The Dawn Duellists Society (DDS) is a non-profit, member run HEMA club. DDS was formed in Edinburgh in 1994 at the very start of the modern HEMA revivial.
DDS is currently an unincorportated organisation, and is pursuing becoming a SCIO.
Our members
A society or club is nothing without its members and since our humble start all those years ago DDS membership has grown, attracting many new students who share the desire and enthusiasm to learn more about the use of the sword in Europe and HEMA in general.
The Dawn Duellists now number around fifty regular members from widely differing backgrounds, all united by a common interest in the understanding and practice of the art.
What we do
The Dawn Duellists continue to study the martial art of historical swordsmanship and have expanded into other related HEMA disciplines over the years. The aim of the DDS is, after all, to allow its members to study the aspects of historical fencing and European martial arts that appeal most to them. We are fortunate that the group has grown during a wider global revival of the study of historical fencing and Western martial arts in general, facilitated greatly by the rise of the internet.
This has enabled us to study treatises and manuals that, even 15 years ago, were almost completely inaccessible because they were only to be found as original copies in a worldwide network of private collections, museums and libraries. Now that a lot of them have been made available electronically, we and others like us across the world can study manuals and discuss the techniques within them freely.
The study of the written word of the old masters is only the start of what the DDS does. We strongly believe in training regularly and properly in order to put our knowledge into practice in a manner as closely resembling the training of the duelling arts of the past as possible.
To accomplish this, we hold weekly classes and frequent workshops, and many or our instructors and senior members travel to receive training from experts across the world. The Dawn Duellists also run and host national historical fencing events, attended by novices and experts from all over the UK and sometimes from even further afield.