About Lonin League

Lonin Lore

The Name

During the group’s early history we reached out and forged connections with other HEMA groups around the world. Most of them had at least one outstanding founder/teacher. Traditionally, such people are referred to by the title “maestro” or master. We didn’t have any such person in our group. We wanted to make this clear to new members so they wouldn’t come in with the wrong expectations. In medieval Japan the term “ronin” denoted a masterless samurai. It’s a word that has been used in countless movies, graphic novels, and games. Since we were exclusively a longsword group at the time, we mashed “Longsword” together with “Ronin” to create our name, meaning a masterless group of longsword practitioners.

The Glyph

Some of our club equipment is marked with a glyph that we created by combining the “L” Futhark rune and the “Nin” Kanji–a direct representation of the Lonin concept described above.

The Logo

Our logo, featuring an elephant with a castle on its back, is simply a modernized version of an image from Fiore dei Liberi’s circa 1409 manuscript Flower of Battle (Fior di Battaglia), one of our foundational texts. In a famous, full-page image called the segno, Fiore depicts four different animals: the lion, the tiger, the lynx, and the elephant. Each of them is associated with a different martial virtue. The elephant is depicted with a castle on its back. Its meaning: the swordsman must be mobile, but that moving base must support a stable and upright defensive platform. It’s a lesson we use over and over again in many of our classes–not just Fiore. The version that appears in Fiore’s manuscript was obviously drawn by an artist who had never seen an elephant, so we substituted something a little more modern!

The Motto

The motto on our banner, “Modum Milites Habemus,” is the result of a bar fight that took place at a HEMA workshop a long time ago. The workshop was sharing the venue with a convention of hockey coaches. One night, in the bar, some of the hockey coaches were creating a hostile work environment for a waitress. As a friend of ours put it, “and that was a problem, because we think we are knights.”

We thought “we think we are knights” was a pretty good slogan and tried to find someone to translate it into Latin. As it turns out, Latin doesn’t have a direct translation for “knight.” There is “eques” but it’s got other connotations so we settled on “miles.” Then it turned out to be difficult to correctly translate the sense of “we think we are” because it came out sounding like we were delusional maniacs who literally believed that we were knights. The true sense of what we were trying to convey was “we think as knights do” or “we pattern our actions after knights” and, to make a long story short, “Modum Milites Habemus” was as close as we could get.

The Vibe

Structurally/Legally, Lonin is a 501(c)3 nonprofit whose stated purpose is to support historical martial arts. Details can be found below under “History” but we have generally been open to qualified coaches and groups who respect our code of conduct and who wish to make use of our infrastructure to run practices. As such the group is inherently decentralized–an autonomous collective. There is no strong central leader or maestro imposing an overall vision. Each of the different sub-groups develops its own culture. From its early days Lonin has been comfortable with diversity in all its meanings.

History

The earliest practice sessions leading to what eventually became Lonin occurred around the turn of the millennium in a suitably post-apocalyptic, half-demolished warehouse in Seattle’s Interbay neighborhood. Members built homemade sword simulators from hockey sticks and protected themselves with hockey, lacrosse, and motorcross gear.

By 2004 the group had moved to a warehouse at 6th and Lander in the Sodo neighborhood, where it operated for a time under the name of SMAWG (Sword Martial Arts Working Group). Work continued on invention of padded weapons, some of which contained electronic sensors, and custom protective gear. As very little was available in the way of instructional media, we proceeded intuitively. Weapons were made to resemble katanas, longswords, and rapiers. During this era we forged a close relationship with SANCA, which began its existence in an adjacent warehouse space.

Circa 2007 we were operating out of a warehouse near Fisherman’s Terminal. A lot more work went into the development of realistic sparring weapons, but we were beginning to make contact with local swordmakers such as Tinker Pearce and Angus Trim, makers of steel swords. In 2007 we made a pilgrimage to the Western Martial Arts Workshop in Racine, Wisconsin and, for the first time, came into contact with the international movement of scholars and athletes who were reviving historical European martial arts. From this point on the days of foam simulators were numbered as we began to swing decisively toward the use of steel. At the same time we began to focus on longsword, working both from Fiore and the German traditions.

After a brief stint working out of the Miller Community Center in Capitol Hill, we began to borrow space at SANCA in Georgetown in 2008. We started a Bartitsu group as well, based on the work of Tony Wolf, whom we had encountered at WMAW. This came to be known as BWAHAHAHA, the Barton-Wright/Alfred Hutton Alliance for Historically Accurate Hoplology and Antagonistics. Around the same time we made our first contacts with the Seattle Escrima Club, forging an alliance that continues to this day.

In 2011, the old SMAWG entity was replaced by a new organization called Lonin (“Longsword Ronin.”) In the same year, SANCA expanded its footprint in the Georgetown building and we were able to sublease a 30 x 20 foot loft in one corner–our first permanent dedicated space. This unlocked the potential for new subgroups to be added. Over the next few years several new groups came into existence at Lonin: a KdF group that was initially separate from the Fiore longsword group, I.33 (Sword and Buckler), Italian Rapier, Bolognese sidesword, pugilism, and others. In 2014, in a series of volunteer work parties, we built an expansion to the loft, bringing it to a size of 30 x 30 feet. In 2015 we became a 501(c)3 nonprofit. The next year we began to host Swordsquatch, a very successful HEMA seminar that drew teachers and students from all over the globe.

2020 brought sudden and unexpected adversity. As collateral damage from the COVID pandemic, we lost our space. For over a year we practiced in an outdoor enclosure behind SANCA, or in parks during good weather. In fall of 2021 we found ourselves back in the building at 6th and Lander where it had all started almost twenty years earlier. New groups that have become part of Lonin in recent years include 1595, jiki shinkage ryu, araki gendai, tenshin buko ryu heiho, and wu style taiji.

Board of Directors

Lonin League is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization

Non profits are required to have a Board of Directors. As a board we strive to stay out of the way as much as possible. We take care of the administrative work, fundraising and making sure all coaches, members and groups have as much room to grow and learn and make their own choices.

email the board board@lonin.org

Your dues and donations are tax deductible
Tax ID #81-0707606