Lars Anderson: A New Level of Archery
Lars Anderson studied historical manuals and rediscovered an ancient and extremely fast way of firing arrows from a bow, making icons like Legolas and Katniss look like slugs.
He trained himself to be able to perform such feats as firing three arrows in less than a second, catching an arrow and firing it back, splitting an oncoming arrow in two, and basically debunking all the lies hollywood has fed us about “ultimate archery skills”
HOLY CRAP historical archery is SO MUCH COOLER than anything out there now.
does this check out? Seems to spend a lot of time talking about how unusually talented this particular guy is.Good grief, this reply grew more than somewhat. It looks more like a magazine article. Have fun!
All opinions are my own, based on library and personal knowledge; if there’s scholarly evidence to the contrary, links please!
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Things certainly check out for Lars Anderson (or Andersen), who seems to be the Annie Oakley of archery. But someone should have warned him that the “Robin Hood: Men in Tights“ pose…
…looks just as silly in real life…
Maybe that’s why a lot of what I watched made me think of of Annie Oakley again, and circus “trick shooting”…
Really interesting meta commentary by @peternorwood digging into the history of archery (was this style really lost?) and why not everything is as it appears.
More meta worth reading (this time focussing on physics and the mechanics of archery) by Elizabeth Bear: In which I am crabby about viral archery videos
knitting in the dark 