Holmgang

What a holmgang actually was

A legal duel, not a brawl. A quarrel that could not be settled any other way was taken to a marked field — a hide pegged flat to the ground with hazel poles at its corners, which is where "hazelled field" comes from — and the two men fought inside it under rules everybody present already knew. Each man was allowed three shields. Stepping off the hide was a defeat, and it had a name of its own. It ended when one man had had enough, not when one man was dead.

That is the whole design of this game. It is not about who is faster. Both men can see exactly what is coming; what decides it is what each of them still has left to spend.

How the duel works, and why nothing is hidden

Every exchange tells you plainly what he is doing and which two of your three resources can answer it. He hews overhand — take it on a shield, or give ground. He thrusts low — give ground, or turn it aside. He binds your blade — turn it aside, or take it on a shield. There is no guessing and nothing to memorise.

The difficulty is the arithmetic underneath. You have three shields and three paces, and they do not come back. Turning a blade aside costs wind, which does. Taking a blow on a board or giving a pace earns you wind — so the cheap answers are the ones you have least of, and the answer you can always afford is the one that empties you.

Three marks, and only wind buys them

Four times in the twelve exchanges he is off balance and throws nothing. That is your only chance to strike, it costs wind, and you need three marks to win. Outlasting him is not beating him: twelve exchanges with two marks is a duel the judges part, and the quarrel is still standing when you go home.

So the whole game is a budget. Every board you break and every pace you give is wind in your chest for a strike later — and both run out.

The numbers were measured before the game was written

Twelve thousand duels were solved exhaustively before a line of the game existed, against three conditions set in advance: perfect play has to win, or a daily duel is an unfair one; obvious play has to lose often, or it is not a puzzle; and random play has to lose nearly always, or it is not a game. Perfect play wins 96.7% of days, the obvious line wins 46.7%, and random answers win 9.5%. If you lose one, it was losable and you had a better line.

The same duel for everybody, today

The order of the exchanges comes from the date, so every player anywhere fights the same man on the same day and can argue about the same exchange. Take the field again after you finish and you get a fresh one.

It runs in your browser and stays there

No account, no sign-in, no network. Your duel is a short code you can share; the link opens on what you did. There is no code on this page that could send anything anywhere — pages in this corner are forbidden to make requests at all, and a test enforces that rather than anybody remembering.

The hide is drawn with a 3D engine, and if your browser will not give the page a canvas the duel does not care: the exchange is described in words and the answers are buttons. It is the same duel either way.

Argue about it in the forum

The board's forum has a room for this. Post the exchange you lost it on and be told, at length, which board you should have broken instead.

This is fan-made, and unofficial

This is an unofficial fan game inspired by The Last Kingdom — the television series and the novels of Bernard Cornwell it is based on — naming the work, its setting and its premise under nominative fair use. It is a free, unofficial fan tribute, made for fun. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Carnival Film & Television, Netflix, or Bernard Cornwell and his publishers.

The holmgang itself is not anybody's invention: it is a historical Norse legal practice, recorded in the sagas and in law, and the rules used here — the hide, the hazels, the three shields — come from that history rather than from any adaptation of it. Every line of text in this game was written fresh for it. No dialogue, novel text, script text, scene, still, logo or artwork from any television series or book is reproduced anywhere in it. Iron Realms — the strategy game the rest of this site is about — is an original fantasy world with its own map, its own houses and its own art, and has no connection to the world of The Last Kingdom. This corner is kept separate on purpose, and nothing in it should be read as suggesting otherwise.

The rest of the corner

The Last Kingdom wing has Lord of Bebbanburg, Hold the Wall, the trivia rounds and the character pages. The fan tributes hub has the Westeros, Supernatural, King of the Hill and Fringe wings alongside this one, and the free tools that are not about anybody's fiction. If you would rather play something with a map in it, Iron Realms is free and runs in a browser tab.