This time I have asked National Representative of Sweden - Loke Juul about the Swedish buhurt scene!
So to begin with, the sport of Buhurt had a very slow start in Sweden. When I joined the Swedish Buhurt team, Swedish Medieval Armored Combat, back in 2015 - 2016, we only had two teams and around 10 armored fighters in total. Now we have 6 teams with around sixty members and ~40 armored fighters that are active. A few years before and during the plague years, Sweden was sadly split into two groups, The HMB and IMCF. Internal turmoil didn't exactly help our young sport to grow, and it wasn't until the end of 2022 - my last year as Chairman, we finally managed to unite all the Swedish Buhurt teams into the same national organisation again.
Me and our coach have created our team, Scania Jacks around the same time as we joined S.M.A.C in 2015. In the first years we focused mostly on IMCF, but in recent years we started going for HMB, later Buhurt international. In 2020 I was elected captain for the Swedish National Team and I've held that ever since.
Last year I decided to finally open up a youth soft combat group and with new members joining our teams every other month, and the fact that we are now starting to see Swedish teams joining international tournaments again, the future starts to look bright!