The thing about the back carry thing for me is: why not have a hole cut so that the blade can come out after you’ve pulled it out straight like usual? I mean, look at the long sword design for monster hunter world. It’s absurdly large (but what isn’t in that game), but it displays what I’m talking about perfectly, at least in the case of the bone shotel. I hope you’ll point out anything wrong with my observation
I have no idea about MHW, I’ afraid, so cannot judge.
But if you mean something like this…
I mean, technically if you wanted to do it that way, you could. But it’s still putting your sword out of easy reach, drawing it requires being widely open to attack, and doesn’t allow you to make an effective fast attack from a normal stance and position as opposed to the hip draw or shouldering position.
“Western” back-carry is a Fantasy Thing.
It started, IMO, with the Schwarzenegger “Conan the Barbarian” movie in 1982.
There may have been comic or book-cover images before then, but I doubt it. I haven’t gone through my Marvel “Conan the Barbarian / Savage Sword of Conan” comics, but I’ve checked my bookshelves and seen nothing on covers painted by Achilleos, Frazetta, Froud, Jones, Matthews, Woodroffe – basically most of the fantasy artists of the 1970s.
I’m fairly sure “Conan” either started the back-carry business in 1982, or was at least the first time it got noticed by a non-genre mass
audience. I added an extra image of the sword to show what’s behind his shoulder. It’s much more obvious in other scenes.
Conan, Valeria and Subotai frequently back-carry their swords at various points in the film, but never draw from that position – I checked, at 15x speed. Indeed before the Big Fight at Thulsa Doom’s orgy, Conan very obviously brings his sheathed sword down from his back and just as obviously secures the scabbard at his waist, using its shoulder-strap to cinch everything tight. He even draws his sword before the fight begins.
There are Japanese woodblock pictures of samurai and ninja with back-carry, but always with emphasis on the “carry” and no indication the swords were meant to be drawn from there. These two images show ōdachi
(the Japanese equivalent of a greatsword or claymore; “ōdachi”
and “claymore” both mean ‘big / great sword”), and the BW drawing is almost certainly the back view of a “how to tie your sword on with a quick-release knot” diagram from a military manual.
Some other Asian cultures also apparently had back-carry; this (modern?) Thai statue shows double back carry, but AFAIK
the swords couldn’t be drawn from this position. They’re too long to draw either straight up or tipped forward, and the forward-from-horizontal is a scary form of draw which brings the edge of any sword – in a drawing motion that’s also a slicing motion – far too close to its wielder’s neck, jugular and carotid.
That risk of doing an enemy’s job for them is another sound reason against a draw from back-carry, even with a blade short enough to do it. Non-fantasy historical warriors (who didn’t do it at all) knew perfectly well why they didn’t.
I’ve never, EVER seen back-carry portrayed in Western medieval or Renaissance art, or photos of real historical back-carry harness. If all the posts expended on “but I / this re-enactor I know can draw a medieval sword from back-carry” had been energy spent on finding historical evidence that back-carry existed not just BC (Before “Conan”) but 500+ years ago, we might actually know something real.
The quarter-scabbard with crossguard-hooks of @we-are-knight‘s original post is also a Fantasy Thing, emphasised by use of a two-hand Highland claymore (a sword specific to period, region and dress) in combination with a distinctly non-specific, thoroughly generic, Romantic foofy shirt.
Even in fantasy that quarter-scabbard makes no sense, since the purpose of a sword’s scabbard is to protect people from the edges of the blade and the blade from wet and weather, either by a close fit at the throat or by flaps either extending upward from the scabbard…
…or downward from the sword-hilt, like this one from the Musée Cluny in Paris.
This one from the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum
in Munich…
…has its hilt leatherwork extended into a little cap, which this beautiful repro shows in place.
In the game “Witcher”, not one but two swords as big as the real longswords above are back-carried and also, apparently, drawn from the back-carry position, but it’s a cheat. The link is to YouTube; here are three stills.
When the character starts their draw, the CGI scabbard simply fades from around the CGI sword-blade. If only real life back-draw was that easy…
Theis live-action version is done with edits – three separate shots, or four if you count the hiccup that included two almost identical close-ups, but definitely not a single unbroken take.
The viewer’s mind fills in what the viewer’s eye thinks it’s seen – which BTW is
why it’s so easy to miss spelling mistakes while editing text…
Back-carry also features in TV’s “Game of Thrones”, where it seems to be such a trademark of Sandor “The Hound” Clegane that it even turns up in caricatures…
I once saw this photo of The Hound with someone’s comment along the lines of “the way he wears that sword on his back is so cool…”
So Rule of Cool means back-carry is here to stay, and people try hard to make it work because it looks cool, and cool is never wrong.
Just don’t put it in something trying to be historically accurate, please.
Even in fantasy, swords shouldn’t be drawn from the back-carry position without a carefully-described special scabbard like that on in the OP image, and a good reason why someone thinks that telegraphing their draw while exposing their armpit (a vulnerable point even in full plate) is a good idea.
Of course history has had special kinds of warrior – berserkers, English longbowmen, Landsknecht Doppelsoldners – with special mental or physical characteristics, and fantasy has had vat-bred Uruk-Hai, trained-from-infancy Unsullied and so on.
It’s not unreasonable to create a race or subspecies with the proper anatomy for drawing big swords worn on their backs.
Start here…
Also, FWIW, as someone who’s done a fair bit of archery (and historical archery research), the same stuff goes for back-carry of arrow quivers. Maybe a way to get things where they’re going, impractical for actual use once you’re there. Since arrows are shorter than swords, some folks can manage, but it’s slow and clumsy. There’s a reason most historical illustrations of archers have arrows carried at belt level. Robin Hood movies are LIES.
If you really want arrows at your back, you can stick them through your belt the way this gal is doing, which is very effective and my fave form of carry on the range (though how she’s managing to do this when she doesn’t have an external belt on is a mystery only the illuminator can explain):
Another common style of belt carry:
A nice belt quiver:
On horseback:
At the bottom, crossbow bolts in a belt quiver, arrows stuck in the ground for fast access:
This is one of very few images used to justify back quivers, and to me it looks like a belt quiver the guy’s slung around his neck for some reason (sudden attack?)
Anyway, I could go on, but I don’t want to make this post too huge.
The-Lounge 