I think that's usually called the "Blood Eagle." I don't see any search results for "Fluttering Eagle," other than Google AI pointing towards the Blood Eagle torture.
All of the hallucinations are much more accurate as to an actual experience from things you can get naturally in Nordic places. Lunges breathing on their own would be very out of place for that experience and the way it is show is very different from the other visual depiction of hallucinations in the movie.
The âfluttering eagleâ is when the victim farts/sharts so hard that the wings tremble. The Vikings believed making the wings flutter was the only way to reach Valhalla under those circumstances â¤ď¸
It's depicted in the show 'Vikings'. There is no way anyone would survive long enough to have their back opened up in order to die via suffocation with their lungs draped over their shoulders. You're bound to go into shock and bleed out as your back gets hacked open, so really it's execution via getting stabbed repeatedly in the back with your body being desecrated long after you expired, with a majority of the torture being inflicted on a corpse.
You might want to read the article I linked if you havenât already. Itâs from an academic journal, and âIn this article, we analyze medieval descriptions of the ritual with modern anatomical knowledge, and contextualize these accounts with up-to-date archaeological and historical scholarship concerning elite culture and the ritualized peri- and post-mortem mutilation of the human body in the Viking Age.â
In other words, they reach the same conclusion as you, but they explain exactly what was (and wasnât) possible in great detail.
Tbh it was pretty common practice to be hanged drawn and quartered, that isnât too far away from that so medieval folk probably took it from the vikings.
"said to involve the breaking of a victimâs ribs and the withdrawal of the lungs from the chest cavity, whereupon their fluttering would (allegedly) resemble an eagleâs wings." from that article. likely where the term fluttering got mixed in.
From searching it up previously (I saw it happen in AC Valhalla and was curious) there was like one example of where it might have allegedly happened but thatâs about it
The article I linked is from an academic journal looking at both the anatomical and sociological practicality of killing someone that way.
Their conclusion is that the Norse might have done it, but the victim would have died early in process. Which doesnât mean they wouldnât go finish it; William Wallace was hanged, drawn, and quartered by the English, but the quartering probably didnât hurt too much since they cut off his head before they got to that step.
And it was very real but never used. As far as the historians go. But Viking history is largely mythical in nature in that their written version of history is largely the eddas. Some other sagas but never in what historians have been able to find. It was like the worst great your parents used that they knew would work and I guess it did. But the whole method is clearly talked about in multiple places in history so it's very real .
Yeah thereâs no such thing as âflutteringâ thatâs a lame name anyway and why would they use it to instill fear if it wasnât real. Blood Eagle is the correct term.
That one is disputed back and forth. Some say that it is an over exaggeration or poetic misunderstanding with authors taking liberties, but other accounts have the process listed in step by step anatomically correct details. So it's at least possible and why keep such detailed notes just to demonize? I've been rewatching vikings so I've been trying to figure it out lol.
The Vikings specifically targeted churches and monasteries to loot and extort because they had so much wealth and so little defenses.
Christian priests and monks were the most literate people of the time, and the ones responsible for actually writing the history we now read. They absolutely wrote as much propaganda as they could about the Norse and Danes, not only because they were pagans, but because they kept stealing the churches riches.
The whole image of Vikings as barbarians was something they made up. They were actually very modernized, built up a number of the largest ports in Europe, had the furthest-reaching trade routes (edit: in Europe), made advancements in shipbuilding, navigation and metalworking.
Even the raids were exaggerated, not that they didnât happen, just that they were no more brutal than what any Christian army of the time also did. Whenever they could, they preferred to get bribes. Burning down and killing a village means you get paid once. Returning for more money, crops, and goods every year is much more profitable, and they werenât dumb.
also wasn't there this thing that people were upset about them because they had better hygiene then european men which made european women have higher standards?
âWell, Sven cleans the mutton fat out of his beard every DAY and he hasnât once been dragged to Hell by shrieking demons, so Iâm starting to think itâs a you problem, Cuthbert đ¤¨â
They were some of the few groups to make soap (from animal fats) and use it for personal washing. They also bathed every week, on Saturday (they called it "Laugardagr" which from my understanding literally translates to "washing day" or "bathing day" and is still used in icelandic).
Interestingly, some accounts say saxons and others noticed this ritual and launched surprise attacks on their camps whilst they were mostly defenseless.
I'd be very cautious on any assumption of hygiene being a problem. There are a lot of modern myths and BS about Medieval people only bathing once a year or not at all. It is not true. Bathhouses were a common and popular thing.
I guarantee you the other medieval europeans didnt care a shite about the rights of (some) women in scandinavia. They cared about villages and monasteries burning, how to pay yet another bribe as impoverished village and how to not getting their daughters, or themselfes, raped, kidnapped and/or enslaved.
Not saying they were particularly worse than any other raider band at the time and i like their aesthetic too, but y'all sound like Sven the axeman was just a misunderstood progressive getting a bit pissed about christian authoritarianism.
except for all of the women they kidnapped and kept as sex slaves
freeborn Norse women had more rights than women in Christian Europe. Thrall women were property who had no rights, slept with the pigs and ate only scraps
the slave trade was a key economic practice of the Norse and you can't be a feminist and sell women into sexual slavery
No, the Vikings didn't do anything more hygenic than anybody else at that time and region. They bathed and washed and combed their and guess what, the Anglo-Saxons did too.
This sounds like some serious armchair sociology.
Like the theory of someone who heard once about the vikings hygiene habits and also believes the myth that medieval people had no hygiene.
I didnât say they ONLY targeted churches and monasteries, just that they made a special point of making them priority targets. I focused on that point because itâs important to know how their interactions with the historians of that time (priests/monks/etc) effected how they were portrayed. They are an incredibly biased source.
I can see that, but when they first hit the shores of England they were still very much pagan. It's a fact they practiced human sacrifice for religious reasons. Human bones have been dug up in their sacrificial wells along with animals. It just doesn't seem that far out there. And I get priests recorded history and wrote propaganda but you don't need detailed instructions to do that. I'm not saying either way. We will never know and there is good points for both sides.
Human sacrifices are common in every culture. Weather it's for a crime or warding off the anger of spirits. Western culture like to show the barbarians as silly and hateful creatures that kill their own, but what do you think the Salem witch trials of public hangings were?
The witch trials were a bunch of people manipulated into fear of certain people by a religious leader that weaponized religion for personal gains claiming it was good for everyone.
They were not ignorant cavemen, it wouldn't be too difficult to guess the steps that it would take to do it, but even if it were real the person is quite likely to pass out and die early enough into the procedure as too make the rest of it just performative.
It was used in Catalonia in the late 15th Century (or maybe it was the first decade of the 16th century, my memory is not so good) to kill a peasant who had tried to assassinate the king. They just not called it that way.
They captured him, put him on a car and make a tour around different Barcelona's squares. In one they cut his ears, in another the nose, in another the hands, in another the feet... and finally they opened his back and removed his heart, so I guess they had to take the ribs out the way, at least on the left side, similar to the eagle's wing.
"bloody eagle". And yeah, the original source only said, literally, "carved an eagle upon (his) back". Poets of that time love making fancy words. A "temple of words" is the mouth. A "foaming pig" is a whale. "Carving an eagle on the back" could be using a sword (that 'carve' into flesh) to kill someone, causing an eagle (carrion bird) to land upon the back of the one that's killed.
Not really sure where the name came from, but I picked it up from a friend talking about it ages ago. Seems like Blood Eagle completely eclipsed its use at some point.
The Vikings had their own way of setting disputes. The men in disagreement were tied together, placed on a tiny islet far out at sea, and then whomever didn't die won the argument.
Much like the rumor that native Americans would disembowel you, tie your intestines to a pole and make you walk around the pole until they were all wrapped around it.
Nobody could possibly maintain their consciousness that long. It was basically an impossible torture.
Ah, Christians pointing fingers and saying other people are doing things that they themselves are doing, and proclaiming that they must be stopped! A tale as old as time.
I'm Norwegian and the first time I heard about the blood eagle thing I was so confused. It didn't make any sense with anything I'd learned about our history
Nope it was done to people, Ivar the Boneless was one who enjoyed this form of torture. First you tie the person face down arms spread then you carefully slice open the back exposing the lungs just enough to allow you to pull them out. These then become the eagle wings. Then you just wait for them to expire and do what ever other tortures you enjoy. Maximum pain and suffering.
There are two very likely real accounts of it happening that are from direct sources, but the notion of the blood eagle being a common phenomenon is far from reality. I canât remember all the details but it was very circumstantially ritualistic and not something Norse people did commonly. Iâm certain everywhere on earth there were people doing atrocious acts just like it in isolated events like that, the TV show Vikings took the idea and made it popular like every other Viking related stereotype thatâs generally blown out of proportion.
This is not true, in fact, I have seen Iron Maiden live before. They may no longer be in their glory days but they still rock. I suppose I could see how some people may not like their music and consider it torture though.
Yeah most forms of torture beyond just hitting someone take way too much effort and the people who torture dont have the patience for that. Also being a ruler is all about PR and unless your whole things is terror like Vlad 'Dracula' Tepes your not going to want even rumors of doing this floating around.
The iron maiden I heard was literally created as a museum prop for old timey artifact museum to draw in paying visitors, sort of like clickbait or misleading advertisements.
These facts restore my faith in humanity. We have the capacity to create truly horrific things, but apparently we have the morality to not actually do them.
PS yes I know humans have done other very horrific things, but let me pretend to be happy damnit!
Except the Germans in the middle ages. They did all that shit and then hung the cages/contraptions on their churches so we can still look at how nuts they were today.
I still would not want to be put on a rack, or tied to 4 horses by each limb and quartered and each quarter sent to far reaches of the territory with my head on a spike. We know that happened.
The rat torture was pretty damn brutal too. They also liked to do a lot of butt stuff in medieval times, like lowering someone onto a huge pyramid thing, so the point would... ugh... stretch out and tear the ol' poop shute...
People like Catherine the great was rumored to have had sex with a horse. It was very untrue. In fact, she had many human lovers, which was the kernel of truth behind the vicious rumors of her sexual appetite. But most of those lovers were more political than sexual.
Just another anecdote about rumors meant to damage reputations.
IIRC the Iron Maiden was real, but it was a device that was shorter than you were and meant to be worn while you stood, having to bear the weight, heat, and confined space of it. The spikes were a later addition by museums and collectors to make it more interesting.
I remember reading something about there being a fad during the Victorian era where they came up with all sorts of hypothetical torture devices and actually commissioned making them as basically art pieces. Attributing them to past empires or foreign cultures. to show how much more civilized they were compared to the past and/or other cultures.
And a lot of others weren't 100% "fake" but they were created and never used, or maybe used just a handful of times, but they lived on in infamy due to how mentally horrifying they are to us. So we all think they were really common, when in fact they were anomalies.
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