The archer, i.e. the person with the bow and arrow, has been around for many centuries, millennia even, and they’ve been around in films for about as long as there’ve been movies. But, it seems, most of what we think of when we see someone pull an arrow from a quiver and fire it from a longbow is actually just a myth perpetuated by Hollywood to make things to look good. And, nowadays, archers in the real world just shoot at targets; they aren’t the quick-thinking, quick-reflexed warriors they once had to be. That’s where Danish self-taught archer Lars Andersen comes into the picture, showing off his skills with what he thinks old-timey bowmen must surely have had to do to not die, and to take out as many opponents as possible.
With characters like Hawkeye, Green Arrow, and Legolas on our screens again, the archer has made a huge resurgence, and while pretty much everybody says Legolas does it wrong (and he totally does), Oliver Queen and Clint Barton don’t necessarily do it any better. The below video shows Andersen’s debunking of the improper ways and shows us things like why quivers are actually not practical, why distance isn’t always as important as speed, and why it’s probably best to shoot with both eyes open.
Though fictional characters might not be legitimate archers, I think we can agree that they don’t look nearly as silly as Andersen does pretty much all the time, though he shoots amazingly well with a bow.
HT: Reddit
Few points here: Archers normally shoot with both eyes open, especially with traditional bows, which do not have sights.
Quivers have been used by many, many societies for thousands of years. They’re only problematic if you’re hopping around like a cartoonish moron, like Lars does in the video. Quivers are in fact very useful if you want to carry more than a handful of arrows. Shooting the way Lars does, you’d be out of arrows in a couple of seconds.
In actual battle, real archers didn’t hop around shooting in all sorts of directions, nor did they catch arrows. Nor did they (generally) shoot this fast. Lars is using a very light bow to do something called trick shooting. It’s an entertaining thing to watch, but would be fairly valueless in, say, medieval Europe, where plate armor and very stout, heavy longbows were the technology of the day. Let’s put Lars there, with his little light recurve and his bouncy antics, and no quiver. He’d fire off his five or six arrows in a couple seconds, which would hit their targets, and bounce off causing no damage. He’d then be unarmed in the middle of a battle with folks who have actual skill at killing other people. The enemy forces would have heavy longbows with armor penetrating bodkins on the ends of their arrows, and quivers with lots and lots of arrows in them. They would also be shooting at LONG RANGE, so as to not get killed by other soldiers armed with close range weapons.
There are some cultures where some of his techniques were used, such as firing on the same side of the bow as the draw arm. This is common in Asian cultures. It doesn’t really make you shoot faster or slower, though, and there are other trick shooters who can fire just as quickly as our little bulshitter here from the opposite side of the bow.
TL;DR: He didn’t do any actual research, and his claims are silly. He’s a talented trick shooter, with nothing of value to say about history or archery myths.
His video tells a lot of outright historical lies, and if you know anything about archery you know his technique is fucking terrible. His footage is incredibly edited.
This link is right at the end of this video explaining why, while his trick shooting is neat, everything else is total BS. Basically, be skeptical of anyone and anything that claims “everything you knew about X is wrong” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDbqz_07dW4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDbqz_07dW4#t=76
Prepare to be pissed at Lars,He conned all of you.
Danish “Archer” Demonstrates Gullibility of Audience
http://geekdad.com/2015/01/danish-archer/
Prepare to be pissed at Lars,He conned all of you.
Danish “Archer” Demonstrates Gullibility of Audience
http://geekdad.com/2015/01/danish-archer/
Please read this very well-written, detailed analysis by a professional archer that outlines everything wrong with this video, including its supposed “historically accurate” styles.
geekdad.com/2015/01/danish-archer
This guy should be one of the guy in Arrow tv show.
that’s insane! wow!
Sorry to be a spoilsport but this has <a href=”http://geekdad.com/2015/01/danish-archer/”>already been debunked by Geek Dad</a>.
If you liked that you might like this parody of it: http://youtu.be/peob993CNUk – Montgomery Rasp: a new level of lacing
Not sure why what he’s doing would be any less impressive now that I’ve read some people criticize it for what it’s not.
I follow Geek Dad but I’m actually more bothered by his over the top attack on a guy who doesn’t profess to be anything more than a fun-loving enthusiast and curious learner. Lars has actually developed some fun and unique skills – and of course the video is edited. Geek Dad, on the other hand is a professed expert archer. He actually comes off as being a little jealous that he doesn’t have a viral video of his own. Put one out there, Geek Dad