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regndoft- It was terrible to behold how the blood poured down her breast while she greedily drank.
The comment was made by an old man when describing an indelible memory from his childhood. [...] It occurred in Hova, Västergötland, when the last public execution was performed some time circa 1870. The man, at the time a young man aged 12-14, was hired as a guard at the event. Those who were to be executed were husband and wife, sentenced to death for familicide. The husband was beheaded first and when the head rolled a man immediately ran forth. In a small bowl he collected the warm, running blood and handed it over to a soldier's wife.
- Hardly had she had time to drink up, the narrator continues, before two hussars on horses, one of them her brother-in-law, closed up on both sides of her.
They took her by one arm each and started riding down the road while the woman ran between them as well as she could. The man tells that the purpose of that action was to make the blood mix well with her own.
Blood was thought to contain life force and was used to heal the sick in Scandinavian tradition.
As morbid as the above story may seem, the thing that gets to me most is how this was not an in any way unusual occurrence. There are witnesses describing how guards had to fight back the pressing masses trying to collect blood in bowls, bottles, spoons etc. at public executions.
Usually, though, the blood of a slaughtered animal would do. Drinking the blood of a recently killed cow was a custom still practised in Sweden as late as the 1930s.
The comment was made by an old man when describing an indelible memory from his childhood. [...] It occurred in Hova, Västergötland, when the last public execution was performed some time circa 1870. The man, at the time a young man aged 12-14, was hired as a guard at the event. Those who were to be executed were husband and wife, sentenced to death for familicide. The husband was beheaded first and when the head rolled a man immediately ran forth. In a small bowl he collected the warm, running blood and handed it over to a soldier's wife.
- Hardly had she had time to drink up, the narrator continues, before two hussars on horses, one of them her brother-in-law, closed up on both sides of her.
They took her by one arm each and started riding down the road while the woman ran between them as well as she could. The man tells that the purpose of that action was to make the blood mix well with her own.
Blood was thought to contain life force and was used to heal the sick in Scandinavian tradition.
As morbid as the above story may seem, the thing that gets to me most is how this was not an in any way unusual occurrence. There are witnesses describing how guards had to fight back the pressing masses trying to collect blood in bowls, bottles, spoons etc. at public executions.
Usually, though, the blood of a slaughtered animal would do. Drinking the blood of a recently killed cow was a custom still practised in Sweden as late as the 1930s.
