Someone in internet confessed that he/she (probably earlier) hated that the dwarves used bows, and the bows should belong to elves, and elves only. Well, this is both stupid and ridiculous. And also moronic, did I forgot to mention. Why couldn't the dwarves use the bow? They use bows in the Hobbit book for Iluvatar's sake!!! Professor Tolkien invented modern concept of dwarves and he made them use bows in the first book they appear in! Yes, elves use also heavily bows, but also many other kinds of weapons, such as swords, knives and spears.
It is a ridiculously stupid and clichéd view that dwarves should only use axes or giant warhammers as their weapons (as in the eponymous tabletob miniature wargame), not swords, spears and especially bows. Many games have give them gunpowder instead! Dwarves are based on Viking mythology, where they first appear and where Tolkien omitted them, so they "should" only use Viking weaponry. That includes swords, spears, axes and bows for example. Especially not firearms!
Elves are also based on Nordic legends, so their weaponry "should" be the same as the dwarves'. But it is fantasy and they can use more diverse weponry if an author wants. As long as it's believable. I think gunpowder weapons are more than a bit off the Viking style of dwarves, but hey, that's just me!
Also the elves shouldn't only use bows, since that's stupid. No army ever used only bows. In every land and time period throughout history all armies had a large footman force in their core, using spears and/or swords. Bowmen were often important, but without anything else, they wouldn't win anything.
But about the dwarf Kili, and his archery. First mistakes:
- Two finger grip. He only has two fingers covered in leather glove, archers glove, so it's natural that the actor doesn't want to use the third finger to draw the string, since it can hurt. they should've given him a third leather finger in his glove at the costume department.
- Keeping bow and arrows in a same (separate) quiver is nothing unusual, for example ancient Persians, Scythians and other eastern/steppe people's did that. But their bow quivers were always at waist level, fastened to a belt. Not in the back, which is not the place for arrows either. They are harder to get there, and why you would make things harder, when you can make them easier? Especially if it may mean if you live or die!
- These flat headed arrow tips are not unknown either, they were used occasionally, but they are kind of speciality arrows. These would probably be used in hunting small animals, such as squirrels, or some other rare purpose, but not against armored opponents for example. These are not good for war. And the arrow tip is also too large, it would be too heavy for that arrow. I get it that they tried to make the arrow look bulky (and succeeded) so it would seem more "dwarven", but why the dwarves have to make everything so impractically thick, heavy, angular and bulky? It's not very useful you know.
- I didn't expect to see good archery in The Hobbit films at all, but Aidan Turner (Kili's actor) has really listened their archery instructor. Better than anyone else on the set. His archery form is nearly perfect. In this second picture his grip is more of a three finger Mediterranean one, and the bowstring is really drawn near his mouth, where it should be. This give much better aim.
- The lines from the arrow and both arms are parallel, which is great. This is how it's done.
- The arrow goes on the left side of the bow, which is right. Too many beginners put it on the right side and then drop the arrow wondering why it happened. He also doesn't seem to shoot sideways, like all other archer characters in The Hobbit have done. Shame on them, good for Kili. Although Kili's bow is so short than it wouldn't lose much power when drawn sideways. Although aim would be poor of course.
I already talked about the arrow tip, but I need to say something about the bow too. It cannot be clearly seen in these photos and screencaptures, but Kili's bow is a very short composite recurve bow. It's length is about the same as his arm from shoulder to fingertips. This short composite recurve bows were in fact used in history, by the Huns for example, but they were always used on horseback. That's why they were so short, so they didn't interfere with the horse. Or the other way around. Anyway, the dwarves are all foot soldiers, so why not a longer bow? Are longbows too elven or something? Although Tauriel was given a recurve bow too, since it seems to be in fashion now. It has become hard to even find longbow using characters these days.
A two finger grip isn't entirely unreasonable to expect, both practically and historically. The variety where the arrow is pinched between the two fingers was called the Flemish loose. Not as inherently strong as three fingers of course, but cleaner and less string pinch.
ReplyDeleteThe actor in the pictures, however, looks more to be using a tertiary release, as described by Morse:
http://www.archerylibrary.com/books/morse/ancient-and-modern-methods-of-arrow-release/docs/large.html
It's still used by some native tribes (PNG and Brazil), who draw surprisingly strong bows with it.
Thanks for commenting! Kili's draw in fact does look more like tertiary release when I look it now. It was just hard to see when the thumb is not visible in these pictures. Apparently though, the tertiary release was used exclusively by North American indians, so it's quite far away from the European/viking archery concept of the dwarves. Of course this is fantasy, so it doesn't bother too much.
DeleteI suppose the good points in Kili’s archery still outweigh the flaws in it. To me, his elbow rotation seemed right and straight up, otherwise it would leave an archer with a painful elbow and a missed shot. Though his bow was short and relatively smaller, presumably his shots won’t be much of power shots. Thank you for sharing this analysis!
ReplyDeleteRobin @ The Hood Archery
Thanks for your comment, and you're welcome!
DeleteYou might be right, maybe there's more good than bad here, especially compared to some other bowmen (and women) in the Hobbit film series.
Composite recurve bows from areas like turkey, Mongolia and Korea are the most powerful existing bows. Much more powerful than longbows. The world record for distance was set by a composite bow, so if the dwarves (Kili) had a composite recurve at hand that should be what he uses. A recurve would be much more compact and easier to carry around while journeying. And also, in the films, the dwarves are always in fast paced combat and mobile combat (while running etc) and historically longbows were not made for mobile/close range combat. So in my opinion using the composite recurve is much better than a longbow. -Yaskko
ReplyDeleteWell, you can make any bow the most powerful bow in the world, you just make it thicker. The highest poundage longbows can be on the same level than highest poundage composite recurve bows. There is an upper limit of what a human can draw, so making bows more powerful than that is not beneficial anymore. They found that limit all over the world where archery was practised. Most bows were of course well below that upper limit, since only a few people could use a bow of 200 pounds strength for example. War bows started from 70-80 pounds and came up to maybe 150 lbs, and those were very powerful bows.
DeleteIt is of course true that with a composite structure as well as with the recurve shape it's possible to pack the same amount of poundage to a shorter bow than with a self bow made of just one piece of wood (which a longbow is).
A recurve bow, while being smaller in scale, would indeed be more compact for travelling, that's true also. I just wondered that maybe a self bow (shorter than a longbow) would suit the dwarves better thematically, since those tiny recurve bows were developed for the use on horseback by the ancient Eurasian steppe nomads, and the dwarves are absolutely nothing like them. They live underground! And they do not ride horses.
Great article. I really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteThe only flaw with the dwarven broadheads in the films is that they don't have a clear tip. I still don't understand why this was done this way. You could still add a triangular tip to a mostly rectangular arrowhead and it would work (regardless of whether the performance would be weaker or not). A "screwdriver tip" like this one would not be all that good in penetration, even with a powerful shortbow.
As others have already stated in the comments, there are plenty of historical techniques of a two-finger draw and release, besides three-finger draws.
There's also the overall issue whether bows would be all that great for shorter-limbed beings like dwarves and hobbits. If crossbows existed in Middle-earth (not counting rare appearances in the films), I think dwarves and hobbits would inclinate towards these. Tolkien purposefully excluded crossbows from the various cultures' arsenals because they didn't fit the tone he was using for the setting (mostly reminescent of the early Middle Ages, even in the late Third Age).
Thanks for your comment!
DeleteI agree with you about the dwarven broadheads. These are probably speciality tips for small game hunting arrows. Maybe Kili was hunting small game while on their trip, that would be reasonable? On the other hand he could've just used "regular" arrow tips of bladed forms, that could be used both for hunting and in war. Since they expected to get into fighting, those would have served more purposes than these flat ones.
I have also learned more about two finger releases during the seven years after the posting of this article. And you are right that they were used, although more in some other than in European medieval context.
Interesting point about the arm length of the dwarves (and hobbits) being unsuitable for archery. Probably there are short armed archers in the modern world, but do they have the same capabilities as longer armed archers? Where goes the line when your arms are too short? It certainly decreases the maximum possible draw-length, which decreases the power you can get from a certain bow.
Then again, longer arms help immensely in sword fighting too, and fighting in general, so being short (and short handed) is just an all-around disadvantage. Crossbows would of course work, but as you said yourself, Tolkien wanted to exclude them, since they are too late Medieval in his early Medieval world setting. Crossbows however belong to the arsenal of dwarves in many other fantasy products, mainly because they are more mechanical, and thus are more "suitable" to dwarves than for example the nature loving elves in people's minds.