Talk:Blood eagle

Hutton Reference
I wouldn't trust Hutton's views in this regard since the cited book is little more than a polemic filled with logical fallacies, such as Special Pleading! Indeed, Hutton is dismissive of the evidence of the Blood Eagle because the scholar he's criticizing didn't conform to some pedantic rule artificially imposed Hutton; a rule that Hutton breaks and does not himself follow a few pages afterward when he commits the same thing he charges the other scholar of doing! Hutton is really an unreliable scholar when it comes to ancient paganism and should be taken with a HEAVY pinch of salt!

Such "unreliable scholars" who dare to have an opposing bias to the writers of historical record are themselves the pinch of salt that anybody should take with the many outlandish libels written by ecclesiastic "scholars" of the pagan religions they put to the sword.71.89.24.41 (talk) 23:58, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Archaeology?
One thing might settle this dispute: have any skeletons been found in Viking graves with bone damage of the sort described? Anthony Appleyard 22:05, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Citations, etc.
I am re-arranging the presentation of the citations, following Wikipedia's style guide: Never Start With Skaldic Poetry Ethan Mitchell 16:38, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Skaldic Poetry does not define a Blood Eagle.

I visited York, England about twenty years ago. There was a 'dungeon museum' in the city, which displayed different tortures associated with the history of York. The 'Blood Eagle' stands out in my memory over all the others. They showed a wax figure of a man nailed to a cross, his chest cavity opened up, and above his head was nailed his bloodied ribs. I am not sure, but I thought that the ribs were severed on each side and then pulled away by the sternum. They were nailed in an inverted position, so that the sternum resembled the body, the ribs the wings. It looked like the stylized eagles seen on some European coats of arms. It was not clear if the victim was alive when this was done, and I pondered how long he might have lived. . . I thought that the organs were left in tact. It left such a strong visual impression upon me, I assume it was an effective way to terrorize the population.

Thoracic surgeon help needed
A thoracic surgeon would be able to say whether this procedure – bringing lungs out through a wound without pulling them off their attachments – is possible. If you are a thoracic surgeon you can help clear this myth up! BlueValour 23:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Who ever said they were not pulled off their attachments? If they were ever extracted in the first place, it was likely as a coup de grace, with no attempts at keeping the trachea (or main bronchial tract) intact. --Svartalf 04:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

There also seems to be many different assumptions of how the procedure was carried out (none of which really make sense anatomically). If you cut the ribs from the back and pull out the lungs you don't get wings of ribs or flesh, you just get some wounds with blobs of lung flesh (which do not resemble wings at all). Lungs are soft and actually quite small when not filled with air. If you open up the chest cavity from the front you get a gaping wound, but no wings. However, if you cut the ribs from the spine, from behind, then open the chest cavity from the front, you might get something like wings (though the ribs will stay curved) but the victim would have been long dead by that point and the whole process would be more taxadermy than torture (plus, the "salt in the wounds" comments would not make much sense). Also it should be noted that once the lungs are traumatically disturbed unconciousness/death occurs very quickly from asphyxiation. Furthermore, it seems that if the term "eagle" is to be used this procedure must have resulted in something more than a victim laying face down with some bloody innards protruding a few inches out of two wounds along the spine. I'd like to see an attempt to sketch/draw this procedure. —Preceding CS_Weaver comment added 13:54, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Removed from execution methods
I've removed the references to this being an execution method. If the blood eagle was real, it was simply a way of torturing prisoners to death. It wasn't a judicial punishment inflicted for a crime; thus it's not an execution. Pirate Dan 21:34, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Whichever way you turn it, the goal of the procedure was execution. I have reverted your edit, because you made it out to be "only" torture.--Berig 21:46, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Poor article
This is another article which seems to be built on some editor's (or editors') personal interpretation of saga material. That is, it is original research. Is there any modern historian who thinks that this is not all based on a medieval misunderstanding? I never saw one yet, and this doesn't cite any. Angus McLellan (Talk) 12:51, 29 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree, but unfortunately I am not familiar with scholarly expertise in the matter. Since the article mainly concerns British sources, and you are more familiar with such matters, maybe you could provide some scholarly opinions on it.--Berig (talk) 13:28, 29 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not an expert, and I freely acknowledge that I am strongly prejudiced against treating saga as historical narrative. Still, I'll have a go. Angus McLellan (Talk) 13:44, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I have never seen you POV-push in that direction. I am personally a fan of legends generally, and I think that sagas have great value in themselves, whether every element is historical or not. I consider them to be in a grey zone between fact and fiction, like most medieval chronicles. Historical reliability is something that comes in degrees, even within a given source.--Berig (talk) 14:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Sarum_(novel) had the viking blood eagle mentioned if I remember correctly. Rutherfurd claimed to have heavily researched and authenticate details as much as possible - perhaps a reference is in there.  Piandao   21:39, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

This article has no original sources, and should be flagged because there is no proof that blood eagling ever took place. Every 'source' that can be cited does not claim first hand knowledge. Romantically violent yes, but worthy of a Wikipedia article, I think not. Kadathdreamques (talk) 02:50, 31 August 2010 (UTC)


 * The long list (not selective enough, in my opinion) of references in fiction alone demonstrates that it is a cultural phenomenon, whether it existed historically or not. It has also been subject to a scholarly debate spanning at least a half-dozen articles and books, in which two schools developed, one represented by Roberta Frank suggesting that it was all mistranslation and 'hey, look what our silly pagan ancestors got up to', and the other represented by Alfred Smyth, who took it as authentic and interpreted several other executions that were not all that similar in their surviving renderings as poorly described examples of the same authentic pagan rite.  That these serious historians dedicated journal articles or book chapters to the subject would likewise seem sufficient to justify a page.  Your problem would seem to be that we have no first-person testimony, but that is not a requirement for a Wikipedia article. Agricolae (talk) 07:38, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Fiction trivia
The Fiction section amounts to nothing more than an indiscriminate list of some extremely trivial popular culture references. At a minimum it needs pared down, if not completely eliminated. I have moved it here for the time being, but only significant mentions should be restored, rather than every book/movie/show/song that ever mentioned it - it's not like the page on Vikings lists every book and movie that names vikings. Agricolae (talk) 23:11, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I concur. I came here to explain the pop culture tag I just placed on it, but apparently this has been an ongoing problem for over five years. I don't know who unilaterally replaced this meandering unsourced list and for what justification after Agricolae removed it, but I am commenting it out. - CompliantDrone (talk) 14:53, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

In fiction

 * Seamus Heaney mentions the blood eagle in his work Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces: "With a butcher's aplomb / they spread out your lungs / and made you warm wings / for your shoulders."
 * Thomas Harris mentions the blood eagle in his novel Hannibal. When Hannibal Lecter arrives back in the United States, he murders his twenty-seventh victim, a deer hunter, and arranges the corpse like the blood eagle.
 * The Silence of the Lambs portrays the blood eagle, of the man found in Lecters cell, hanging from the ceiling.
 * R. A. MacAvoy portrays a blood eagle performed on a sacrificial victim in the fantasy novel Book of Kells.
 * Alan Moore mentions the blood eagle in his novel Voice of the Fire, in the chapter entitled "November Saints".
 * The blood eagle also appears in Edward Rutherfurd's novel Sarum.
 * Annie Dillard's novel The Living includes the blood eagle.
 * Craig Russell has written a detective novel, Blood Eagle, set in modern-day Hamburg involving a serial killer who murders his victims in the style of the blood eagle.
 * The Night Lords Chaos Space Marines are known to tear open their POWs' rib cages and crucify them to their tanks, as described in the Warhammer 40,000 novel Nighbringer by Graham McNeill.
 * In the historical novel Conscience of the King by Alfred Duggan, the main character, Cerdic, relates how Gertrude, sister of King Oisc of Kent, became pregnant, which infuriated Oisc because of the potential threat to his own line. She was consequently branded with the blood eagle.
 * Harry Harrison's Hammer and Cross series has at least one character killed by this means.
 * Guy Gavriel Kay mentions the blood eagle in The Last Light of the Sun.
 * There is a historical scene within Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods, in which several Norse warriors who travel to America seize a Native American brave and perform the blood eagle upon him to mark their passage into the New World.
 * There is a reference to this practice on the website for the film Pathfinder.
 * In the horror film Saw III, Detective Kerry is killed in a trap similar to the blood eagle.
 * The fantasy novel Northern Lights mentions creatures called the "Breathless Ones", who are essentially living-dead victims of the blood eagle.
 * In the crime fiction The Tunnels by Michelle Gagnon, at least two of the victims found had the blood eagle performed upon them.
 * In the fantasy novel When Death Birds Fly by Andrew J. Offut and Keith Taylor, writing a continuation of Robert E. Howard's Cormac Mac Art character, the blood eagle is used at the end on the main antagonist.
 * David Gibbins mentions the blood eagle extensively in his book Crusader Gold in reference to Halfdan, son of King Haraldr Hárfagri of Norway. Also, one of the book's characters has the blood eagle performed on him.
 * Stephen Baxter mentions the blood eagle in his science fiction book Conqueror several times, including a detailed description of the ritual.
 * Mercedes Lackey mentions the ritual in her novel Burning Water. In it, the protagonist Diana Tregarde describes it as the act of slicing the victim's back between the ribs and then pulling out the lungs through the slits. The victim is then left to die over a period of "usually hours to days."
 * The character of Starkad in Robert Low's The Wolf Sea is killed by means of the blood eagle.
 * Robert E. Howard mentions the blood eagle in some of his stories dealing with the character Cormac Mac Art.
 * Italian epic doom metal band Doomsword have a song entitled "Blood Eagle" on the Let Battle Commence album. This song is about King Ælla's death.
 * There is a song entitled "Bloode Eagle" by the German metal band Stormwarrior. "The blade awaits thee / thy back shalle be slit / The bloode-dripping lobe of thy lunges / Builde a pair of wings / Delivered to Odinn..."
 * In J.D. Rhoades's crime fiction novel Breaking Cover, the leader of a biker gang orders two people killed using the blood eagle, which he read about in prison.
 * In Fox's TV series Bones, in the episode "Mayhem on a Cross", the team discovers a body which was treated to this blood eagle torture technique.
 * In the title story of Wells Tower's Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned collection, Tower describes the performance of the blood eagle by a band of marauding Vikings.
 * The black metal / grindcore band Anaal Nathrakh has a song titled "Blood Eagles Carved on the Backs of Innocents" which appears on the album In the Constellation of the Black Widow.
 * Tom Knox describes the action of a Blood Eagle Sacrifice in great detail in his novel The Genesis Secret
 * Charles Stross mentions the blood eagle as a method of torture in his science-fiction/fantasy series The Merchant Princes
 * in Highlander the series episode Homeland Kanwulf the viking performs the blood eagle in the hope it would help him find a axe taken from him by Duncan Macleod 400 years earlier
 * On the Spike tv show, 1000 Ways to Die, a Viking king returns from a marauding campaign to find his younger brother raping the queen, and he executes him by performing the blood eagle.
 * In "An Echo in the Bone" by Diana Gabaldon, Lord Ellesmere mentions it as a particularly savage form of execution performed by Germanic troops.
 * In the horror movie Midsommar (2019), one of the students is a victim of the Blood Eagle.

The article is a complete nonsense
Let's clarify first how the lungs work normally. The thorax is expanded by the diaphragm moving down and the intercostal muscles pushing the ribs apart. That increases the volume of the thorax and also expands the lungs so the air goes to the lungs through the mouth, nose, thacheea, etc. The air goes INSIDE the lungs and oxygenates the blood. The lungs are not attached to the ribs. Moreover there's a pleural fluid acting as a lubricant to allow a smooth sliding of the lungs along the ribs.

As soon as an opening is performed in the thorax, the air will not go anymore the normal way. It will take the shorter way through that opening and will go between the lungs and the ribs. That's because the lungs are not secured to the ribs. In this case the thorax will expand but the lungs won't. The air will go into the thorax, but OUTSIDE the lungs, so it will not oxygenate the blood anymore.

As soon as the cutting operation will begin, the victim will suffocate. He will die long before the difficult and time consuming operation of cutting the ribs can be completed.

Let's add that it takes a highly skilled surgeon to cut the ribs without cutting the lungs. Since all the blood goes through the lungs, any cut of the lungs will cause a massive bleeding that will shorten even more that few seconds of survival. Not to mention that the blood will also flood the lungs by exiting the blood vessels and filling the spaces reserved for the air.

As a method of torture, the blood eagle is impossible. It can be used only to kill somebody in seconds. Srelu (talk) 00:26, 14 December 2011 (UTC) 99.255.239.40 (talk) 00:17, 14 December 2011 (UTC)


 * That may all be the case, but the article discusses a cultural, and not a medical, phenomenon. In other words, it need not be true, it just needs to have been believed to be true.  It would be useful, though, if you had a citation from the medical literature that specifically addresses why the ritual of the Blood Eagle is physiologically problematic. Agricolae (talk) 16:20, 24 April 2012 (UTC)


 * A citation is not needed: this is basic physiology. Opening the thorax and exposing the lungs implies lack of breath; no breathing implies death in a few minutes. You call it "blood eagle"? Fine, the physiology is not affected by the name you give to the procedure. How can I explain? If I said "in an ancient rite called The Flying Maids, chosen girls from richer villages would fly for about 5 minutes", you would not require a specific reference to "Flying Maids" in a Physics book to say that's physically impossible. Right?
 * Any physiology textbook could serve as "citation", like "Ganong's Review of Medical Physiology, 24th Edition" or any other.


 * We don't need a citation for maids not being able to fly because we don't feel the need to explain this, any more than that we feel the need to explain that there isn't a giant snake that encircles the earth, or that a giant beanstalk to the sky could not support the weight of a boy, or that there really isn't a giant blue ox that could carve the grand canyon by pulling a plow. We discuss legends as legends, we do not carry out our own pointless analysis of how we think they deviate from reality.  It is not the article that is complete nonsense, it is the legend, but then, most legends are complete nonsense.  Agricolae (talk) 00:06, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Rísta blóðörn
In Norse (and Icelandic) the words used are: RÍSTA BLÓÐÖRN: explained as: skera rifin frá hryggnum á e-m og draga út lungun = cut the ribs from somebody´s back and force (draw) out the lungs. / RÍSTA BLÓÐÖRN Á BAKI E-M: sbr: blóðörn, m. Blodørn; rísta blóðörn á baki e-m var en Maade, hvorpaa man dræbte sine i Strid fangne Fiender og ofrede dem til Guderne: hann brá þá saxi ok reist blóðörn á baki honum ok skar öll rifin frá hryggnum ok dró þar út lungun. / Að rísta blóðörn translates: TO SLASH A BLOODEAGLE. - and "að rísta blóðörn á baki e-m" translates: to slash a bloodeagle on someones back. In Fritzner´s dictionary these words are translated in Norwegian as: a mode one killed one´s enemies in war to sacrifice them to the Gods. --194.144.212.210 (talk) 13:12, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Possible similarities with Chinese torture?
In Chinese torture there's a parallel method of torture which is called 開膛破肚 or "opening the chest and splitting the stomach", the Chinese wiki link is here: http://www.baike.com/wiki/%E5%BC%80%E8%86%9B%E7%A0%B4%E8%82%9A

Could this be incorporated with the article too? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pappymu (talk • contribs) 15:40, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

prevalence of corporal / capital punishments in celtic and nordic cultures?
I am curious as to the legal justice systems in ancient europe, i have read that the celts practice mostly tort law, i.e. money compensation for crimes.

There were relatively violent and sadistic tribes in europe that were interested in violence, and relatively peaceful ones that focused more on nature and spirits. A parallel can be found in Amerindian tribes, almost all tribes were relatively war like, a man was measured by his warrior conquests, that he would dance and recount around the fire, and taking of slaves from other tribes... this was prevalent in most of america i have read, however when the europeans arrived, they introduced scalping to count number of indians killed by poachers for rewards, i have read that is where scalping may have come from... and it is not said that the american indians were generally sadistic, only some tribes were sadistic, and other's weren't... only a small number of american tribes were known for torturing captured victims. I am curious therefore as to the tribal prevalence of different levels of peaceful and war like behaviours in europe, the distribution and nature of their attitudes to corparal punishment, perhaps it's not really documented.

I thought that they found a corpse in a peat bog in england/ireland where the cut was made along the thorax, and was attributed to blood eagle. here it sais they took the lungs from the back. The back of the lungs is home to major veins and arteries, and even the expert butchers that the warmonging tribes were, it would be very tedious and difficult to cut ribs at the back, they are attached by the sternum at the level of the lungs, and so you coulnt move them unless they were floating ribs. Furthermore, it would be almost impossible to do avoid killing someone by cutting ribs near the spine, as blood loss and arterial pressure would make the death anywhere between 10 seconds and loss of conciousness 20 minutes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.88.135.133 (talk) 18:34, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Is this the same as spatchcocking, just in a different context?
Is this the same as spatchcocking, just in a different context? It sounds like basically the same operation as spatchcocking, except done in the context of execution rather than food preparation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.106.18.48 (talk) 07:28, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I've only tried it once, but it was finger-lickin' good.

New study
See. News article: Sizeofint (talk) 02:10, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I saw this reported, but only in the form of a regurgiscience writeup based on a press release from the institution of the authors. This seems to be of higher quality, but we shouldn't overplay it - the conclusion is that, in the authors' opinion, it is physiologically possible. Agricolae (talk) 22:05, 10 January 2022 (UTC)