Blood Eagle

Today I am discussing a little snippet, a slice (if you will), of an alleged Viking practice known as the Blood Eagle.

Featured prominently in modern portrayals of Viking culture, the Blood Eagle was a horrifying method of execution in which the victim’s entire back was split open (perhaps by a spear with a hook at the end), with the ribs then cut apart from the spine. After, the person’s lungs were drawn and laid out, and each rib was flayed open — the victim was thus turned into a grizzly representation of an eagle. (For a modern depiction, look at the next slide. Or don’t, because it’s gross.).

The poem _Orkneyinga Saga_ or _Harald’s Saga_ (ca 1200) describes it thus: “ribs cut from the spine with a sword, and the lungs pulled out through slits in his back.” Some historians have speculated that the Stora Hammars stone from the seventh century, the first image of this post, is a visual representation of the Blood Eagle.

While the Blood Eagle has snagged the attention of the public from Late Medieval Icelanders through the Victorians and up to modern viewers of the televised series _Vikings_, historians such as Roberta Frank have been arguing since the 1980s that it was an unlikely practice. The small handful of Medieval sources that mention it are almost all much later than the actual Viking era, and the one early 12th century source describing it does so in ambiguous language which might refer to an eagle tattooed on someone’s back.

A recent scholarly article involving medical historians does claim that anatomically, the ritual might have been possible, but that it was unlikely the victim would have been alive throughout the procedure (like the sources allege).

Regardless, the Medieval story of the Blood Eagle consistently refers to it being done as an act of righteous vengeance. Also, it was a religious sacrifice. Whether the Vikings actually did perform the Blood Eagle or not, later generations believed they did, and the accounts speak to the values of the Viking honor culture.