The Bl*od Eagle: The M*st Brut*l Viking Execut*on Ever Described

Lothbrok, one of the most famous Vikings of the era. Ragnar had been captured after a catastrophically botched raid on Northumbria. And now his fate rests in the hands of King Aella. But what to do with this terrifying figure?

On the one hand, he’s far too dangerous to be set free. On the other, doing harm to this legendary Viking would most certainly come with consequences. After some consideration, King Aella figures that his best move is to bump Ragnar off, but to make sure it’s done in such a terrifying manner that no Viking will dare to approach Northumbria again.

A series of events are now set in motion, which will result in the Blood Eagle, perhaps the most terrifying death that anybody could imagine, in which a victim’s rib cage is opened from behind before the lungs are pulled out and draped over the exposed ribs, creating the impression of a set of bloody wings, flapping with each shallow breath, which inflates the lungs. All while the victim is still alive.

But it won’t be Ragnar Lothbrok who receives this punishment. For Ragnar, death comes in a slightly different flavor, and he’s tossed into a pit of venomous snakes, where he’s bitten and strangled by the violent serpents that now surround him. As one set of venomous fangs after another sinks into Ragnar’s flesh, and his arms and legs are restrained by the wriggling snakes, this hardy Viking finds the strength to lift his head out of the hole and spit a prophecy at King Aella:

“How the little piggies will grunt when they hear how the old boar suffered.”

Rather than getting a taste of justice, Aella and his advisers are left with something else in their mouths: regret and fear.

It doesn’t take long for the news of Ragnar Lothbrok’s punishment to make waves across the Viking world, eventually reaching Ragnar’s four sons: Ivar the Boneless, Ubbe, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, and Hvitserk. They heard the details of Ragnar’s fate—torn apart by snakes, injected with spiteful venom, and strangled on the armless frames of the serpents. The old boar had certainly suffered. And now the little piggies were grunting. Four little piggies to be exact, who went on to swear a blood oath to avenge their father’s death.

By autumn of that same year, 865, the boys arrive in East Anglia at the head of an enormous Viking force known today as the Great Heathen Army. One particular brother, Ivar the Boneless, tells his brothers to keep things secure down south. He’s going to go up to Northumbria alone and speak to the king man-to-man.

When Ivar and Aella met, the Viking son of Ragnar is amicable, understanding even. He accepts that Aella was put in an impossible position, that his father probably had it coming, and that there was no ill will between them. As a favor, he asks Aella if he could be granted a plot of land as recompense for the loss of his father. Aella is in no real position to say no, and the two men agree that Ivar would be guaranteed a plot of land equal in size to the hide of an ox.

But Ivar is feeling cheeky and pushes his luck by cutting the oxhide into long strips which he uses to draw a large circle on the ground—room enough to build an entire fortress. Aella reluctantly approves, and without meaning to, he’s given the Vikings a foothold in the north and Ivar a position from which to build influence and strength in the region.

A year later, Ivar is confident that he’s got enough ducks in a row and enough lay of the land that he can throw his weight around. And so he calls his brothers to join him. By 866, the brothers arrived with their army and captured the city of York. King Aella’s chickens are coming home to roost. Now he has the unenviable position of trying to recapture his own city from a horde of monsters and heathens all crying for the blood of the man who tossed Ragnar Lothbrok into a pit of snakes.

It takes Aella a year to get his forces in order. And in 867, he desperately throws his army at the Vikings in York, trying as hard as he might to drive out these invaders and restore peace to the realm. The Northumbrian king is woefully unsuccessful. His armies are crushed, routed, and scattered to the hills. Left all alone, Aella is captured alive, and the four sons of Ragnar Lothbrok have full license to select when and how their father’s killer should face justice.

Perhaps it’d be best to starve him. Perhaps burn him alive. Some little piggies were grunting that Aella should suffer the same fate that the old boar did and have him tossed into a pit of snakes. But then Ivar the Boneless comes forward and suggests the worst fate of them all: the blood eagle.

It’s a controversial suggestion. According to the legends, the punishment is reserved especially for Vikings. The story going that should someone be able to endure the process without screaming in agony, then they will still have their place in Valhalla, even if their crimes might have otherwise denied them access to the great hall.

Despite the hang-ups, though, it seems to have been a hit with the others. And with that, King Aella’s fate was sealed.

The process began by dragging the broken king out of captivity and placing him on his site of execution, usually a slab of unyielding stone. Once there, he would be restrained either by being forced to lay down and having his hands and legs tied together or instead on his knees with his arms outstretched tied to two posts either side of him.

Once properly restrained, King Aella would have felt a sharp, searing, digging sensation as a dagger was slowly used to bore a hole into the small of his back just to the side of the spinal cord. This alone would have caused unimaginable pain due to the high concentration of nerves in the area, but it was really just the beginning of the torment.

After the dagger had been driven home, a violent upward shove would be next, driving the blade further and further up the spine towards the base of the neck. Given the rather sinewy nature of this part of the body, this would not have been a smooth slice upwards, but instead a series of violent bloody tugs, not unlike the pulling of an uncooperative zip on a broken backpack—just that this time it’s a human being unzipped from behind.

Although King Aella was a Christian, not a Viking, he was still said to have endured the process in resolute silence, not allowing a single whisper of agony or complaint to escape his lips. Perhaps he saw himself more of a martyr than an honorable warrior bound for Valhalla.

Nonetheless, his steadfastness impressed the brothers, but still nothing could prepare him or anyone else for what came next. Once a line had been carved from the small of his back to the base of his neck, those performing this execution, often said to be Ivar’s brothers themselves, would then follow the wound with their hands, plunging fingers into the open cut and tugging away at the skin and flesh, opening the line along his back like a pair of curtains.

Needless to say, this would have been unthinkably painful as nerve endings attached to the spine and central nervous system are systematically torn away from their housing. But it served another function as the process would have exposed the spine, allowing for the next stage of the blood eagle.

With the skeletal structure under the flesh exposed, an axe or a hammer and chisel would be taken to the base of the spine where it would begin slowly bashing away at the bone, taking chunks, one swing at a time. But they wouldn’t be aiming for the spine itself. Instead, they would be targeting the ribs either side so that they were removed from the spinal cord themselves and left to float inside the torso. There are 24 individual ribs attached to the thoracic vertebrae, each of which would need to be carefully removed one at a time.

Although this would require immense precision so as not to damage the spine itself or the organs underneath, it was still ultimately a violent process, and being so close to the spine would have been incredibly painful. After all 24 ribs have been smashed, broken, and severed from the spine, the last stages of the process could finally begin.

The now free ribs would be taken by the hand and ripped outwards like opening a cupboard. Again, this would need to be done more or less one at a time, causing the front of the ribs to fold into the chest cavity, whilst the back of the ribs rose out in a grotesque frame, not unlike the outline of a pair of wings attached to the back.

At this stage, King Aella was seasoned as one of the brothers spitefully threw a handful of salt into his back to add more suffering into the mix. Although it must be said that this tidbit is only mentioned in one of the sources. So like King Aella, feel free to take that detail with a pinch of salt. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

Anyway, now that the back had been exposed, the rib bones disconnected from the spine and the rib cage itself drawn out of the back and into the shape of a pair of wings, the final stage was imminent, which was to reach into the chest cavity, carefully grip the lungs, and then drape them over the ribs in order to finish the wings.

As King Aella drew his final breaths, the lungs would have expanded, creating a display not unlike a pair of bloody wings flapping in the wind as the victim underneath was left to expire.

Aella’s death marked the beginning of Norse dominance in northern England, and he became the most famous blood eagle execution in legend, turning him into a mythic villain whose name survives in poetry, sagas, and screen: a Christian king torn open as tribute to the old gods.

But did it actually happen?

Well, fortunately, probably not. Most of the sources we have for this particular telling of the story are a bit wishy-washy on detail, and they blur the line between history and literature. King Aella was most likely just executed in a normal fashion, but I know you guys will find that disappointing. God knows why.

So, let’s focus on the blood eagle again because he’s not the only example of it happening, and ask the question: did the blood eagle itself ever actually happen, even if not to King Aella?

Well, there are a few sources across the Viking sagas and a few Anglo-Saxon texts that mention the blood eagle. The most literal description is in the Ragnarssona þáttr, which is the Tale of Ragnar’s Sons, in which they go through the tearing of the ribs and the hanging of the lungs. And then again in the Orkneyinga saga, there’s a mention of a blood eagle being performed on a guy named Halfdan Longleg. And then lastly Saxo Grammaticus, an Anglo-Saxon chronicler who talks a bit about the Vikings doing this kind of stuff.

Historians argue back and forth constantly about whether this is just a literary motif, perhaps an attempt by Christians to demonize the Vikings, or if it did actually happen and that’s why it’s in the sources. Although, it should be said that all of these sources are writing at least 100 years after the blood eagle was supposed to have happened.

There’s also no archaeological evidence to prove the blood eagle ever happened, but I don’t think that that’s a particularly damning consideration because this was a sacrificial execution. So, the victim was unlikely to be buried and may have even been burned afterwards. So, the jury really is out, at least on the historicity of it all.

So, the next question I had, which I’m sure you also have, is: would something like the blood eagle even be possible?

Because if we’ve learned anything, it’s that if something horrible and cruel can be done, it often has been done. So, is the blood eagle actually possible?

And the depressing answer is yes. It’s definitely possible. But there’s a few caveats. If you were going to do this to someone and wanted them to stay alive for the final crescendo of breathing lungs being drawn over exposed ribs, you’re going to have three big problems to deal with.

The first one is the scapula, or shoulder blades. These would get right in the way of the upper ribs and make drawing them or cutting them impossible. So, in order to get to the ribs themselves, the shoulder blades would also need to go. But it’s not that easy. There’s a lot of blood vessels around these triangular bones and plenty of sinew and tendon. So you’d be there for quite a while digging around to try and free these—quite a long time that your victim might not have because you’ve got another problem to deal with: blood loss.

And not just from the shoulder blades. Even once you get rid of those, you need to then hack the ribs off the spine. But each rib is supplied by posterior intercostal arteries, and these branch off from the thoracic aorta, which means if you break them open, especially all 24 of them, you’re going to die fast. They also run along the underside of each rib in what’s called the costal groove, where they supply blood to the ribs, intercostal muscles, and overlying skin. In other words, you can’t just leave them. If you want to get rid of those ribs, you also need to tear these arteries.

So, if you wanted the victim to survive, you would have to cut, then cauterize the nub of the rib still attached to the spine—a process not mentioned in the sources and obviously very risky.

And then lastly, you’ve got the biggest problem to deal with: a pneumothorax.

See, the lungs need negative pressure to function, but once you open the chest cavity from behind, this negative pressure immediately disappears, causing the lungs themselves to instantly collapse like wet cloth. This would make breathing impossible, which means the victim has got minutes before death would come, and you’ve still got 24 ribs to saw through.

Now, assuming you were expecting the victim to die before the process was completed, you could still technically do all of these steps to get the final result. But instead of having an impressive display of breath-filled lungs draped over the ribs like a pair of wings, you’d actually get something a bit more ridiculous as the lungs deflate into fist-sized nubs of organ, which you would have to kind of skewer on one of the ribs with the victim underneath long gone.

Nonetheless, though, this would still be a horrific, slow, and painful way to meet your maker and would still perform very well as a symbolic method of execution—just not quite what we imagine when we hear about the blood eagle.

So, did it actually happen?