Blood Eagle

The blood eagle (Old Norse: blóðǫrn) was a method of ritually executing a chosen member as detailed in late skaldic poetry. According to the two instances mentioned in the Sagas, the victims (in both cases members of royal families) were placed in a prone position, their ribs severed from the spine with a sharp tool, and their lungs pulled through the opening to create a pair of "wings". Until the 1980s, there was continuing debate about whether the rite was a literary invention, a mistranslation of the original texts, or an authentic historical practice.

Accounts
The blood-eagle ritual-killing rite appears in just two instances in Norse literature, plus oblique references some have interpreted as referring to the same practice. The primary versions share certain commonalities: the victims are both noblemen (Halfdan haleggr or "Long-leg" was a prince; Ælla of Northumbria a king), and both of the executions were in retaliation for the murder of a father.

Einarr and Halfdan
There are two sources that purport to describe Torf-Einarr's ritual execution of Haraldr Fairhair's son, Halfdan Long-Leg, in the late 9th century. Both were written several centuries after the events they depict, and exist in various versions known to have influenced each other.

In the Orkneyinga saga, the blood eagle is described as a sacrifice to Óðinn.

Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla contains an account of the same event described in Orkneyinga saga, with Einarr actually performing the deed himself:

Ragnarr loðbrók's sons and King Ælla of Northumbria
In Ragnarssona þáttr (the "Tale of Ragnarr's sons"), Ívarr the Boneless has captured king Ælla of Northumbria, who had killed Ívarr's father Ragnarr loðbrók. The killing of Ælla, after a battle for control of York, is described thus:

The blood eagle is referred to by the 11th-century poet Sigvatr Þórðarson, who, some time between 1020 and 1038, wrote a skaldic verse named Knútsdrápa that recounts and establishes Ívarr the Boneless as having killed Ælla and subsequently cutting his back.

Sighvatr's skaldic verse in Old Norse:

Skaldic verse, a common medium of Norse poets, was meant to be cryptic and allusive, and the idiomatic nature of Sighvatr's poem as a description of what has become known as the blood eagle is a matter of historical contention, particularly since in Norse imagery the eagle was strongly associated with blood and death.

Saxo Grammaticus in Gesta Danorum book 9, chapter 5,5 tells the following about Bjørn and Sigvard, sons of Ragnarr loðbrók and king Ælla:

Other accounts
Another possible oblique reference to the rite appears in Norna-Gests þáttr. There are two stanzas of verse near the end of its section 6, "Sigurd Felled the Sons of Hunding", where a character describing previous events says:

In Reginsmál, the stanza 26 of the Poetic Edda, the story is described as:

Authenticity
There is debate about whether the blood eagle was historically practiced, or whether it was a literary device invented by the authors who transcribed the sagas. No contemporary accounts of the rite exist, and the scant references in the sagas are several hundred years after the Christianization of Scandinavia.

In the 1970's Alfred Smyth supported the historicity of the rite, stating that it is clearly human sacrifice to the Norse god Óðinn. He characterized St. Dunstan's description of the Ælla's killing as an "accurate account of a body subjected to the ritual of the blood eagle".