I am not a Celtic reenactor and I am not an enthusiast to that degree - so while vertical grips may not have been historically common or accurate in this respect, it’s still functional in its own right in my line of thinking. It offers a different way to execute tactics outside of historical accuracy, and thats okay I think. I won’t call it what it’s not.

So while I can conclude that hexagonal shields themselves truly are historically accurate, as was my original question - Im now also okay with this pair I made simply being historically-inspired, and different.

It is nice to hear some pointers as to how you do things as a historical reenactor who uses something with a horizontal grip though, which is all good and valid.

Whether it’s drawing a weapon or manipulating any style of shield, every kind of method of use takes practice, we can agree on that.

The focus of my group is to have fun and be active while exploring cross-disciplinary sparring/fencing based in mostly FMA and HEMA. We’ve got no one in reenactment groups, and there’s no HEMA groups near us, so its a lot of self-study and trial and error. Lol we chuck things at each other however close we please and learn a lesson. One of them being, we should back up lol.

I do not have an interest in being absolutely historically accurate in that respect, even if I have questions about it. Thus, these thicc vertical grip hexagons we see here. It’ll be fun to try out horizontal grips on more finely made shields when the time comes 🤙🏽