A few months back, a Danish archer named Lars Andersen made a video where he showed off a number of nifty bow and arrow techniques and claimed that many of the Hollywood depictions of archers and archery were, in fact, not how historical archers had actually fired arrows. While most of us regarded this video with a mixture of “Oh, that’s interesting” and “Wow, who has time to learn all of that?”, many took to the comment boards and made videos of their own attempting to debunk Andersen’s video, including Jim MacQuarrie at GeekDad who wrote a scathing indictment of Andersen, calling most of his video “nonsense.”
I personally got tweeted at by several people, several times (a stupid amount, really), trying to get me to watch their rebuttal video because I had written Nerdist’s initial article about the Lars Andersen video. These people spoke as though I were perpetuating a lie as great as Oswald acting alone and when I didn’t respond, I was accused of being “afraid” to admit the truth. Little did any of these people know that the real truth is I didn’t give anything approaching a solitary fart about archery or this video. However, Andersen himself DOES.
The cause of the outrage has made a video answering some of his biggest critics and proving some of the theories and practices he puts forth. He also does a little bit of mea culpa regarding some of the editing that makes him look more badass than he actually is. He tackles allegations that firing an arrow on the right side wouldn’t work, that the books Arab Archery and Saracen Archery are the only real texts about the subject, and that he didn’t invent the methods he describes, which he (in the subsequent video) freely admits.
Watch the video above and let Lars Andersen himself refute or confirm some of the criticisms that the wildly popular internet phenomenon has brought forth. If you still think he’s full of Danish beans, discuss it in the comments below. But don’t tweet me about it; I’ve fired an arrow maybe 5 times in my life, in sixth grade. I’m no expert.
