Vikings' 'blood eagle' torture was horrific -- and may have actually happened

By Mindy Weisberger published 1 day ago

It literally turned victims inside out.



A detail from a Viking-era picture stone in Gotland, Sweden, shows a ritual execution resembling a practice described in Nordic texts as the "blood eagle." (Image credit: Berig, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)


A brutal, ritualized method of torture and execution that was allegedly practiced by Nordic people during the Viking Age was so gruesome that some scholars questioned whether it was even possible to perform on a human body.

However, researchers recently found that the act known as blóðǫrn, or "blood eagle," was in fact anatomically possible and could have been performed with known Viking weapons.

According to descriptions of the blood eagle in poems and prose dating from the 11th century to the 13th century, victims were typically captured in battle. Captors would cut and open large flaps of skin and muscle from their living victim's back and then sever the ribs from the spine, opening the ribs out to the sides to form "wings." The torturer would then complete the ritual by pulling out the victim's intact lungs and laying them over the extended ribs (by this point, the victim was certainly deceased, the researchers wrote). Performing such a horrific act would have been "anatomically challenging" for the torturer — but it would not have been impossible, scientists reported in the January 2022 issue of Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies.

In the new study, the researchers evaluated the blood eagle practice by first analyzing human anatomy, breaking down the sequence of the torture step by step and approximating how it might have been accomplished in a public ritual. They then looked at weapons from that era, to see how diverse blades might have been used for a task so laborious and grisly.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/viking-blood-eagle-torture