Such a weapon might even be depicted on a stone monument found on the Swedish island of Gotland, where a scene carved into the stone depicts something that could have been a blood eagle or other execution. We suspect that a particular type of Viking spearhead could have been used as a makeshift tool to “unzip” the rib cage quickly from the back. What we found was that the procedure itself would be difficult but far from impossible to perform, even with the technology of the time. Using modern knowledge of anatomy and physiology, alongside painstaking reassessment of the nine medieval accounts of the ritual, we investigated what effect a blood eagle would have had on the human body. A widely-held position is that the whole phenomenon is a misunderstanding of some complicated poetry, not something that could actually have been attempted.
Previous scholarship on the blood eagle has only ever focused on the details of medieval textual accounts of the torture, with long-running debates concentrating on the exact terms used to describe the “cutting” or “carving” of the eagle into the victim’s back. Our team, made up of medical scientists and a historian, bypassed the long-standing question of “did the blood eagle ever really happen?”, asking instead: “Could it have been done?” Our answer is a clear yes. However, our new study, takes an entirely new approach on the matter. So the bloody rite has been rejected as improbable, resulting from repeated misunderstandings of complex poetry and a desire by Christian writers to paint their Nordic attackers as barbaric heathens.
No archaeological evidence of the ritual has ever been found, and the Vikings themselves kept no records, listing their achievements only in spoken poetry and sagas that were first written down centuries later.
Blood eagle series#
The final fluttering of the lungs splayed out on the outspread ribs would supposedly resemble the movement of a bird’s wings – hence the eagle in the name.ĭepictions of the ritual have recently featured in the TV series Vikings and the video game Assassins Creed: Valhalla, as well as the 2019 Swedish horror film Midsommar.įor decades, researchers have dismissed the blood eagle as a legend. The ritual allegedly involved carving the victim’s back open and cutting their ribs away from their spine, before the lungs were pulled out through the resulting wounds. Particularly infamous is the so-called “blood eagle”, a gory ritual these warriors are said to have performed on their most hated enemies. Between the eighth and 11th centuries, these groups left their Nordic homelands to make their fortunes by trading and raiding across Europe. PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamyįamed for their swift longboats and bloody incursions, Vikings have long been associated with brutal, over-the-top violence. Jarl Borg is one of the victims of the Blood Eagle in the show Vikings.
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