The Asgarda is Ukraine’s very own brand of axe-wielding girl power: self-proclaimed descendants of the legendary Amazon warrior women who, according to myth, once roamed parts of what is now Ukraine.
Asgarda’s leader, Katerina Tarnovska, is a world champion kickboxer. Since 2002, she’s initiated well over a thousand girls into the Asgarda, which is both a philosophy and a fighting technique specifically tailored to the female form. According to Katerina, it’s the only martial art in the world exclusively for women.
We travelled to the Carpathian Mountains in Western Ukraine to attend one of Asgarda’s recruitment camps, where the ladies learn how to hack attackers with sabres, axes and scythes. We had imagined they would mostly be discussing things like what it’s like to be a woman in Ukraine’s patriarchal society – the country’s parliament is more than 90 percent male, and domestic violence is a major problem. But they were more concerned with how to win a warrior man’s heart and eerie nationalistic plans to breed a new generation of Ukrainian warriors.