What We Talk About When We Talk About Vikings

[AnaKhouri]

Me: Hey, you know lots about everything.

Husband: O...kay.

Me: When Vikings did a blood eagle, did they pull the lungs through the front of the chest or the back?

Husband: I believe it was the front.

Me: Huh. That's not very aesthetically pleasing. If they did the back, they could lay the victim back down so it would look like the wings came from their shoulders. With the front it's just bloody and gross.

Husband: I don't think they were concerned about aesthetics.

Me: Yeah, but you'd think if they went to all that trouble...

Husband: They'd do it right?

Me: Yeah. Maybe it was too hard to get them through the back, with the ribs and all.

Husband: You are so weird.

[ArcticChicken]

I have conversations like that all the time.

[taurinejunkie]

I would have them too but that sort of topic tends to scare off everyone around me.

[AccountingDrone]

the wiki page seems to have a fair set of exemplars of it being the back, for what it is worth.

Personally I would imagine the back, as eagle wings are normally depicted artistically as coming out of the back ...

[shankyknitter]

From the research I've done (don't ask) they were pulled through the back. Getting around the pesky ribs was easy when they were just hacked off the spine.

Also thank you for reminding me of a song that if I could find online I would link it. But the general line is "we'll hound them until the last wears the blood eagle, carved like a lovers knot deep in his back."

[AnaKhouri]

Hmm, I read the Wiki page and I guess Husband knows lots about everything, but not everything about everything.

It says they sprinkled salt in the wounds. Um, you just had your ribs broken and your lungs pulled out. Is a little salt going to make it that much worse?

[RayvenQ]

Not really since by the time they pulled your lungs out, you'd already be unconcious if not dead.

[Amina516]

That is AWESOME!!!

[RayvenQ]

Reminds me of when I utterly confused a friend of mine with Roman knowledge

"Hey, do you think they made the end of the pila bendable on purpose or was it just accidental design, and if they did it on purpose what do you reckon they did it for, so they got stuck in shields or so they couldn't be thrown back?"

The look on her face (she knows quite a bit of roman stuff) was priceless (Tip: Not even historians know, they presume it to be on purpose but we simply don't know)

Also, as for vikings, did you know, axe heads on viking war axes were actually really small, much smaller than media leads us to believe.

[Mr. Anubite]

That's dinner conversation in my family. I love my parents

[RecoveringKinkoid]

It says they sprinkled salt in the wounds. Um, you just had your ribs broken and your lungs pulled out. Is a little salt going to make it that much worse?

Eh, I call crap on that. You'd be dead. Lungs do not work on their own, so you'd be deader than Elvis before they even got them out into the sunshine.

Furthermore, salt was money. Literally.