An adversary who engaged in combat with the Vikings and was subsequently caught ran the danger of having his final moments on earth be more excruciating than death itself, according to some accounts.
Legend has it that the Vikings resorted to the gruesome practice of blood eagle as a means of punishing captured enemy.
According to historians, the blood eagle was mentioned as a means of death in a total of nine mediaeval sources: seven from Old Norse and one from Latin. Only a few accounts provide any detail about the technique beyond the fact that the Vikings would carve an eagle-like design upon the victim's back.
Some accounts go into more depth, detailing how the Vikings sever the condemned man's ribs from his spine from behind. The inmate's ribs were subsequently bent to one side, and his lungs were then extracted from behind and fanned out like an eagle's wings.
A work by the skald Sigvat Tordarson (ca. 995-1045) is one of the places where the blood eagle is mentioned. He states in it: "And Ivar, who was staying in York, cut an eagle on Ælla's back."
Since no fossil of a human having been beheaded by a blood eagle has ever been unearthed, it is impossible to say whether or not this brutal practice ever occurred. The technique may be technically possible, nonetheless, if the Vikings so desired.
A study that looked at whether the Vikings could have performed a blood eagle was released in December 2021 by a research team that included doctors, anatomy experts, and a historian.
The Pope authorized the inquisitors to employ torture without limitations in their persecution of heretics, ushering in a bleak period in human history. By simulating the severe wounds digitally, the researchers came to the conclusion that the Vikings might have executed a blood eagle using modern weaponry.
But before the whole rite could be performed, the victim would probably die of blood loss or asphyxiation.