Tollund Man — Bjældskovdal

OVERVIEW

Tollund Man is a naturally mummified body from the Pre-Roman Iron Age, preserved in a peat bog at Bjældskovdal, twelve kilometres west of Silkeborg on the Jutland peninsula. He died between 405 and 384 BC.

HISTORY

He was found on 8 May 1950 in the peat by the cutters Viggo and Emil Højgaard, after Viggo's wife Grethe noticed the body in the pit. The preservation was so complete that the family believed they had found a recent murder victim, and the police were called. Twelve years earlier another bog body, Elling Woman, had been found in the same bog. He was laid in a sleeping position, naked but for a sheepskin cap and a hide belt, with the rope still round his neck.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The cause of death has been determined forensically as hanging. There is not enough evidence to establish the reason: a ritual sacrifice or a judicial execution, and the argument has run for seventy years. His last meal — porridge of barley and seeds — was still in the gut and has been analysed more than once. The entry records what is genuinely unexplained about him, which is not how he died but why, and a face across two and a half thousand years that people still find difficult to look at.

VISITING

The body is displayed at Museum Silkeborg. Bjældskovdal itself is a bog with a marker at the find spot; boardwalk access, and it is wet ground.