Spotlight on German
Medieval Weaponry
Kirby Lund's Hobby
Kirby Lund, a former student of German, enjoys exploring medieval weaponry. We asked him to introduce himself and share his hobby with us.
I’m from Williston, North Dakota, a town in western North Dakota that is currently going through an oil boom. The 2011-2012 school year will mark my fourth year of studying at UND. I took German because I had already taken a few classes of it in high school; the real reason, though, is that most people associate Europe with the medieval period of history, and Germany sits directly in the heart of the continent. Besides that, people of that time period wrote in Germanic languages, and I felt like knowing German would greatly help in translating and researching these texts if I make it that far in my education.
It was a lazy summer, and none of the events around town caught our interest, but we really just wanted to learn more about medieval weaponry through trial and error in our designs. My friend and I knew very little about medieval weapons, but we figured, “Hey, if people could figure this out over 500 years ago, we can figure this out, too.” We tweaked the design of the trebuchet quite a few times, slowly improving the range of the device, and we built several crossbows, each with small things changed, until we found a design that performed to our liking (by shooting an arrow into a car door). We did learn a great deal that summer, only because of patience and a passion for medievalism.
<—
German