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The search for the origins of bog bodies and their secrets goes back a fairly long way, too. In 1780, a peat-cutter found a skeleton and a plait of hair in a bog on Drumkeragh Mountain.
Jan 11, 2023 · A deep dive into "bog bodies" reveals that this practice started in southern Scandinavia during the Neolithic and spread throughout Northern Europe.
- Overview
- Power of peat
- Visions and revisions
- Alken Enge: Military memorial
- Causes of death
Some 2,000 remarkably well-preserved bodies have stirred up creative theories about their lives. Now technology is revealing the truth about their deaths.
A violent end
Tollund Man’s peaceful face hides the violent cause of his death some 2,000 years ago. A woven leather cord, also preserved by the bog, suggests he was hanged before being placed in the bog near Silkeborg, Denmark.
Marshes, mires, and swamps are murky, mysterious places found across northern Europe. A space between two worlds, a bog occurs where dry land and a body of water intersect, creating a soft, spongy terrain that is neither wholly liquid nor solid. This liminal quality may have led the early peoples of northern Europe to associate bogs with the supernatural. They were portals to other worlds, where gods and restless spirits dwelled. In more recent times, peat bogs are seen as valuable natural resources, yet they’ve retained their mystical qualities thanks to the thousands of human bodies that have emerged from their depths.
Europe’s bog bodies have fascinated people since one was first documented in 1640 in Holstein, Germany. Since then, some 2,000 more bodies have emerged in the wetlands of Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Scandinavia, and the Baltic States. A groundbreaking study published in January 2023 in the journal Antiquity estimates that figure is conservative, and the actual number could be much higher.
Bog bodies provide a tangible connection with a remote ancestral past, while also serving as a grim reminder of the harsh daily lives of most people. Looking at the mortal remains—whether the peaceful visage of Tollund Man or the curly hair of Bocksten Man—one cannot help but imagine their lives and ponder the causes of their deaths. Were they the most loathed among their people, or were they sacrificed to please the gods? Whether accidental drownings, executed outlaws, fallen warriors, or human sacrifices, these people’s well-preserved remains are providing fascinating windows into a 7,000-year-old tradition and the cultures who practiced it.
Many bog bodies have disturbingly lifelike appearances thanks to a natural chemistry that prevents the decay of some human tissues. Bogs accumulate a muddy layer called peat, which is made of decaying plants and mosses. Peat has been used for centuries as fuel and fertilizer, but many peatlands are now valued for their role as highly efficient and compact carbon sinks and important parts of the fight against climate change.
Sphagnum moss is a key component of peat and gives northern Europe’s bogs their seemingly magical preservation properties. These northern wetlands are cold, low in oxygen, and very acidic. This environment combined with antibiotic properties of the moss creates a perfect soup for preserving the human body’s calcified and keratinous structures—the bones, teeth, skin, hair, and nails. Sphagnum can leach calcium from bones, making them soft and supple. The sinuous qualities of some of the preserved bodies are because of the bones’ bending to pressure in the bog. The aquatic environment also preserves clothing made of wool or animal skin. Plant-based textiles, like linen, do not fare as well over time.
The 2023 study was the first large-scale overview of well-dated human remains from these bogs and included analysis of more than 250 sites and 1,000 sets of remains. Burials were practiced as far back as 5200 B.C., but they flourished between 1000 B.C. and A.D. 1500, from the Iron Age through the Roman era to medieval times.
Assessing all these remains, the study’s authors categorized them into three groups: “bog mummies” with preserved skin, soft tissue, and hair, like the famous Tollund Man of Denmark; “bog skeletons,” whose bones are all that survived, like many of the oldest bog body finds dating back to the ninth millennium B.C.; and a third “mixed” group composed of partially mummified and skeletal remains.
Scholars had little to go on in the 19th century when they began exploring in earnest how these bodies ended up in the bogs. There are no written records documenting the rituals and beliefs of preliterate societies in the region, and early scholars pulled information wherever they could find it. Many relied heavily on the writings of Tacitus, a first century A.D. Roman historian, to inform their interpretations of the Iron Age bog sites.
Despite never having been to the northern regions himself, Tacitus wrote Germania around A.D. 98. Relying on secondhand and thirdhand sources, he described the northern peoples and their cultures. The work extols the virtues of the Germanic tribes in order to shame Romans for what Tacitus considered their extravagant behavior at home. In the section where he describes crime and punishment among the Germanic peoples, Tacitus includes approving descriptions of hanging certain criminals while drowning others in the bogs.
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Archaeologists uncovered the remains of some 80 people at the site of Alken Enge, on the shore of Lake Mossø on Denmark’s Jutland Peninsula, where an estimated 380 bodies may still rest beneath the bog. Most of the preserved remains were young male adults who all died in a single event in the early first century A.D. Unhealed trauma wounds, as well as the presence of weapons, suggest they died in battle. Prior to this discovery, experts believed Germanic fighting forces in the area were significantly smaller, closer to 80 people rather than the hundreds buried at Alken Enge. The well-preserved bodies also reveal an interesting ritual side. Many of the human remains displayed animal gnaw marks consistent with being left exposed for up to a year before they were submerged. Other bones were found deliberately arranged in bundles. In one case fragments of hip bones from four different people were threaded on a tree branch. This evidence led researchers to suspect that time passed after the battle, and the dead lay where they fell. Survivors returned to collect the remains and deposit them in the marsh. Noting the ancient ceremonial and ritual importance of bogs and marshes across northern Europe, scholars believe this removal of war dead may likely be the victors’ attempt to memorialize their triumph.
Warriors' cemetery
Archaeologists uncovered the remains of some 80 people at the site of Alken Enge, on the shore of Lake Mossø on Denmark’s Jutland Peninsula, where an estimated 380 bodies may still rest beneath the bog. Most of the preserved remains were young male adults who all died in a single event in the early first century A.D. Unhealed trauma wounds, as well as the presence of weapons, suggest they died in battle. Prior to this discovery, experts believed Germanic fighting forces in the area were significantly smaller, closer to 80 people rather than the hundreds buried at Alken Enge. The well-preserved bodies also reveal an interesting ritual side. Many of the human remains displayed animal gnaw marks consistent with being left exposed for up to a year before they were submerged. Other bones were found deliberately arranged in bundles. In one case fragments of hip bones from four different people were threaded on a tree branch. This evidence led researchers to suspect that time passed after the battle, and the dead lay where they fell. Survivors returned to collect the remains and deposit them in the marsh. Noting the ancient ceremonial and ritual importance of bogs and marshes across northern Europe, scholars believe this removal of war dead may likely be the victors’ attempt to memorialize their triumph.
Mads Dalegaard/Moesgaard Museum
Not surprisingly, bog body research has taken many different turns as technology has developed over the decades. New methods—CT scans, 3D imaging, DNA analysis, and radiocarbon dating, to name a few—are creating a larger and more complex rendering of the lives and deaths of these people. Rather than romantic stories about their deaths, scholars are...
The Colour out of Space By H.P. Lovecraft Written: March 1927 | Published: September 1927 W est of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight.
Jul 18, 2014 · July 18, 2014. • 12 min read. Cast into northern European wetlands, bog bodies have long appeared as opaque to archaeologists as their dark and watery graves. But new clues are coming in the ...
- Christine Dell'amore
Jul 3, 2019 · What Scientists Have Learned about the Grauballe Man. The Grauballe Man is the name of an extremely well-preserved Iron Age bog body, the 2200-year-old body of a man pulled from a peat bog in central Jutland, Denmark in 1952. The body was found at depths of more than one meter (3.5 feet) of peat.
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Jun 23, 2024 · A bog body called Windeby I that was found in a peat bog near Windeby, Germany, in 1952. Windey I was once a 16-year-old boy who lived between 41 B.C.E. and 118 C.E. The Yde Girl was found outside the village of the village of Yde, Netherlands, in 1897. She died sometime between 54 B.C.E. and 128 C.E. when she was 16 years old.
