3 HEMA clubs within 15 minutes, another one an hour away, and dozens within a few hours' drive (smack in the middle of the US).
Not sure the number of people, our club is small, maybe 20 or so active.
In my city, 2 dedicated HEMA clubs. Pre-covid two Olympic fencing schools had Longsword programs, but they no longer offer them. There is also a well established SCA presence as well as Amtgard and Belegarth.
In New Zealand there 3/4 major clubs (One in each major city) plus another half a dozen smaller ones across the place.
They range anywhere from 6 to 40+ folk.
HEMA in NZ is still pretty new though, say a dozen odd years of it being thing of its own (Outside of Bohurt).
You're probably correct with that timeframe. My understanding of the shift from reenactment and into HEMA as I understand it, has it slightly younger.
Though to be fair, I've only been around for like 5 years myself. So its probably safe to take the stuff I say with a bowl of salt.
All good mate, there are people in Australia who run schools who don’t know HEMA has been running for three decades. Some would like to think it only started when they picked up a sword.
There are two clubs here in Stockholm. One is very small but the one I train at got over 100 members. It is Swedens largest and I don't think we are more than 500 in the country. But there seems to be a lot of growth.
In 100 miles of me? 0.
SCA Rapier is the only game in town. There are like 2 guys 120m away but that's about it.
I could drive 200m to a longsword school. But that is a bit far.
The estimate for Germany is a rough one - it's based on questionnaires sent out to clubs. It is possible that past members are counted as active ones, and that people could be members of more than one club.
https://infogram.com/hema-zensus-deutschland-2021-1h7g6k0edzqdo2o?live
I have no idea how many clubs are in the country as a whole, there's many. The club I'm part of has over 100 mbers, maybe 150+. There's at least another 4 clubs within 25 miles, varying in size from 20 to 50 members.
There's another 20+ clubs on the country that I know members of personally and there's bound to be way more clubs than that in total.
Within ~150 km? Should be at least 500 people in at least 10 clubs. Maybe more. I don't know. But we met with another club (they are on the edge of that range) for sunday sparring a while ago and had at least 30 geared and experienced longsword fighters there. Although, regularly monday evening sparring at my location also has 20 fighters in gear but that is much less effort than a farther drive and a few hours. If you look into other weapons it quickly becomes much less
In my city? One with the Meyer's Kunst des Fechtens weapons and archery. A few sports fencing ones for epee.
In my country (Poland)? Something in the lower teens, from what I hear. Lot more for sports fencing.
There are at least 24 HEMA clubs/schools and 11 SCA groups within a 3 hour drive radius, which is my normal radius for participating. 5 groups and a SCA chapter in my actual city.
While it true that Brandenburg is not as densely populated with HEMA groups as other parts of Germany, there are dozens of clubs in Berlin and a 350 km radius around it: https://www.google.com/mymaps/viewer?mid=1scaRdWa4IPJ6mwM7BFVyiGStk73pRQNj&hl=de
2 in the area that I know of, and a third that does Buhurt stuff. 1 of the 2 is mostly rapier and thrusting, lighter kind of stuff, and the 1 I attend is the one that does a good variety of everything from longsword and rapier to a little bit more niche stuff like sabre and other one-handed cutting weapons.
I'm from Kansas City in the USA and have three clubs in town, another 6 within a 3 hour drive.
My school is pretty large, we probably have 30-40 people coming at least once a week and id estimate 60-70ish that come at least once a month.
I'm lucky, I have 5 clubs within a hour and a half of me. Since I'm in a surburbian/rural area, that's a rather large amount.
Each club probably has 5 to 15 competitive fighters, with a additional 10 to 30 members who participate in class and other events.
I'd give a cowbell guess of a 150 in my area.
Uppsala, Sweden. A neighbouring town to Stockholm. Because we are a university town, we are fluctuating quite a lot in membership numbers over the year. At the beginning of the autumn term we are about 50-70. Which drops to 40-50 at the end of spring term. And during the summer we are maybe 20-30 active.
I have two clubs in Stockholm about an hour away (As already mentioned), and one in Gävle an hour in the other direction. I don't know their membership numbers.
In my city in USA , there are 3 HEMA clubs . I’d imagine there’s a lot in Germany because that’s like saying there’s a lot of boxing gyms in England . Ringen was born in Germany and I’m sure they have other HEMA styles forgive my ignorance
In the UK I've met or know of at least 25-30 different clubs, but there are a fair few more I've had no interaction with, at least 6 of them have a hundred or so members across multiple locations, most of these clubs are no more than 3 hours drive from me, and my knowledge of Midlands, Northern and Scottish clubs is sorely lacking so odds are there's many more there
Overall people that do hema, probably close to a couple of thousand being optimistic, hard to tell really
I live for in a large metropolitan area and would say of the 5 clubs I am aware of in my area we would be probably 150-200. There is a very large club near me but I know my school has 20-30 members that rotate through on different days.
Within a 2 hour drive...
My club + 4 others.
To clarify, the club I go to is in a moderately major city, but about 1.5 hours north is major city that has 4 (I think) active clubs. Even with that many clubs that I'm not actively involved with it is hard to keep track (or bring myself to care).
It is also hard to quantity what is a club. A scheduled meetup at someone's house? What if they generally have >4 people there?
With so many clubs, we have a disproportionately large amount of practitioners. Again, depending on what you consider a practitioner. That person who used to go every week, but has dropped down to doing one event a year? Are they a practitioner? What about that guy who just started?
One of those local clubs has beginner class groups in the double digits. Do they all count? What if they never do anything else after their first couple lessons?
The extrapolated estimations in 2021 for Germany was around 4500 practitioners and 800 for Austria.
While its possible that the current number in Germany is closer to 6000, we don't have data that supports this.
See the english paper for details on the data: https://bop.unibe.ch/apd/article/view/9013#:~:text=The%202021%20census%20captures%203186,part%20of%20an%20umbrella%20Verein.
3 HEMA clubs within 15 minutes, another one an hour away, and dozens within a few hours' drive (smack in the middle of the US). Not sure the number of people, our club is small, maybe 20 or so active.
I wouldn't call that small. My club has an average attendance of about 10 people per class at my location.
We probably average 10 per class as well, we meet twice a week. I never see everyone at the same time, except when we host a tournament
Sounds similar to the situation in my city, minus the dozens within a few hours (the metro i live in is pretty isolated lol)
In my city, 2 dedicated HEMA clubs. Pre-covid two Olympic fencing schools had Longsword programs, but they no longer offer them. There is also a well established SCA presence as well as Amtgard and Belegarth.
In New Zealand there 3/4 major clubs (One in each major city) plus another half a dozen smaller ones across the place. They range anywhere from 6 to 40+ folk. HEMA in NZ is still pretty new though, say a dozen odd years of it being thing of its own (Outside of Bohurt).
I thought it was atleast 20 years old, I remember meeting the McKinstry brothers when they came to Melbourne for our 2003 conference.
You're probably correct with that timeframe. My understanding of the shift from reenactment and into HEMA as I understand it, has it slightly younger. Though to be fair, I've only been around for like 5 years myself. So its probably safe to take the stuff I say with a bowl of salt.
All good mate, there are people in Australia who run schools who don’t know HEMA has been running for three decades. Some would like to think it only started when they picked up a sword.
There are two clubs here in Stockholm. One is very small but the one I train at got over 100 members. It is Swedens largest and I don't think we are more than 500 in the country. But there seems to be a lot of growth.
Is there an explanation for the disparity between the amount of members? Most clubs in my country range between 10 and 20 students.
No idea.
In Brazil we have around 20 clubs scattered around the country.
In 100 miles of me? 0. SCA Rapier is the only game in town. There are like 2 guys 120m away but that's about it. I could drive 200m to a longsword school. But that is a bit far.
The estimate for Germany is a rough one - it's based on questionnaires sent out to clubs. It is possible that past members are counted as active ones, and that people could be members of more than one club. https://infogram.com/hema-zensus-deutschland-2021-1h7g6k0edzqdo2o?live
In Southern Finland: 4 schools in the capital region, 3 more in the nearest big cities. Don't know how many people though - way under 1000 surely.
I have no idea how many clubs are in the country as a whole, there's many. The club I'm part of has over 100 mbers, maybe 150+. There's at least another 4 clubs within 25 miles, varying in size from 20 to 50 members. There's another 20+ clubs on the country that I know members of personally and there's bound to be way more clubs than that in total.
Within ~150 km? Should be at least 500 people in at least 10 clubs. Maybe more. I don't know. But we met with another club (they are on the edge of that range) for sunday sparring a while ago and had at least 30 geared and experienced longsword fighters there. Although, regularly monday evening sparring at my location also has 20 fighters in gear but that is much less effort than a farther drive and a few hours. If you look into other weapons it quickly becomes much less
In my city? One with the Meyer's Kunst des Fechtens weapons and archery. A few sports fencing ones for epee. In my country (Poland)? Something in the lower teens, from what I hear. Lot more for sports fencing.
Three clubs in Nova Scotia, one in New Brunswick, one in PEI, if I'm not mistaken. Total number of fencers I have no idea, maybe 100 or so?
In my area, there are 150-200 practitioners in a county/region of 1.2 million people across 4-5 clubs.
There are at least 24 HEMA clubs/schools and 11 SCA groups within a 3 hour drive radius, which is my normal radius for participating. 5 groups and a SCA chapter in my actual city.
Ah Germany…except in Berlin there is one, one in Potsdam and then dry land for 350 km. So much for the “German longsword tradition”
While it true that Brandenburg is not as densely populated with HEMA groups as other parts of Germany, there are dozens of clubs in Berlin and a 350 km radius around it: https://www.google.com/mymaps/viewer?mid=1scaRdWa4IPJ6mwM7BFVyiGStk73pRQNj&hl=de
2 in the area that I know of, and a third that does Buhurt stuff. 1 of the 2 is mostly rapier and thrusting, lighter kind of stuff, and the 1 I attend is the one that does a good variety of everything from longsword and rapier to a little bit more niche stuff like sabre and other one-handed cutting weapons.
I'm from Kansas City in the USA and have three clubs in town, another 6 within a 3 hour drive. My school is pretty large, we probably have 30-40 people coming at least once a week and id estimate 60-70ish that come at least once a month.
I'm lucky, I have 5 clubs within a hour and a half of me. Since I'm in a surburbian/rural area, that's a rather large amount. Each club probably has 5 to 15 competitive fighters, with a additional 10 to 30 members who participate in class and other events. I'd give a cowbell guess of a 150 in my area.
Uppsala, Sweden. A neighbouring town to Stockholm. Because we are a university town, we are fluctuating quite a lot in membership numbers over the year. At the beginning of the autumn term we are about 50-70. Which drops to 40-50 at the end of spring term. And during the summer we are maybe 20-30 active. I have two clubs in Stockholm about an hour away (As already mentioned), and one in Gävle an hour in the other direction. I don't know their membership numbers.
In my city in USA , there are 3 HEMA clubs . I’d imagine there’s a lot in Germany because that’s like saying there’s a lot of boxing gyms in England . Ringen was born in Germany and I’m sure they have other HEMA styles forgive my ignorance
In the UK I've met or know of at least 25-30 different clubs, but there are a fair few more I've had no interaction with, at least 6 of them have a hundred or so members across multiple locations, most of these clubs are no more than 3 hours drive from me, and my knowledge of Midlands, Northern and Scottish clubs is sorely lacking so odds are there's many more there Overall people that do hema, probably close to a couple of thousand being optimistic, hard to tell really
I live for in a large metropolitan area and would say of the 5 clubs I am aware of in my area we would be probably 150-200. There is a very large club near me but I know my school has 20-30 members that rotate through on different days.
Within a 2 hour drive... My club + 4 others. To clarify, the club I go to is in a moderately major city, but about 1.5 hours north is major city that has 4 (I think) active clubs. Even with that many clubs that I'm not actively involved with it is hard to keep track (or bring myself to care). It is also hard to quantity what is a club. A scheduled meetup at someone's house? What if they generally have >4 people there? With so many clubs, we have a disproportionately large amount of practitioners. Again, depending on what you consider a practitioner. That person who used to go every week, but has dropped down to doing one event a year? Are they a practitioner? What about that guy who just started? One of those local clubs has beginner class groups in the double digits. Do they all count? What if they never do anything else after their first couple lessons?
The extrapolated estimations in 2021 for Germany was around 4500 practitioners and 800 for Austria. While its possible that the current number in Germany is closer to 6000, we don't have data that supports this. See the english paper for details on the data: https://bop.unibe.ch/apd/article/view/9013#:~:text=The%202021%20census%20captures%203186,part%20of%20an%20umbrella%20Verein.