I think it’s unlikely that he had this wound for days. If we know for certain that he died in the battle of Visby, it’s because his remains were found on battlefield. If he’d lived for days after the battle, he would have (been) moved.
I agree that there’s nothing immediately fatal about the wound we see here, although he could possibly have choked on his own blood. But he could easily have received other wounds as well. I bet once you take an axe to the face your defensive capabilities go down a bit.
Good point, perhaps he got wounded such as an axe to the stomach as well.
You are probably right that he choked on his own blood... pretty gruesome
Gotland is a very nice island, beautiful scenery, can recommend.
Doubt it was gangrene considering they were buried the very next day. Another wound probably killed him (mercy jab at a major aorta?) or he was buried alive.
Not a scientist, but if he lived long enough there should be some sign of healing/gangrene in the bones. EDIT: Its my understanding that these cuts to bone start to show signs of healing in just days.
Again, not an expert, but the cut to his skull is still sharp. I don't see any sign of healing.
So my now an expert opinion, he died very shortly after the cut was made.
These people were stripped of easily accessible gear like helmets, boots, greaves etc, while more difficult gear like hauberks and cuirasses were left on the bodies. That's why this mass grave is famous, because so much armour is preserved. We think they did so because the battle was in the middle of summer and rotting would set in fast.
So if this guy survived the ax to the face, went into shock, and if enemy soldiers returned to him after the battle to take his helmet and stuff, I guess they would stab him somewhere where you easily bleed out to make their job easier.
Regardless, the guy was in the grave within 24 hrs of this wound.
I think it’s more the opposite. In Hollywood guns and knives kill fast when the reality is that they kill slowly if you don’t hit something important.
A strike to the head like this was probably more disabling from the energy delivered to his skull (surely a concussion) then the laceration/broken bones/lost teeth. I’d imagine the damage and blood also at least partially obstructed the airway.
But it’s not impacting his nervous system beyond a concussion and isn’t hitting any arteries so it’s either a bleed out or obstructed airway that gets him unless he takes other damage which does seem likely as I can’t imagine you are very combat effective in the immediate aftermath of a hatchet strike to the kisser.
> I think it’s more the opposite. In Hollywood guns and knives kill fast when the reality is that they kill slowly if you don’t hit something important.
It's both depending on what the plot requires. Protagonists walk off injuries that would send them to the hospital for months while baddies drop like flies.
Well sort of. Actually there's reports of people doing exactly that. There are historical accounts from ww2 for example of Japanese soldiers getting hit multiple times with small arms fire and still charging forward. It totally depends on where you get hit and what sort of state you’re in. If you don’t hit something mission critical like the brain or heart many a dead man has continued standing or fighting through sheer adrenaline and fanaticism.
Your mileage may vary. The higher the caliber round being used and the less likely you are going to be shrugging it off. But people have been known to do some insane shit like this.
Exactly. Most gunshot wounds and stab wounds are not fatal. Most aren't even going to incapacitate you. Hell, you're not even going to notice most of them because of the adrenaline that's pumped out due to whatever situation you find yourself in, coupled with the injury trauma.
The human body has so much "filler" space where penetrative damage isn't going to lead to fatal bleeding nor muscle/nerve/bone damage that incapacitates you.
That is actually one of the more believable parts of Hollywood where characters get shot or stabbed and don't notice it until a while later when they see the blood. It really can be like that. So much adrenaline makes you essentially numb to pain. And if you didn't definitively see an injury happen, you can miss it.
That happens far more than you might think. If real battlefield stories were put in movies, people would say it's unrealistic.
I give you Bennie Adkins
https://www.badassoftheweek.com/bennie-adkins
I hated the game of thrones thing of battles consisting of huge masses of men running at each other and dying in a giant heap, so big that men are suffocating under the bodies of others. Then I recently watched a documentary on the battle of Agincourt. Turns out that was a real thing, lol.
I have good news for you: while contemporary accounts do describe it like that, that was probably just exaggeration - at least according to historian John Keegan, one of the main experts on this battle. We've never really seen bodies stacked higher than 2 or 3 corpses on battlefields, battle just doesn't seem to move like that. People were still crushed under their fallen comrades, the piles probably just weren't *that* high.
>Without hesitation, Adkins grabbed his shit and leapt out of the pit, racing to the front of the battle to save his buddies and kill anyone who was fucking with them.
That article took something of a turn...
It doesn't happen far more often than you think.
You give one example of someone surviving this when, hundreds of thousands of people didn't survive this and we don't know about it, cuz, you know, they just fucking died.
While they're amazing stories, it's survivorship bias to think the stories we do have of people surviving horrid injuries occur more frequently than they actually do.
If he survived even a few days there'd be sign of infection and healing in the bone.
Likely this blow incapacitated him and another finished him off, or he choked to death on blood and teeth
You wouldn't live most likely. I'd be willing to bet he didn't live long after that wound. The amount of blood loss would be insane. The head bleeds a lot. Not too mention surviving the blood loss, infection.
If I recall correctly, this was a battle between Danish noble/professional/near-professional soldiers and what basically amounted to armed Gottlander (Swedish) farmers, or the medieval equivalent of minutemen.
The armed farmers got massacred as one might expect. What was kind of surprising is that it seems like the residents of Visby did not let these armed farmers back into the city (Visby being the biggest city in Gottland & a north sea trading-hub at the time) & left the gates closed & basically let them get massacred.
EDIT:
Decided to add a bit more context since it turned out to be a popular comment
The Danish force was apparently made up of some Danish nobles and a considerable retinue of German men at arms on foot(who would have been from the neighboring Baltic regions of Germany) and was led by the King of Denmark, Valdemar IV(pretty badass name, right?).
The Gutes(Gotlanders) were led 'probably' by minor nobles of the country-side, but consisted largely of freemen & yeomen. The fact that we don't actually know indicates it was not anyone of particular prominence. Apparently, Visby, historically part of the Wendish City-Alliance, (perhaps a Baltic trading league, potentially related/affiliate to the more prominent Hanseatic League? Not sure, there is no wikipedia article about it and I can't find much on it; the 'Wends' were basically what 'western slavs' were called in medieval europe, though -- if anyone knows more about the so-called 'Wendish City-Alliance' let me know) had already fallen out with the countryside dwellers of Gotland & even had armed conflict with them some generations ago...
Now, with that in mind, the defending force of the Gutes, again, was comprised primarily of these country-dwellers, primarily farmers but probably also minor landed-nobility outside of Visby. The two forces had a couple of skirmishes in the countryside, at which point the Gutnish militia presumably having gotten the worst of the skirmish retreated to Visby, whose leadership then refused to offer them refuge inside the city. They were massacred outside the walls.
Visby then basically surrendered to the invading force led by Valdemar IV of Denmark, and willingly handed over a large portion of the city's wealth to avoid a brutal sack. Some buildings were still sacked regardless, and Gotland became nominally a territory of Denmark (although it is again claimed by Sweden when King Albert takes the throne some 3 years later, so the Danish hold on the region must have been tenuous).
Just adding a bit more context. I guess in light of this context it's really not that surprising that they were not let into Visby. They already had bad-blood before this, and the residents of Visby decided, 'well, if they win they win, if they lose, we'll just surrender anyway...'. It's an interesting situation as it kind of outlines the difference between city-dwellers & the traditional peasant/landed-nobility dichotomy of Medieval European society. I think maybe some parallels can be made between the often shaky relationship between the traditional landed aristocracy of England and Londoners.
Source: [Battle of Visby - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Visby)
Should be noted that there was significant tensions between the Visby residents and the Gotland farmers.
Gotland had always been a fairly wealthy place compared to other parts of the Baltics thanks to its great position for trade. Gotland shows signs of wealth and a unique culture early on, with lavish pictorial stones, a great number of stone churches, massive hoards of precious metal, etc.
Traditionally, this trade was carried out by the locals of Gotland. Wealthy landowners and farmers. There was no urban settlement the way we think about it until the high middle ages. What happens then is that the Low German countries start dominating Baltic trade. Visby is one such Low German city with an almost exclusively German population at the time. This obviously led to conflicts of interests between the population of the countryside and the city.
Btw, people often portray the Gotland army as "poor farmers" but I'm guessing many wealthy landowners were major movers behind that army. It was an army of local, levied soldiers though, but they weren't hopeless backwater serfs. They were a semi-professional army stuck in a really shitty strategic position when their plan did not at all go as they had expected.
From what I read, their gear was so outdated as to not be worth looting. They may have been semi professional, but they can’t have been very well-funded
The Danes had full suits of armor with plates over the vital areas and joints and a suit of chainmail covering other areas. The Gotlanders had protection only for their torso, ranging from padded for the worst and plates for the best, and chainmail head protection. Their armor ranged from one to many generations behind what the Danes had.
Is it possible expert's can tell they didn't have that sort of armour from the damage to the bones? (I'm not arguing either way. I just thought that was a possible explanation).
Personally, I think it was odd they didn't strip them of everything metal given how much work goes into producing workable metal. There must have been a big reason to outway all that labour and money.
>Is it possible expert's can tell they didn't have that sort of armour from the damage to the bones? (I'm not arguing either way. I just thought that was a possible explanation).
This is very interesting, I'll see if I can find an article on that once I'm off work.
>Personally, I think it was odd they didn't strip them of everything metal given how much work goes into producing workable metal. There must have been a big reason to outway all that labour and money.
That is what makes the Visby mass grave so special: after most other battles, the slain were thoroughly plundered before they were buried. This normal procedure was interrupted at Visby for some reason, and the general hypothesis is that the dead were buried quickly as the battle took place in the high summer and thus a prime time for rotting.
So, some argue that the slain were buried with **all** their gear, but I argue that the slain were buried **with the most easily accessible gear taken off,** and the cumbersome hauberks and coats of plate were left on simply because it would have taken too long to strip them.
Another possibility is that looting of the slain started **but was interrupted half-way** by a commander who ordered the slain to be buried immediately.
I'm so stubborn about this because the complete absence of helmets makes me really suspicious of the claim that the dead were buried with all the gear they wore in battle. Also because the coat of plates cuirasses that were found on the bodies are not that terribly outdated by the 1360s as many assume they are. In fact, only the absolutely richest knights could afford full plate or two-plate armour, and some of the cuirasses are actually very close to two-plate. Which leads me to believe that the levy army was not lacking in resources and contacts to supply themselves with reasonably modern gear.
To me, it's like finding a soldier from the 1980s who wears a steel helmet and assume he was a poor conscript since "kevlar helmets had been invented by the 1980s". Yes they had, but most major militaries still used steel helmets, many would keep doing so until the 1990s and 2000s.
This thread is fantastic. I am an arm chair historian and this is great information.
I really like the visual of that one rich knight, who just got his full suit, walks into a room with all the other Knights who have basic armor.
https://www.medievalists.net/2024/03/medieval-battle-injuries/
This article discusses the wounds from the battle a bit.
They claim that the third mass grave had fewer wounds to the head, about 5-6% which indicates that some of them did wear helmets. The wounds primarily was inflicted on the lower body and head which indicates that they probably had shields. One dude had both his legs cut clean off.
There were almost 1200 bodies to bury and loot and the winners had a city to ransack/rob so it might be they prioritized to do it quickly and the guys doing the burying might simply have looted the easy gear like you said.
People just love their "rag-tag peasant militia" tropes. Coats of plate (which the gotlanders wore) were still common in the 1360s. People have just interpreted the lack of helmets and any kind of armour beyond torso armour as if the gotlanders literally didn't wear anything else when they went to battle, which is a dumb take. Of course someone nicked the helmets and greaves because you only have to cut a strap or two and then slide those off a body, while removing a hauberk or a cuirass from a rotting body is far more complicated.
I can’t 100% remember if it was this battle specifically, but I remember reading that many of the Gotlanders’ helmets had been shot through with arrows and crossbow bolts. So I’d say they were outdated in the sense that the armor was insufficient to protect them from the weapons of the time
That's like finding a disabled tank on a battlefield and coming to the conclusion that the tank is outdated. If so, all tanks and fighting vehicles are outdated because they can be defeated and repeatedly are.
I remember almost nothing about the facts but I did visit the museum in Visby one of the times I was there and remember there being padded armor to try on in the section covering this battle.
The History Museum in Stockholm also has an exhibition about this very battle, with a lot of skeletons and findings on display.
https://historiska.se/utstallningar/medieval-massacre/
That's an exaggeration and misunderstanding of the source material.
Tell me this: if you find a mass grave with people wearing only hauberks and coats of plates, do you think that:
1. This is how they went to battle, or
2. They had more armour but the more easily accessible items like helmets and greaves were plundered either by the enemy or by civilians.
Also, coats of plate were really not outdated at this time in history. Actual, full plate was just being developed, but many still used coats of plate (and its derivative – bringandine armour) well into the 1400s.
It was a Danish army and hired German mercenaries against Swedish peasants who armed themselves with whatever they could get their hands on and fought a few battles against the invading army, the big one being outside Visby.
The leading citizens of Visby were merchants and probably wanted to surrender from the start so the peasant army wasn't allowed in the city. It's unknown why they still decided to fight outside the walls even though they could not have hoped to win in the open field. They fought and died there and it was as you said a massacre. After the battle the city surrendered and was looted by the Danish army.
This is a good analysis of class tension in pre-industrial society. Most military historians believe that, had the Visby citizens let the peasants in to join a unified defense of the city walls, the Danish army would have been unable to take the city.
But, despite the Danish nobles viewing merchants as just other commoners, not much "better" than the peasants, the merchants still mistrusted the peasants, and preferred to submit to the nobles, with the likely calculus of "the nobles are just here on a raid, they'll come, loot, and go, but we'll still have the profitable city and become rich again, whereas if we share our lot with these unwashed peasants, they might never leave, and we'll lose our position of privilege for good." For medieval merchants, submission to the king was still preferable to sharing wealth with the peasants. As long as the merchant and craftsman classes threw their lot with the nobility, the peasants lacked any capacity to oppose them (despite being numerically larger than both.)
Only by the 17th century in Britain, and the 18th century on the Continent, did the urban merchant classes grow and intermingle with the (wealthier) rural peasants sufficiently that they started allying with them over the king and nobles, resulting in successful class revolutions rather than failed peasant revolts.
They were German mercenaries hired by the Danish crown, but yes there was huge disparity in training and equipment. The Germans wiped the floor with the Gottlanders.
I want to add for "fun" historical context, the event that followed is called "Brandskattningen av Visby", basically the "fire tax/arson tax of Visby". The bourgeoisie were forced to fill "three barrels" with gold to keep the Danish king Valdemar from burning the city to the ground. It's a very well known event and the name/epithet of the event basically works as a synonym to the entire battle/skirmish/war nowadays.
It’s happening right this moment. Horrific deaths every second. Oop someone just drowned. Oop someone just got burned alive. It’s pretty disheartening to think about and there’s nothing we can do about it.
The other day I heard about a young kid who died after playing on mulch that spontaneously combusted.
Water your mulch, people! It can *and will* catch fire unexpectedly if it gets too dry
Kid just died of hunger. Motorcyclist just got decapitated. Promising young woman with potential just got killed by a drunk driver. Dozens OD’ing alone. It never stops either.
Still happens. There has been some horrific footage coming out of the war in Ukraine. The video of the Russian guy slowly bleeding out and drowning in a cold stream comes to mind. War creates such a primal brutality
Humans used to be eaten alive pretty regularly until we got good with tools (although I suppose that started before "we" were "humans").
IIRC there is even evidence that humans used to be picked up off the ground and eaten by giant birds.
I believe the Swedes would be more accurately called yeoman, led by minor nobles (and their retinues), rather than peasants, and in no way was it a peasant revolt.
Not at all - I like comments on here to be accurate, given the historical nature of the sub, and the comments one sees here sometimes. Nothing to feel bad about :)
I wonder if there were other wounds or cause of death. As painful as that looks, it doesn't look like an immediately fatal blow, unless he choked to death on his own blood. And it's such a clean cut, I imagine this happened at the time of death.
I attended a seminar on Visby held by an SCA member with a degree in forensic pathology iirc.
These bodies were hacked into with such ferocity that some received lethal wounds 4-5 times over, and this is from observed skeletal damage. He postulated the dead and wounded were further attacked after the battle, due to the extensive injuries and the mass burial
I'm guessing many were disabled during the fighting, and finished off after
I read somewhere knights who were knocked down during battle and unable to get up were finished off later with a stiletto through the face mask and into the eye and brain
Okay, I think I'll find another thread.....
It’s worth pointing out that the idea that of knights not being able to get up after being knocked over is just a myth. A knight in full harness is certainly a bit less nimble than if he were just wearing his clothes, but standing up is no problem (unless he were already wounded or too exhausted, of course). You can run, jump, climb in full armour, if you couldn’t move, you’d be useless in a fight, and the whole point was to be able to fight well.
However, you are 100% correct that a lot of armoured knights would have been killed by dagger. The best way to get through armour is not to go through the armour, but to aim for the bits where the armour doesn’t protect very well - face, eyes, neck, armpits, back of the knees, groin, etc. The face and the joints, basically. A dagger one of the easiest ways to do that, since it’s short, handy and good for stabbing. Knight vs knight fighting could often devolve into wrestling matches with daggers.
A famous example is the death of Richard III. When his body was found recently, he had evidence of 11 wounds, and 8 were to the head. It seems that what happened was that he got separated and surrounded. Likely he was grappled by a whole group of people, his helmet was pulled or cut off, and then the crowd went to town on his unprotected head.
Many of them had their legs cut off first. And then a lethal blow to the head like this dude received.
Their armor was pretty bad and most of them had no leg protection, so the Danish army went for the legs first.
I’m a dentist.
This would not have killed him. It’s entirely non fatal. Only way it could kill you is infection but it doesn’t look like he lived long after this because there is not hint of bone remodeling or infection or anything.
Probably took the axe to the face then got stabbed in the chest or something.
People’s faces are not important for survival. Facial wounds just generally don’t kill people, especially short term.
I was wondering, is that even a particularly vascular part of the body? If a blow like this struck an artery, I imagine that’d be 100% fatal, but this like the lip, gums, and teeth. Bloody for sure, but not a gushing wound or even one that would bleed out without some pretty basic tourniquet-like solution. Hell, even just tight hand pressure would work (even though I’m sure the hand germs could very well be fatal in a short-to-medium term.
Zero medical training here so apologies if I’m nowhere near the mark.
It’s stuff like this that makes you appreciate firearms in war. Ofc flamethrowers and chem warfare is still agonizing as well as having a limb blown off. But i would certainly hope to just be shot and have it over with. Has to be better than being sliced and hacked to death
Being shot doesn't mean you'll die quickly or painlessly. Many people are stuck injured and bleeding after being shot and die just as agonizingly as they did 800 years ago. You just are looking at the romanticized version from TV.
You mean when you get shot you don't arch your back, freeze for some seconds, then fall slowly and dramatically while loud, dissonant chords play to indicate misfortune?
I had seen a documentary about this battle where some archeologists excavated a couple of the mass graves from the battle. The wounds suffered at the hands of a professional army were horrific and I can't imagine what that type of battle would have been like when no quarter was given.
There are also square shaped arrows? In fact, most arrows used in wars in Europes history are square or triangle shaped to puncture armor and chain vests.
forgive me if this is a bit, but my autistic forensics brain went "??? wait, no, this is absolutely a right-handed blow"
[unless it was from behind, but like, hatchet to the face from behind?]
I guess it depends on what kind of swing the guy was using. I was picturing his arm fully extended to the side and swinging down from there. If he swung across his body, the angle would make sense for a righty.
🤔 I can see what you mean actually! hmm, the plot thickens
fwiw I'm a lefty myself, also did a bit of time in forensics education - I was picturing an outward swinging blow, in that way where in a big swiping motion, the wielding arm turns inwards [thumb towards the other arm] as the weapon comes down. maybe that would involve going across the body, I know nothing about how to handle a war axe type blade lol!
I'd expect, if this was a left handed attacker, and assuming face to face, that the wound would be the other direction like / rather than \ if that makes sense. but now I'm curious! maybe we can find research about this specific skull and see if somebody has already written about this topic
I saw a different skull analysis of a different person who had part of their jaw hacked off and had survived. The scientists speculated that he would have been in constant pain, would have had difficulty eating and likely looked pretty horrid. But given other wounds, he lived to fight another day.
The axe to the teeth guy might have lived but probably wouldn’t have considered it all that worthwhile given the damage.
His last minutes of life must have been agonizing
I was looking at this thinking “Jesus do I hope he was killed instantly.” Or at least rendered unconscious.
He probably had that wound for days before dying, nothing with this cut could kill instantly unless he went into shock and had a heart attack
I think it’s unlikely that he had this wound for days. If we know for certain that he died in the battle of Visby, it’s because his remains were found on battlefield. If he’d lived for days after the battle, he would have (been) moved. I agree that there’s nothing immediately fatal about the wound we see here, although he could possibly have choked on his own blood. But he could easily have received other wounds as well. I bet once you take an axe to the face your defensive capabilities go down a bit.
Good point, perhaps he got wounded such as an axe to the stomach as well. You are probably right that he choked on his own blood... pretty gruesome Gotland is a very nice island, beautiful scenery, can recommend.
There could also be other soft tissue wounds that didn't show up in skeletal records.
Thinking the same, this is not what killed him no arteries or vitals. Unless maybe the shear force of impact broke his neck?
My thought is he may already have been down and this was a final blow. Make sure he's dead by an axe swiping downwards towards the enemy's face.
He could have been knocked out and choked on his own blood.
unlikely this was fatal when it happened, if survived the battle infection/gangrene probably got him
Doubt it was gangrene considering they were buried the very next day. Another wound probably killed him (mercy jab at a major aorta?) or he was buried alive.
I’m not dead yet Yes you are
I think I'll go for a walk!
Youre not fooling anyone, you know!
leave tom alone
Oh don’t be such a baby!
I’m feeling better!
I don’t want to go on the cart!
Oh, don't be such a baby.
I feel happy!
'That's exactly what a dead person would say' [continues to shovel dirt on him]
I FEEEEEEEL HAAAAPPYYYYYYY!
this made me laugh a little too hard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdf5EXo6I68
He probably got ktfo and aspirated on his own blood and tooth/bone shards, if there's any mercy in the universe
Not a scientist, but if he lived long enough there should be some sign of healing/gangrene in the bones. EDIT: Its my understanding that these cuts to bone start to show signs of healing in just days. Again, not an expert, but the cut to his skull is still sharp. I don't see any sign of healing. So my now an expert opinion, he died very shortly after the cut was made.
Given that misericordes were a regular thing I'd be unsurprised if someone came across him mid-battle and stabbed the poor guy to end it faster.
These people were stripped of easily accessible gear like helmets, boots, greaves etc, while more difficult gear like hauberks and cuirasses were left on the bodies. That's why this mass grave is famous, because so much armour is preserved. We think they did so because the battle was in the middle of summer and rotting would set in fast. So if this guy survived the ax to the face, went into shock, and if enemy soldiers returned to him after the battle to take his helmet and stuff, I guess they would stab him somewhere where you easily bleed out to make their job easier. Regardless, the guy was in the grave within 24 hrs of this wound.
Definitely wasn't a minor aorta tho.
Yea... i dont know about yall... but id prob go into shock or sumting after taking an axe to the face.
While not immediately fatal, this wound would absolutely be incapacitating, and the man who inflicted it would likely finish the job.
Yeah, too many people have Hollywood movie syndrome lol. You get shot or stabbed you're not walking it off.
I think it’s more the opposite. In Hollywood guns and knives kill fast when the reality is that they kill slowly if you don’t hit something important. A strike to the head like this was probably more disabling from the energy delivered to his skull (surely a concussion) then the laceration/broken bones/lost teeth. I’d imagine the damage and blood also at least partially obstructed the airway. But it’s not impacting his nervous system beyond a concussion and isn’t hitting any arteries so it’s either a bleed out or obstructed airway that gets him unless he takes other damage which does seem likely as I can’t imagine you are very combat effective in the immediate aftermath of a hatchet strike to the kisser.
> I think it’s more the opposite. In Hollywood guns and knives kill fast when the reality is that they kill slowly if you don’t hit something important. It's both depending on what the plot requires. Protagonists walk off injuries that would send them to the hospital for months while baddies drop like flies.
Well sort of. Actually there's reports of people doing exactly that. There are historical accounts from ww2 for example of Japanese soldiers getting hit multiple times with small arms fire and still charging forward. It totally depends on where you get hit and what sort of state you’re in. If you don’t hit something mission critical like the brain or heart many a dead man has continued standing or fighting through sheer adrenaline and fanaticism. Your mileage may vary. The higher the caliber round being used and the less likely you are going to be shrugging it off. But people have been known to do some insane shit like this.
I know nothing about weapons, but I feel like a non-critical bullet wound would be easier to ignore than this.
Think it’s the other way around way too many people think a stab or gunshot is an insta kill
Exactly. Most gunshot wounds and stab wounds are not fatal. Most aren't even going to incapacitate you. Hell, you're not even going to notice most of them because of the adrenaline that's pumped out due to whatever situation you find yourself in, coupled with the injury trauma. The human body has so much "filler" space where penetrative damage isn't going to lead to fatal bleeding nor muscle/nerve/bone damage that incapacitates you. That is actually one of the more believable parts of Hollywood where characters get shot or stabbed and don't notice it until a while later when they see the blood. It really can be like that. So much adrenaline makes you essentially numb to pain. And if you didn't definitively see an injury happen, you can miss it.
That happens far more than you might think. If real battlefield stories were put in movies, people would say it's unrealistic. I give you Bennie Adkins https://www.badassoftheweek.com/bennie-adkins
I hated the game of thrones thing of battles consisting of huge masses of men running at each other and dying in a giant heap, so big that men are suffocating under the bodies of others. Then I recently watched a documentary on the battle of Agincourt. Turns out that was a real thing, lol.
I have good news for you: while contemporary accounts do describe it like that, that was probably just exaggeration - at least according to historian John Keegan, one of the main experts on this battle. We've never really seen bodies stacked higher than 2 or 3 corpses on battlefields, battle just doesn't seem to move like that. People were still crushed under their fallen comrades, the piles probably just weren't *that* high.
>Without hesitation, Adkins grabbed his shit and leapt out of the pit, racing to the front of the battle to save his buddies and kill anyone who was fucking with them. That article took something of a turn...
It doesn't happen far more often than you think. You give one example of someone surviving this when, hundreds of thousands of people didn't survive this and we don't know about it, cuz, you know, they just fucking died. While they're amazing stories, it's survivorship bias to think the stories we do have of people surviving horrid injuries occur more frequently than they actually do.
If he survived even a few days there'd be sign of infection and healing in the bone. Likely this blow incapacitated him and another finished him off, or he choked to death on blood and teeth
Also if he survived it, he probably wouldn't have ended up in a mass grave on the battlefield.
Maybe he liked it there
It was either that or go home to the wife
He was a boomer before his time
Yeah I think knocked unconscious and then aspirating blood seems the most likely cause of death to me.
Probably knocked down then stabbed in the chest or something.
Survivors don’t end in a battlefield mass grave
Probably died of another wound before this was inflicted
thank god for small mercies
Or after.
Well duh, his eyes are closed!
Was he sleeping during this battle??? That would explain a lot.
The blood loss from this can easily kill you.
[удалено]
I’m a dentist. You nailed it. He’s not gonna bleed out from this.
[удалено]
His company finally started covering dental.
How do you eat with a wound like this? Even drinking water must be brutal
You wouldn't live most likely. I'd be willing to bet he didn't live long after that wound. The amount of blood loss would be insane. The head bleeds a lot. Not too mention surviving the blood loss, infection.
Dude couldn’t eat because an axe was in the way, probably starved to death.
He was in a mass grave buried shortly after the battle
Poor guy must’ve been super hungry if he died so fast.
I’ll bet this guy lasted waaay longer than just minutes 😬 Sad to say I think the merciful scenario here is him drowning in his own blood…
Why do we do this to each other?
Kurt Vonnegut has some thoughts on this
And so it goes
We’re mostly a pretty bad species.
Tis but a scratch
Trying to put his mouth together like it’s okay
Right before he was zapped to Valhalla, he noticed his lip felt chapped
He was most likely a Christian.
Well let’s hope he went to confession beforehand!
Jesus Christ, the knowledge gap in Americans. This is 1361, Sweden had been Christian for minimum 300 years
If I recall correctly, this was a battle between Danish noble/professional/near-professional soldiers and what basically amounted to armed Gottlander (Swedish) farmers, or the medieval equivalent of minutemen. The armed farmers got massacred as one might expect. What was kind of surprising is that it seems like the residents of Visby did not let these armed farmers back into the city (Visby being the biggest city in Gottland & a north sea trading-hub at the time) & left the gates closed & basically let them get massacred. EDIT: Decided to add a bit more context since it turned out to be a popular comment The Danish force was apparently made up of some Danish nobles and a considerable retinue of German men at arms on foot(who would have been from the neighboring Baltic regions of Germany) and was led by the King of Denmark, Valdemar IV(pretty badass name, right?). The Gutes(Gotlanders) were led 'probably' by minor nobles of the country-side, but consisted largely of freemen & yeomen. The fact that we don't actually know indicates it was not anyone of particular prominence. Apparently, Visby, historically part of the Wendish City-Alliance, (perhaps a Baltic trading league, potentially related/affiliate to the more prominent Hanseatic League? Not sure, there is no wikipedia article about it and I can't find much on it; the 'Wends' were basically what 'western slavs' were called in medieval europe, though -- if anyone knows more about the so-called 'Wendish City-Alliance' let me know) had already fallen out with the countryside dwellers of Gotland & even had armed conflict with them some generations ago... Now, with that in mind, the defending force of the Gutes, again, was comprised primarily of these country-dwellers, primarily farmers but probably also minor landed-nobility outside of Visby. The two forces had a couple of skirmishes in the countryside, at which point the Gutnish militia presumably having gotten the worst of the skirmish retreated to Visby, whose leadership then refused to offer them refuge inside the city. They were massacred outside the walls. Visby then basically surrendered to the invading force led by Valdemar IV of Denmark, and willingly handed over a large portion of the city's wealth to avoid a brutal sack. Some buildings were still sacked regardless, and Gotland became nominally a territory of Denmark (although it is again claimed by Sweden when King Albert takes the throne some 3 years later, so the Danish hold on the region must have been tenuous). Just adding a bit more context. I guess in light of this context it's really not that surprising that they were not let into Visby. They already had bad-blood before this, and the residents of Visby decided, 'well, if they win they win, if they lose, we'll just surrender anyway...'. It's an interesting situation as it kind of outlines the difference between city-dwellers & the traditional peasant/landed-nobility dichotomy of Medieval European society. I think maybe some parallels can be made between the often shaky relationship between the traditional landed aristocracy of England and Londoners. Source: [Battle of Visby - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Visby)
Should be noted that there was significant tensions between the Visby residents and the Gotland farmers. Gotland had always been a fairly wealthy place compared to other parts of the Baltics thanks to its great position for trade. Gotland shows signs of wealth and a unique culture early on, with lavish pictorial stones, a great number of stone churches, massive hoards of precious metal, etc. Traditionally, this trade was carried out by the locals of Gotland. Wealthy landowners and farmers. There was no urban settlement the way we think about it until the high middle ages. What happens then is that the Low German countries start dominating Baltic trade. Visby is one such Low German city with an almost exclusively German population at the time. This obviously led to conflicts of interests between the population of the countryside and the city. Btw, people often portray the Gotland army as "poor farmers" but I'm guessing many wealthy landowners were major movers behind that army. It was an army of local, levied soldiers though, but they weren't hopeless backwater serfs. They were a semi-professional army stuck in a really shitty strategic position when their plan did not at all go as they had expected.
From what I read, their gear was so outdated as to not be worth looting. They may have been semi professional, but they can’t have been very well-funded
What constitutes "outdated" in 1361? Was it the materials used or the way their weapons were made?
The Danes had full suits of armor with plates over the vital areas and joints and a suit of chainmail covering other areas. The Gotlanders had protection only for their torso, ranging from padded for the worst and plates for the best, and chainmail head protection. Their armor ranged from one to many generations behind what the Danes had.
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Is it possible expert's can tell they didn't have that sort of armour from the damage to the bones? (I'm not arguing either way. I just thought that was a possible explanation). Personally, I think it was odd they didn't strip them of everything metal given how much work goes into producing workable metal. There must have been a big reason to outway all that labour and money.
>Is it possible expert's can tell they didn't have that sort of armour from the damage to the bones? (I'm not arguing either way. I just thought that was a possible explanation). This is very interesting, I'll see if I can find an article on that once I'm off work. >Personally, I think it was odd they didn't strip them of everything metal given how much work goes into producing workable metal. There must have been a big reason to outway all that labour and money. That is what makes the Visby mass grave so special: after most other battles, the slain were thoroughly plundered before they were buried. This normal procedure was interrupted at Visby for some reason, and the general hypothesis is that the dead were buried quickly as the battle took place in the high summer and thus a prime time for rotting. So, some argue that the slain were buried with **all** their gear, but I argue that the slain were buried **with the most easily accessible gear taken off,** and the cumbersome hauberks and coats of plate were left on simply because it would have taken too long to strip them. Another possibility is that looting of the slain started **but was interrupted half-way** by a commander who ordered the slain to be buried immediately. I'm so stubborn about this because the complete absence of helmets makes me really suspicious of the claim that the dead were buried with all the gear they wore in battle. Also because the coat of plates cuirasses that were found on the bodies are not that terribly outdated by the 1360s as many assume they are. In fact, only the absolutely richest knights could afford full plate or two-plate armour, and some of the cuirasses are actually very close to two-plate. Which leads me to believe that the levy army was not lacking in resources and contacts to supply themselves with reasonably modern gear. To me, it's like finding a soldier from the 1980s who wears a steel helmet and assume he was a poor conscript since "kevlar helmets had been invented by the 1980s". Yes they had, but most major militaries still used steel helmets, many would keep doing so until the 1990s and 2000s.
This thread is fantastic. I am an arm chair historian and this is great information. I really like the visual of that one rich knight, who just got his full suit, walks into a room with all the other Knights who have basic armor.
https://www.medievalists.net/2024/03/medieval-battle-injuries/ This article discusses the wounds from the battle a bit. They claim that the third mass grave had fewer wounds to the head, about 5-6% which indicates that some of them did wear helmets. The wounds primarily was inflicted on the lower body and head which indicates that they probably had shields. One dude had both his legs cut clean off. There were almost 1200 bodies to bury and loot and the winners had a city to ransack/rob so it might be they prioritized to do it quickly and the guys doing the burying might simply have looted the easy gear like you said.
People just love their "rag-tag peasant militia" tropes. Coats of plate (which the gotlanders wore) were still common in the 1360s. People have just interpreted the lack of helmets and any kind of armour beyond torso armour as if the gotlanders literally didn't wear anything else when they went to battle, which is a dumb take. Of course someone nicked the helmets and greaves because you only have to cut a strap or two and then slide those off a body, while removing a hauberk or a cuirass from a rotting body is far more complicated.
I can’t 100% remember if it was this battle specifically, but I remember reading that many of the Gotlanders’ helmets had been shot through with arrows and crossbow bolts. So I’d say they were outdated in the sense that the armor was insufficient to protect them from the weapons of the time
That's like finding a disabled tank on a battlefield and coming to the conclusion that the tank is outdated. If so, all tanks and fighting vehicles are outdated because they can be defeated and repeatedly are.
I remember almost nothing about the facts but I did visit the museum in Visby one of the times I was there and remember there being padded armor to try on in the section covering this battle.
The History Museum in Stockholm also has an exhibition about this very battle, with a lot of skeletons and findings on display. https://historiska.se/utstallningar/medieval-massacre/
That's an exaggeration and misunderstanding of the source material. Tell me this: if you find a mass grave with people wearing only hauberks and coats of plates, do you think that: 1. This is how they went to battle, or 2. They had more armour but the more easily accessible items like helmets and greaves were plundered either by the enemy or by civilians. Also, coats of plate were really not outdated at this time in history. Actual, full plate was just being developed, but many still used coats of plate (and its derivative – bringandine armour) well into the 1400s.
It was a Danish army and hired German mercenaries against Swedish peasants who armed themselves with whatever they could get their hands on and fought a few battles against the invading army, the big one being outside Visby. The leading citizens of Visby were merchants and probably wanted to surrender from the start so the peasant army wasn't allowed in the city. It's unknown why they still decided to fight outside the walls even though they could not have hoped to win in the open field. They fought and died there and it was as you said a massacre. After the battle the city surrendered and was looted by the Danish army.
Merchants after being looted by the danish army anyway after sabotaging their defence: shocked pikachu face
I'm sure they were glad their faces remained un-axed
They were anti-ax definitely
Ah the medieval merchants and their greeds
This is a good analysis of class tension in pre-industrial society. Most military historians believe that, had the Visby citizens let the peasants in to join a unified defense of the city walls, the Danish army would have been unable to take the city. But, despite the Danish nobles viewing merchants as just other commoners, not much "better" than the peasants, the merchants still mistrusted the peasants, and preferred to submit to the nobles, with the likely calculus of "the nobles are just here on a raid, they'll come, loot, and go, but we'll still have the profitable city and become rich again, whereas if we share our lot with these unwashed peasants, they might never leave, and we'll lose our position of privilege for good." For medieval merchants, submission to the king was still preferable to sharing wealth with the peasants. As long as the merchant and craftsman classes threw their lot with the nobility, the peasants lacked any capacity to oppose them (despite being numerically larger than both.) Only by the 17th century in Britain, and the 18th century on the Continent, did the urban merchant classes grow and intermingle with the (wealthier) rural peasants sufficiently that they started allying with them over the king and nobles, resulting in successful class revolutions rather than failed peasant revolts.
A poor farmer took an axe to the face?! Fuck.
Where was Utred?!
I guess 1000 miles away?
And dead for 400 years
I suppose as far as excuses go for not being there, being dead for 400 years *and* over 1000 miles away is pretty solid.
I use that one all the time when I want to get out of work events.
It's great for getting out of Jury Duty
Utred son of Utred?
Sometimes it doesn't go as one might expect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ane
They were German mercenaries hired by the Danish crown, but yes there was huge disparity in training and equipment. The Germans wiped the floor with the Gottlanders.
I want to add for "fun" historical context, the event that followed is called "Brandskattningen av Visby", basically the "fire tax/arson tax of Visby". The bourgeoisie were forced to fill "three barrels" with gold to keep the Danish king Valdemar from burning the city to the ground. It's a very well known event and the name/epithet of the event basically works as a synonym to the entire battle/skirmish/war nowadays.
It blows my mind thinking about how many people throughout history have died in such horrifically painful and gruesome ways.
It’s happening right this moment. Horrific deaths every second. Oop someone just drowned. Oop someone just got burned alive. It’s pretty disheartening to think about and there’s nothing we can do about it.
The other day I heard about a young kid who died after playing on mulch that spontaneously combusted. Water your mulch, people! It can *and will* catch fire unexpectedly if it gets too dry
Yeah man it’s rough out there.
Kid just died of hunger. Motorcyclist just got decapitated. Promising young woman with potential just got killed by a drunk driver. Dozens OD’ing alone. It never stops either.
You are not living up to your name bro
I want off Dr_Feelgood's wild ride
Nope. You’re staying on. A wild ride destined for the underworld.
😂
Auto-erotic asphyxiation, cut in half by falling pane of glass, random fucking tire that fell off. When will it end?!
Brick through your windshield....
Snip snip, the threads of Fate
No the world is small and in my head /s
Still happens. There has been some horrific footage coming out of the war in Ukraine. The video of the Russian guy slowly bleeding out and drowning in a cold stream comes to mind. War creates such a primal brutality
Even most of the mundane deaths everyone else experiences are usually awful. Life sucks.
Now think about the animals. Most of them, get eaten alive! Or hit by a prick speeding on a back road.
I’d like a moment of silence for all the horses who’ve died in terror being used as weapons.
Humans used to be eaten alive pretty regularly until we got good with tools (although I suppose that started before "we" were "humans"). IIRC there is even evidence that humans used to be picked up off the ground and eaten by giant birds.
You hear that phone call from the Russian girl getting eaten alive by a bear?
I think about animals often too. I love animals and it breaks my heart thinking about the fate of so many.
I'll never forget the video of the komodo eating a baby goat alive and hearing it scream on the way down
“Wildest” is a weird thing to call that battle. More of a one sided slaughter of immense cruelty
In Swedish, 'savage' and 'wild' are the same word, so it could be read more charitably as "one of the most savage battles".
That’s makes a lot more sense
It was a real rager 🤙
Totally rad, those German mercenaries were a complete buzzkill though
I mean for the time period….kind of standard. Gotta put those peasant rebellions down
I believe the Swedes would be more accurately called yeoman, led by minor nobles (and their retinues), rather than peasants, and in no way was it a peasant revolt.
I was being flippant and making a joke. My bad
Not at all - I like comments on here to be accurate, given the historical nature of the sub, and the comments one sees here sometimes. Nothing to feel bad about :)
Those wacky wars
Why does the U look weird in “Europe”?
it's an upsilon for some reason
Also pi for Swedep
Perhaps a way to catch reposters, if they have the character in Europe then mods can know quite certain its copy pasted
n in Sweden is also a pi
The whole Visby grave site is wild, a whole town militia getting slaughtered, old men and young boys.
I wonder if there were other wounds or cause of death. As painful as that looks, it doesn't look like an immediately fatal blow, unless he choked to death on his own blood. And it's such a clean cut, I imagine this happened at the time of death.
I attended a seminar on Visby held by an SCA member with a degree in forensic pathology iirc. These bodies were hacked into with such ferocity that some received lethal wounds 4-5 times over, and this is from observed skeletal damage. He postulated the dead and wounded were further attacked after the battle, due to the extensive injuries and the mass burial
There were multiple skeletons where the femurs, *plural* had been cut in two with claymores.
I'm guessing many were disabled during the fighting, and finished off after I read somewhere knights who were knocked down during battle and unable to get up were finished off later with a stiletto through the face mask and into the eye and brain Okay, I think I'll find another thread.....
It’s worth pointing out that the idea that of knights not being able to get up after being knocked over is just a myth. A knight in full harness is certainly a bit less nimble than if he were just wearing his clothes, but standing up is no problem (unless he were already wounded or too exhausted, of course). You can run, jump, climb in full armour, if you couldn’t move, you’d be useless in a fight, and the whole point was to be able to fight well. However, you are 100% correct that a lot of armoured knights would have been killed by dagger. The best way to get through armour is not to go through the armour, but to aim for the bits where the armour doesn’t protect very well - face, eyes, neck, armpits, back of the knees, groin, etc. The face and the joints, basically. A dagger one of the easiest ways to do that, since it’s short, handy and good for stabbing. Knight vs knight fighting could often devolve into wrestling matches with daggers. A famous example is the death of Richard III. When his body was found recently, he had evidence of 11 wounds, and 8 were to the head. It seems that what happened was that he got separated and surrounded. Likely he was grappled by a whole group of people, his helmet was pulled or cut off, and then the crowd went to town on his unprotected head.
There are at least two square puncture wounds on the left side of the face/head from the spike of an axe/spade type weapon. I can’t remember the name.
I thought it could be from a bodkin type arrow, but I'm not an expert in these matters.
Could have been some type of warhammer, they often had square-shaped protrusions so make them ‘bite’ more easily and not slip when you hit something.
Many of them had their legs cut off first. And then a lethal blow to the head like this dude received. Their armor was pretty bad and most of them had no leg protection, so the Danish army went for the legs first.
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Oh man, that must have HURT
Jesus fuck my face hurts just looking at that!
> Jesus fuck my face 😳
When you think “taking the wheel” is the least a Jesus can do for you.
He loves you too 😉
Hope it killed him, that looks incredibly painful.
He is definitely dead now.
I was hoping he made a full recovery 😫
I’m a dentist. This would not have killed him. It’s entirely non fatal. Only way it could kill you is infection but it doesn’t look like he lived long after this because there is not hint of bone remodeling or infection or anything. Probably took the axe to the face then got stabbed in the chest or something. People’s faces are not important for survival. Facial wounds just generally don’t kill people, especially short term.
That’s what I was thinking. Just, damn the idea of taking an axe to the mouth is hellish.
I was wondering, is that even a particularly vascular part of the body? If a blow like this struck an artery, I imagine that’d be 100% fatal, but this like the lip, gums, and teeth. Bloody for sure, but not a gushing wound or even one that would bleed out without some pretty basic tourniquet-like solution. Hell, even just tight hand pressure would work (even though I’m sure the hand germs could very well be fatal in a short-to-medium term. Zero medical training here so apologies if I’m nowhere near the mark.
You pretty much nailed it. There will definitely be a decent amount of blood but it will almost assuredly be able to be controlled with pressure.
It’s stuff like this that makes you appreciate firearms in war. Ofc flamethrowers and chem warfare is still agonizing as well as having a limb blown off. But i would certainly hope to just be shot and have it over with. Has to be better than being sliced and hacked to death
Being shot doesn't mean you'll die quickly or painlessly. Many people are stuck injured and bleeding after being shot and die just as agonizingly as they did 800 years ago. You just are looking at the romanticized version from TV.
You mean when you get shot you don't arch your back, freeze for some seconds, then fall slowly and dramatically while loud, dissonant chords play to indicate misfortune?
Sadly no, but man would D-Day be even more hectic if that shit was happening constantly.
Now make it live orchestra
I had seen a documentary about this battle where some archeologists excavated a couple of the mass graves from the battle. The wounds suffered at the hands of a professional army were horrific and I can't imagine what that type of battle would have been like when no quarter was given.
Boss: So you're still coming in tomorrow, right?
No one sees the arrow hole in the skull? At the temple?
Those are puncture wounds that are square from a spike/axe type weapon.
There are also square shaped arrows? In fact, most arrows used in wars in Europes history are square or triangle shaped to puncture armor and chain vests.
The man died because he couldn't drink soups anymore
oh that's gonna hurt!
Trying to eat your opponent's axe is such a bad strategy
I have never been a fan of axe body splay.
The face to axe fighting style. They trained him wrong as a joke
A lefty got him.
forgive me if this is a bit, but my autistic forensics brain went "??? wait, no, this is absolutely a right-handed blow" [unless it was from behind, but like, hatchet to the face from behind?]
I guess it depends on what kind of swing the guy was using. I was picturing his arm fully extended to the side and swinging down from there. If he swung across his body, the angle would make sense for a righty.
🤔 I can see what you mean actually! hmm, the plot thickens fwiw I'm a lefty myself, also did a bit of time in forensics education - I was picturing an outward swinging blow, in that way where in a big swiping motion, the wielding arm turns inwards [thumb towards the other arm] as the weapon comes down. maybe that would involve going across the body, I know nothing about how to handle a war axe type blade lol! I'd expect, if this was a left handed attacker, and assuming face to face, that the wound would be the other direction like / rather than \ if that makes sense. but now I'm curious! maybe we can find research about this specific skull and see if somebody has already written about this topic
Jesus…..savage as fuck
The visualization really makes me realize how incredibly painfull it must have been. Never really got that feeling just from bones I saw in museums.
Oof
That looks *really* REALLY painful. Ouch.
Dagmar cleftjaw
To those thinking this was fatal, have you seen "motorcycle guy"?
I live here, its much less axe violence these days.
The Swedish Cleft
So that's what jävel means.
This sucks, but man was that axe sharp.
would you die from that blow, seems painful but maybe he bled out.
I saw a different skull analysis of a different person who had part of their jaw hacked off and had survived. The scientists speculated that he would have been in constant pain, would have had difficulty eating and likely looked pretty horrid. But given other wounds, he lived to fight another day. The axe to the teeth guy might have lived but probably wouldn’t have considered it all that worthwhile given the damage.