shows the last part of a crest melee involving Arne Koets, Petter Ellingsen and Wouter Nicolai, although it looks like Toby Capwell may have been involved in the melee in the bits before the video begins. The melee ends when Arne knocks part of Petter's crest off. The marshal for the melee is Wolfgang Krischke of the Fürstlichen Hofreitschule Bückeburg.