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Tollund Man
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The Tollund Man was a man who lived during Denmark's Iron Age. He is distinctive because he was buried in a peat bog around 400 BCE, and the conditions in the bog preserved his body. When two people were cutting peat in 1950, they discovered his naturally mummified body, which was so perfectly preserved that they thought they had stumbled upon a fresh corpse. They reported the find to the police, who were puzzled until they brought in an archaeologist; the archaeologist realized that far from being a fresh body, the Tollund Man represented a major historical discovery.
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Tollund Man is a male Iron Age body found in a fen at Tollund, Denmark in 1950. The man wore only a leather cap, and he had a rope around his neck. Archaeologists have speculated that he may have been an executed criminal, or a sacrificial victim.
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Was the Tollund Man quilt of a crime for which he had to be punished? Was he a low-life in society which people wanted to get rid of? Or was he a slave or perhaps a well-respected man who was sacrificed in order to appease the gods of the bog?
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In his poem, "The Tollund Man," Heaney approaches the cultural landscape of Northern Ireland as a sort of poetic archaeologist. As in a previous poem, "Bogland," Heaney walks in the step of a pioneer, "Striking inwards and downwards...". The poet, influenced by the Danish Archaeologist P.V. Glob's text, The Bog People (1969) (which described the bodies of Iron-Age Celtic ritual killing victims found remarkably preserved in a peat bog in Denmark), visited the bog-site. Both the book and the visit to the peat bog, where he gazed upon the preserved body of the Tollund Man, had a profound and insightful effect upon him. Recalls Heaney (1994) "The unforgettable photographs of these victims blended in my mind with photographs of atrocities, past and present, in the long rites of Irish political and religious struggles."
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The bog where Tollund Man met his end is striking today for its stillness and beauty. Off a dirt road in a suburb of the small city of Silkeborg, Denmark, a trail leads to the wetland, called Bjaeldskov Dal. In late winter—the season during which researchers believe Tollund Man was killed—I slogged through slush toward the narrow valley that cradles what remains of the bog. It was late afternoon, but still light. A drizzle of sleet hissed down. Up the steep hills on either side grew fir trees.
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The Tollund Man was found in 1950 during peat digging in Tollund Bog. The body was sent to the National Museum. Here, it turned out to be the body of a man in his late thirties or early forties. He was lying on his right side almost doubled up, as if he were asleep. The body was very well-preserved - particularly the hands and feet, which have kept their original appearance. On his head the man had a leather cap and around his throat the braided leather string with which he had been strangled.
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Tollund Man