Jack Brown, Mitchell Glatzel and Noah Pongratz duel at Leif Erikson Park. When playing jugger they go by the names Dragon, Tumbles and Grub.

There’s a weekly sword fight at Leif Erikson Park in Duluth. Rolling, sliding and dodging blow after blow of foam attacks, three duelists who call themselves Dragon, Tumbles and Grub always draw a crowd of onlookers.

To the uninformed, the spectacle might seem like a form of live-action roleplay. But it would be more accurate to say Dragon and his crew have introduced a new sport to Duluth: jugger.

Mitchell Glatzel, aka Dragon, has been playing the sport since 2021. He took it up as a hobby while he was living in Denver and fell in love with the combination of exercise, teamwork and foam swordplay.

“Honestly, this is one of the most fun things I’ve done,” Glatzel said. “You get to meet a lot of great people, you get to be active, you get to do this fun thing that you wouldn’t think would be fun, but it totally is. It’s awesome.”

A game of jugger is ideally played with two teams of five and each team is composed of one “qwik” and four “enforcers.”

The qwik is the only team member without any form of weapon — no shield, no sword, no chain. The job of the qwik is to gain control of the ball in the middle of the field and get it to the end of the opposing team’s side for a point. The first team to score three points wins. Ideally, the qwik is nimble and, maybe unsurprisingly, quick footed.

Using their loadout of choice, the enforcers guard their qwik or hinder the advancement of the opposing team’s qwik. Any form of contact on the body with the opposing team’s foam equipment counts as a down. There is no minimum force required for a hit, a tap and a baseball-style swing-for-the-hills are counted just the same, though the latter won’t make many friends.

Glatzel persuaded passerby Dennette Lynch to spar with him in a first-to-five-point duel.

Jugger was created for the 1989 movie The Salute of the Jugger, which is titled The Blood of Heroes in the United States. Starring Rutger Hauer, the film depicts a post-apocalyptic wasteland where jugger is the world’s most popular sport, though the weapons aren’t foam in the movie. Teams compete with a dog skull taking the place of the ball. Many European and American professional teams use foam dog skulls as an homage to the movie. Glatzel also doesn’t own or use a dog skull, a foam football works just fine for him.

In lieu of the deadly weapons seen in the movie, players use harmless foam replacements for short swords, longswords and chains. A chain is a foam ball at the end of a rope similar in concept to a medieval flail but without the handle. When Glatzel first moved to Duluth, he needed to make new equipment to supply players with, but when Glatzel’s old jugger team heard he was starting a new league in Minnesota, they sent him a care package that provided all that was needed to equip two jugger teams and get a match going.

Jugger equipment is made by a stringent ruleset: all of a sword’s non-handle surface must be covered with foam, and it must be the correct type of foam. In addition, there must be no metal studs or rivets anywhere on the players’ equipment. These guidelines ensure the safety of everyone on the field.

“I’ve never gotten bruises or welts from any of the equipment that we’re using,” Glatzel said. “Everything’s really safe.”

Glatzel supplies all of the needed equipment to play jugger and hosts practices in front of the Leif Erikson Park amphitheater stage. With its two castle-style spires, few places in Duluth are more prime for a late-day sword fight. Located on Lakewalk, the public venue draws attention from all sorts of people passing through.

“I’d say that jugger is one of the best spectator sports of all time,” Glatzel said. “It is so entertaining to watch — and to play. But to watch is something else too, you never really see that kind of thing.”

Glatzel often convinces audience members to take up the foam sword and play a couple rounds of jugger, though he admitted to having difficulties with his player recruitment methods on at least one occasion.

Glatzel poses with jugger equipment.

“It was just me, I was standing there in the field and I’d holler at people ‘Hey, do you want to come fight?’ And that’s not something you should say. I changed that almost immediately,” Glatzel said.

When Dragon, Tumbles and Grub don’t have enough players to play jugger, they practice a form of foam fighting called belegarth. Another sport entirely separate from jugger, belegarth features full-contact battles and duels. Belegarth operates on a two-point system — a hit to a limb is worth one point, a body shot is worth two. A duelist is counted out upon receiving a hit to two limbs or a hit to the torso.

The force requirement for belegarth is different from jugger: taps don’t count, so using more force is recommended. A strike to a limb effectively removes it from play until the next round — a common tactic is to first go for an opponent’s leg, severely reducing mobility.

Jack Brown, known by his belegarth name “Tumbles,” started Twin Kingdoms Belegarth with the goal to get people involved with his favorite sport. Upon realizing the similarities in the sports, Brown and Glatzel merged their two operations.

As Glatzel describes it, jugger is more of a “shorts and T-shirt” type of game, though Brown has been known to wear a troll outfit while participating in belegarth and jugger matches.

Madeline Glatzel, Mitchell’s wife and frequent qwik player, gave her pitch as to why more people should be playing jugger.

“Give it a try,” she said. “It looks silly but it’s the type of silly fun that I think more adults need to be having.”

Practices have been held on Thursdays at 5 p.m. this summer, but are being moved to Sundays from noon to 2 p.m. starting Sept. 8. The location will continue to be Leif Erikson Park. Glatzel and Brown welcome newcomers of all ages and are ready to teach new players, no prior experience required.

To stay up-to-date on Duluth jugger news, follow the Minnesota Jugger Facebook page, where Glatzel announces game days and practices in Duluth and the Twin Cities. For more information about Brown’s belegarth league, follow Twin Kingdoms Belegarth on Facebook.