What Punishment was like for Vikings

one may think words like law and order do not apply to scruffy barbarians of the north who murdered plundered and pillaged the rest of europe without any conscience in the middle ages hard to believe but vikings did have an intricate and sophisticated lost system back in the day but beware for the viking punishment was all one can imagine as their justice could be unforgiving welcome to nutty history and today let's find out what were the merciless and cruel punishments that vikings used in their time in modern times humans have well-defined distinctions when it comes to

the act of killing such as premeditated murder intentional murder and manslaughter but back in the viking age the line wasn't drawn so impeccably clear according to the viking law killing somebody covertly and without fair warning was considered a despicable in monstrous act while killing someone in a duel after challenging them in public was considered honorable even in the case of manslaughter or accidental killings one had to take responsibility for the killing and not flee obey the council and pay the compensation imposed on you the same applied to homicides resulting from fights or similar situations however

if one was caught murdering someone in their sleep by surprise or without fair warning chances were high they might be asked to do the fatal walk this punishment was reserved mostly for high profile murders as was the case in broader and yellow saga in the fatal walk the executioner would slice the prisoner's belly open and the prisoner would be asked to walk to the spot of his execution with their guts spilling out even if guts or intestines are removed from the body of a person they somehow managed to stay alive for hours all being in

a very agonizing way on arriving at the spot of execution which was commonly a tree the spilling guts of the prisoner would be pulled out to tie them around the tree if the prisoner was fortunate they might die during this ordeal or else more agony awaited as death may take its sweet time [Music] medieval nordic people are more commonly referred to as vikings in pop culture they do not have a very sophisticated and civilized image in present times often depicted as savages scandinavians were quite a complex society with a nearly well-defined judiciary system there was

no police system but they did have the thing [Music] the thing or a thing was the governing assembly at the local level to sort out disputes punish crimes maintain peace uh or shall we say keep control over violence during the thing which was held periodically all free men of the vikings would gather in their communities to enforce law each thing had a law speaker who would recite the law from memory the law speaker and the local chieftain would judge and settle the cases of dispute they heard although all free men of the community had a

say however things were most likely dominated by a local powerful family or families so the more influence you had in the community the more weight your words had during the thing also the thing led by the king was called al thing now before talking about how a thing functioned it is important to understand that in the viking age taking responsibility for one's own actions was considered supreme if one did something wrong they had to admit to the deed one could only defend themselves at the thing which was the honorable way in nordic society this was

a reason why theft was considered a more heinous crime than say murder which is considered one of the biggest law violations in modern times in their customs theft was considered a dishonorable offense with treacherous and conspicuous intentions while killing somebody in the open was an honorable thing so technically one had a better chance of getting away with cutting a throat rather than cutting a purse unfortunately as vikings considered any form of writing except runes lame their records of social and political conduct are based on sagas the oral literature is based on events that were passed

on from generation to generation so consider taking these punishments with a pinch of skepticism according to the sagas if one was caught stealing he better hope to be killed for it it was less painful than being punished the other way there was no uniform code for capital punishments among the vikings sometimes things would work like a kangaroo court and villagers would raise the gallows to hang the guilty until death or simply chop one's head off executions in nordic law were used in the rarest of cases but hanging was more common than beheading which was mostly

considered as a means of execution for slaves but these were more like guidelines than law these were quick ways to kill the culprit but were also regarded as the most embarrassing way to die it was so because of the nordic belief about valhalla and how one should always die in battle with a weapon in hand to get an honorable seat on odin's table in the afterlife a thief would never get to see valhalla at the end of the tunnel and most possibly end up in nevelham the realm of evil and death ruled by hell however

if the thing decided to punish the thief the other way one might get to experience the velham while being alive itself introducing the hung meat [Music] mentioned in the fraffenkel saga frysengoda the hung meat can be considered to have the greatest plausibility as a physical act of vengeance pretty sure you the audience even if you are a vegan must have visited a butcher shop in your life or at least peruse its contents through the window passing by now you may be able to picture why this punishment was called the hung meat it's exactly what it

sounds like the meat is hung by its rear tendons using hooks in a butcher shop like it was in the frocking kills case would be hung by a rope upside down the only difference is that the carcasses of dead animals and butcher shops are dead while the culprits who suffered this punishment in scandinavia were still alive and mostly lived through this ordeal instead of tying their ankles with a rope administrators of punishment would use the knives to pierce holes through the victim's heels behind their tendons to pass the rope and then pull it over a

beam to string them up after the duration of punishment would be over the guilty would be cut down and declared an outlaw by the thing all their property would be forfeited and divided into the community even though the punishments mentioned in this video were used by vikings in the rarest of cases they had a special punishment reserved for the rarest of the rarest case the blood eagle the most known instance of blood eagle execution is related to fame viking king rachnar lothbrok after ragnar was captured and killed by king ayela of northumbria england his sons

invaded northumbria seeking revenge after northumbria fell ragnar's son ivar the boneless condemned ayla to the horrible fate of the blood eagle today modern scholars debate how vikings perform this ritual torture and some don't even want to believe that the gruesome method of the ritual was even preferred at all you can't blame them for the process of the blood eagle it is indeed so cruel and grisly that one would like to doubt it ever happened but whether fetishizing fiction or repulsive reality the blood eagle ritual was a fate you would not even hope for your enemies

the victim's hands and legs were strangled to prevent escape or sudden movements the person seeking vengeance would then stab the victim with an axe by their tailbone and up towards the rib cage meticulously separating every rib from the backbone the victim would be left having their internal organs on full display the gruesome process was carried out while making sure the victim stays alive to endure the pain to make it worse vikings would then rub salt on the gaping wound no that was not a metaphor actual saline stimulant would be applied to the wound to enhance

the torment then the detached ribs would spread out like giant fingers so that the vengeance seeker would have easy access to the victim's organ so they can pull the lungs out and make the victim appear as if they had a pair of wings spread out on their back therefore the name blood eagle there were two main reasons vikings used the blood eagle on their victims first they believed it was a sacrifice to odin father of the norse pantheon of gods and the god of war second and more plausibly was that the blood eagle was done

as a punishment to honor lacking individuals according to the orkneyenga saga of the vikings halfton was defeated in a battle at the hands of earl einar who then tortured him with a blood eagle as he conquered halfton's kingdom similarly ayela was tortured in vengeance so we leave you with a question do you think blood eagle and other such viking punishments were works of fiction or do the scrupulous details in the description have a shred of truth behind them let us know in the comments and if you would like to watch more cruel punishments in history

check out these videos on the screen and as always thanks for watching nutty history you