Note: A dolmen is a megalithic passage tomb. I haven't been able to find much of anything in English about Sprove Dolmen, but I think it's more commonly referred to as Sprovedyssen or Sprove Runddysse. According to a site called Hunebed Nieuwscafe, "the passage grave of Sprovedyssen lies very close to the famous tomb of Kong Asgers Høj on the island of Mon in Denmark. The tomb was built by the Funnel Beaker Culture [4300 - 2800 BC] during the New Stone Age and is surrounded by a circle of 35 stones (ring stones)."
Kong Asgers Hoj in Denmark.
The Kong Asgers Hoj tomb, also dating back to the Beaker Funnel Culture, "consists of a chamber (10 m long by 2 m wide) with a long passage (7.5 m long). This type of grave is found primarily in Denmark, Germany and Scandinavia, and occasionally in France and the Netherlands." (Wikipedia) The tomb was used for secondary burials (reburials) during the later Corded Ware Culture period (2900 - 2350 BC).
"Archaeologists discovered the man's skull, as well as the remains of at least 10 other Stone Age adults and an infant, in 2012 at the bottom of what used to be a small lake in what is now Motala, a municipality in eastern-central Sweden. However, only one of the adults had a jaw; the rest were jawless, and two of the skulls had been placed on stakes sticking out from the lake's surface.
"Now, a 3D facial reconstruction reveals the likeness of one of those jawless skulls. Oscar Nilsson, a forensic artist based in Sweden, used this skull as well as genetic and anatomical information gleaned from it to create a bust of the man — a blue-eyed, brown-haired and pale-skinned individual in his 50s."
"Saint Olga [aka Helga] ... was a regent of Kievan Rus' for her son Svyatoslav from 945 until 960. She is known for her obliteration of the Drevlians, a tribe that had killed her husband Igor of Kiev. Even though it would be her grandson Vladimir that would convert the entire nation to Christianity, for her efforts to spread Christianity through the Rus' Olga is venerated as a saint. While her birthdate is unknown, it could be as early as AD 890 and as late as 5 June 925." Source: Wikipedia. She is thought to have died in 969 AD.
Olga, a sinister beauty if I ever saw one -- assuming that her portraits are accurate -- was probably a Varangian, i.e. a Russified Viking. She turned to Christianity after her husband was killed and is "sometimes credited as founding, with her grandson Vladimir, what has come to be known as Russian Christianity (the Moscow Patriarchate within Eastern Orthodoxy). She was the ruler of Kiev as regent for her son, and she was the grandmother of St. Vladimir, great-grandmother of Saint Boris and Saint Gleb." Source: Thought Company.
Orthodox Easter Liturgy Mass, Moscow, 2016.
I'm not sure who Saint Boris and Saint Gleb were, but it sounds like Olga whelped a whole family of saints. She was a kind, compassionate and gentle Viking matriarch who displayed her Christian qualities of mercy and forgiveness when she dealt with the Drevlians, the Eastern Slavs who killed her husband:
"Igor's widow Olga avenged her husband's death in an extremely harsh manner, killing Drevlian ambassadors and nobility, burning their capital of Iskorosten to the ground and leveling other towns." (Wikipedia)
Her treatment of the Drevlian ambassadors is particularly memorable. According to Russia Insider, "Olga pretended to accept the ambassadors with honors. She invited them to the court on the next day. They were to be carried in boats by her own warriors as a special honor. But instead, she had a ditch dug near her own palace, and when the ambassadors, filled with their own significance, were carried in on longboats, she ordered them thrown into the ditch and buried alive."
I'm no Christian, but I've always liked the Russian Orthodox church. Persecuted by the Communists, criticized by modern liberals, the church is a force for tradition during a time of widespread social collapse in the West and any religion that has saints like Olga can't be all bad.
"In April 2021, she somehow managed it again – unearthing an impressive grouping of silver coins and pieces of cut silver armbands dating to around AD 1030.
"The coins were minted in England, Dublin, modern day Germany and the Isle of Man, demonstrating some of the extent of Viking trade and influence. They include representations of Kings Sihtric Silkbeard and Cnut while the cut silver would have been used to pay for goods."
"A re-analysis of the stomach contents belonging to a naturally mummified Iron Age man is providing new insights into his surprisingly nutritious final meal and compromised state of health." Source: Gizmodo.
"Tollund Man died around 400 BCE in what is now the Jutland peninsula of Denmark. He died by hanging, in what is believed to be a ritual sacrifice. His body was preserved in a Danish bog for 2,400 years, allowing for an analysis of his stomach contents."
Though not identified, I'm pretty sure the bog body featured here is Tollund Man.
"The new findings, published in Antiquity, suggest Tollund Man ate his final meal some 12 to 24 hours before his death and that it consisted of porridge and fish—both common dishes during the Danish Early Iron Age. It was a nutritious, likely tasty meal, but Tollund Man was not in the best of health, as he was infected with several parasites. The new research was led by archaeologist Nina Nielsen from the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark."
The Huldremose Woman probably didn't die a natural death. According to the National Museum of Denmark, "Her hair was tied up with a long woolen cord, which was also wrapped around her neck several times. However, there are no marks on her throat or elsewhere, which can be interpreted as signs of strangulation. Perhaps instead the cord was of symbolic significance? Strangled people are known from other Danish bog finds. This applies to, amongst others, the bodies from Elling and Borremose, and the famous Tollund Man [who was hung or otherwise strangled in an apparent human sacrifice]."
Note: According to the National Museum of Denmark, one of the Huldremose Woman's arms was almost cut off before she died, but according to Wikipedia "it is thought that the arm was damaged by a shovel during excavation." Nobody knows exactly how she died, but "one possible interpretation is that she was killed and then placed in the bog as a sacrifice." (National Museum of Denmark)
"The museum covers 14,000 years of Danish history, from the reindeer-hunters of the Ice Age, Vikings, and works of religious art from the Middle Ages, when the church was highly significant in Danish life. Danish coins from Viking times to the present and coins from ancient Rome and Greece, as well as examples of the coinage and currencies of other cultures, are exhibited also. The National Museum keeps Denmark's largest and most varied collection of objects from the ancient cultures of Greece and Italy, the Near East and Egypt. For example, it holds a collection of objects that were retrieved during the Danish excavation of Tell Shemshara in Iraq in 1957." (Wikipedia)
"The Dane axe is an early type of battle axe, primarily used during the transition between the European Viking Age and early Middle Ages. Other names for the weapon include English long axe, Danish axe, and hafted axe." Source: Wikipedia.
These long axes look like they would be awkward and heavy, requiring a lot of strength to use, but "[i]n reality, battle axes in the Viking age were light, fast, and well balanced, and were good for speedy, deadly attacks, as well as for a variety of nasty, clever moves," according to Hurstwic.
Axes have several advantages over swords. They're cheaper, for instance, and most Viking farmers would probably have owned at least one short axe for chopping wood and so on:
"In a period when almost everything was constructed of wood, it is unsurprising that a large number of different axes existed. These were mostly used as tools for the construction of ships, houses and carts, as well as other objects, so many different sizes and types of axes were required. The axe was also put to very effective use on the battlefield. Sometimes it is difficult to tell whether an axe was used as a weapon or a tool. Perhaps the Vikings used their ordinary woodworking axes as weapons if the situation demanded it?" Source: National Museum of Denmark.
These were effective weapons. As seen in the video above, the long haft of the Dane axe could be used as a pole for parrying, striking and to maintain distance. Short-handled axes have one obvious disadvantage in that you have to get closer to your target for them to be effective, but there are all sorts of trade-offs when comparing these particular weapons.
The longer reach of the Dane axe made it particularly effective for fighting in shield walls:
"When in the shield wall, most attacks against your opponent are made overhead. The overhead attack is an attempt to hit over the top of the enemy’s shield while aiming at their head and trying to bash or split them in the head, neck, or shoulders. Most thrusts while in a shield wall formation would go against the enemy’s shield and open yourself up to similar attacks as you must open a small gap in the wall to allow you to thrust." Source: Spagenhelm.
"... the dane ax could be used to reach over the shield wall and be swung down upon the enemy’s heads and shoulders behind their shields. Their shields would also be shattered and split from the powerful overhead hacks by a dane ax armed viking warrior."
Maintaining distance and extending your reach were critical in these tightly packed shield wall battles. The Dane axe had its problems, but in general it was an excellent weapon, not only for swinging down over the shields, but for smashing through the shields themselves and for swinging at the legs of opponents. And the Dane axe could deliver devastating injuries. The next video shows a series of tests done on a pig carcass with various Viking weapons. The axe tests begin at around 10:23. Note: Even if a Dane axe couldn't penetrate mail armor, the impact alone could have been extremely damaging.
Dane axes had different types of blades. Some of them, for instance, had hook-shaped heads that could have been useful against cavalry. With an axe like that, a warrior could have reached up and hooked a rider off his horse, assuming he could get close enough in the first place, not an easy thing to do.
Inevitably, new developments made these kinds of axes obsolete. According to Wikipedia, "[w]hile the use of the Dane axe continued into the 14th century, axes with an armour piercing back-spike and spear-like spike on the fore-end of the haft became more common, eventually evolving into the Pollaxe in the 15th century [see next video]. The simple Danish axe continued to be used in the West of Scotland and in Ireland into the 16th century. In Ireland, it was particularly associated with Galloglas mercenaries."
The execution of Jarl Borg. Vikings Season 2, Episode 7
"The blood eagle is a ritualized method of execution, detailed in late skaldic poetry. According to the two instances mentioned in the Sagas, the victim (in both cases a member of a royal family) was placed prone, the ribs severed from the spine with a sharp tool and the lungs pulled through the opening to create a pair of 'wings'. There is a continuing debate about whether the ritual was a literary invention, a mistranslation of the original texts or an authentic historical practice." Source: Wikipedia.
The Blood Eagle was a particularly nasty form of sacrificial execution, but did the Vikings actually put people to death this way? As far as I can tell, the only primary documentary evidence for the practice comes from sources such as the Orkneyinga Saga, the Heimskringla, the Tale of Ragnar's Sons, and a handful of references in other texts.
Note: The Tale of Ragnar's Sons describes (among other things) the execution of King Aella of Northumbria, a scene also depicted in Vikings.
Jarl Borg (top video) in Vikings is an entirely fictional character, I believe. Aella, on the other hand, was apparently a real king, though the sources for his life are limited and very little is known about his reign. According to some accounts, he was executed by the Vikings after they invaded Northumbria following the king's execution of the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok, another figure who may or may not have actually existed. How Aella died is a matter of conjecture, though, because the sources contradict each other:
"While Norse sources claim that Ragnar's sons tortured Ælla to death with a blood eagle, Anglo-Saxon accounts maintain that he died in battle, at York, on 21 March 867." (Wikipedia)
"Well into the last century, most historians of the Vikings accepted that the blood eagle was deeply unpleasant but very real. According to the eminent medievalist J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, its possible victims were not only Ælla of Northumbria but also Halfdán, the son of Harald Finehair (or Fairhair), king of Norway, and the Irish King Maelgualai [Mael Gualae] of Munster; in some interpretations, it is supposed that even Edmund the Martyr may have suffered the same fate."
One possibility is that the Blood Eagle was a real execution method sensationalized by later writers. For instance, the Welsh scholar and translator, Gwyn Jones, argues in A History of the Vikings (1968) that this "inhuman rite" was "unhappily no fiction ... but owes its eminence in pseudo-lore almost entirely to fiction ..." (footnote pp 119-220, 1968 edition)
It's also possible that the Blood Eagle is entirely fictitious. This seems to be the current consensus, but there's a lot of disagreement. Revisionist historians have challenged the idea that the Vikings were just a mob of cruel barbarians wearing horned helmets, but their depictions of "cuddly" Vikings went too far in the other direction. One of the main problems with our picture of the Vikings is that much of what we know about them was written by their enemies.
If the Blood Eagle is a literary invention, there's a good chance that this grisly method of execution was dreamed up by Christian writers trying to demonize the pagan Vikings. According to Wikipedia, "[t]here 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 ritual exist, and the scant references in the sagas are several hundred years after the Christianization of Scandinavia." Considering the Christians' history of inventing martyr stories set in the Roman Empire, I wouldn't be surprised if they concocted similar atrocity stories about the Vikings.
When I first started to research this subject, I assumed there was a high probability that the Blood Eagle was a real thing because the Vikings are thought to have conducted human sacrifices and the Blood Eagle is, in a way, just another form of ritual sacrifice. As it turns out, though, the question of whether the Vikings actually killed people for religious purposes isn't all that straightforward.
There is some archaeological evidence that the Vikings may have sacrificed humans. For instance, "[a]t Trelleborg [Sweden] a sacrificial site was found from the time before the Viking fortress was erected in 980-81. In five c. 3 metre-deep wells human and animal skeletons were found, together with jewellery and tools. Of the total of five human sacrifices, four were young children aged between 4 and 7. " Source: National Museum of Denmark.
Blood sacrifice, including human sacrifice, was an intrinsic part of pagan religions. The historical sources for Viking human sacrifice are questionable, though, because they all seem to come, once again, from Christian accounts:
According to the National Museum of Denmark, "[t]here are several horrifying accounts of human sacrifices from the Viking period. The German bishop, Thietmar of Merseburg, describes how the Vikings met every nine years at Lejre on Zealand [Denmark] in January 'and offer to their gods 99 people and just as many horses, dogs and hens or hawks, for these should serve them in the kingdom of the dead and atone for their evil deeds.'"
A similar ritual (at a different location) is also depicted in Vikings.
"The German monk Adam of Bremen wrote a similar account in 1072 about the sacrificial tradition at [Gamla Uppsala] in Sweden, where the temple was devoted to Thor, Odin and Frey. Here the Vikings also met every 9 years to ensure the goodwill of the gods. 9 males of all kinds of living creatures were sacrificed in a holy grove nearby. According to Adam of Bremen dogs, horses and humans hung from the trees. The number 9 was apparently of magical significance to the Vikings and was involved in a number of rituals." (National Museum of Denmark)
"There has been extensive debate over whether these accounts were real or simply Christian propaganda."
I wouldn't be shocked to learn that the Vikings actually executed royal prisoners using the Blood Eagle. Even if the descriptions in the sagas were written for entertainment, they may have had some basis in fact. At this point, however, it looks like this particular form of execution was a literary invention derived from the skaldic poems and embellished by later Christian writers in yet another attempt to make the pagans look like cruel and bloodthirsty savages:
"One of the features of a skaldic poem is that it’s incredibly convoluted, like a cryptic crossword puzzle. If you have a reference to what appears to be the Blood Eagle in a skaldic verse, it’s quite likely this is a poetic conceit. Roberta Frank, at Yale, argues that the Blood Eagle is just the idea of a carrion bird scratching at the back of the dead. If you create lots of corpses, you are a very good warrior. That’s what is being referred to. But when later writers made prose stories around these skaldic verses, they seem to have interpreted it literally. So it’s quite likely that there was no such thing as this horrible form of torture, but it grew in the telling." Source: National Geographic (2017).
"A Bronze Age hoard brimming with fine jewelry was discovered in Sweden in early April, when a local man investigated what he thought was a piece of scrap metal sticking out from under a pile of rocks in a hilly, wooded area." Source: Live Science.
"Tomas Karlsson was doing an outdoor navigation activity called orienteering when he uncovered the stash, located just outside of the municipality of Alingsås in southern Sweden. He quickly realized that the metal wasn't scrap — it was ancient bronze jewelry that had since turned green. It appeared that a wild animal had recently dug up a few pieces, revealing the metal, so Karlsson contacted the local authorities, who told archaeologists about the site, according to Sveriges Radio, Sweden's national publicly funded radio station."