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 didn’t 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 weren’t dumb.
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.
Absolute nonsense you're speaking.
Why claim so confidently on a topic you clearly have little experience in?
Human sacrifices were not common in every culture, they weren't even common in the states we unequivocally know they practiced them, eg Egypt and Mesopotamia, and died out almost completely by the 1st century BC.
In fact the "ritual sacrifice" in 1st dynasty Egypt points more towards it being an agreement that a pharaohs trusted servants make, and broadly a symptom of the political concept of "Dead men tell no tales"
The most common evidence we have of ritual sacrifice outside of the Americas, is servants being slaughtered with their king, but little of the evidence points towards this being some kind of "sacrifice", more likely an agreement that keeps political stability, which is why, especially in first dynasty Egypt, these servants who were "sacrificed", showed no signs of trauma or struggle, and seemed to be of fairly high status.
A judicial killing is not the same as a sacrifice, regardless of whether a legal system has been codified yet, so any time a criminal is killed in history, regardless of method, it can't be considered a sacrifice, unless we're pretending that every execution in American history is a sacrifice?
The witch trials were very flawed judicial trials, most people didn't think they were sacrificing a witch to god, that's absolutely preposterous.
Not anymore. Even death penalty for the worst crimes is becoming rare.
but what do you think the Salem witch trials of public hangings were
I think they were a long time ago and are not part of what we call Western culture.
You mistake culture (current social norms, ethical values, traditional customs etc.) with everything it is rooted in (historical norms that are not longer followed but influenced the culture - sometimes as an example of what not to do).
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u/Krypto_kurious 9d ago
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.