Tollund Man

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Tollund man.

The Tollund Man lived during the 4th century BC, during the time period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was buried in a peat bog on the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark. Such a find is known as a bog body. Tollund Man is remarkable for the fact that his body, and in particular the face, was so well preserved that he seemed to have died only recently.

On Monday 8 May 1950 the Højgård brothers from the small village of Tollund were cutting peat for their tile stove and kitchen range in the Bjældskovdal peat bog, 10 km west of Silkeborg, Denmark. As they worked, they noticed in the peat layer a face so fresh that they could only suppose that they had stumbled on a recent murder. They immediately notified the police at Silkeborg.

The Tollund Man lay 50 metres away from firm ground, his body arranged in a foetal position, and buried under about two metres of peat. He wore a pointed skin cap fastened securely under his chin by a hide thong. There was a smooth hide belt around his waist. Otherwise, he was naked. His hair was cropped so short as to be almost entirely hidden by his cap. He was almost clean-shaven, but there was short stubble on his chin and upper lip, suggesting that he had not shaved on the day of his death. There was a rope made of two leather thongs twisted together under a small lump of peat beside his head. It was drawn tight around his neck and throat and then coiled like a snake over his shoulder and down his back.

Preserved full length corpse of the Tollund Man, with rope around neck

Underneath the body was a thin layer of moss. Scientists know that this moss was formed in Danish peat bogs in the early Iron Age, therefore, the body was suspected to have been placed in the bog approximately 2,000 years ago during the early Iron Age. Subsequent C¹⁴ radiocarbon dating of Tollund Man's hair indicated that he died in approximately 350 BC. The acid in the peat, along with the lack of oxygen underneath the surface, had preserved the soft tissues of his body.

Examinations and X-rays showed that the man's head was undamaged, and his heart, lungs and liver were well preserved. He was not an old man, though he must have been over 20 years old because his wisdom teeth had grown in. The Silkeborg Museum estimates his age as 40 and height at 161 cm (5 ft 3 in), comparatively short-statured even for his time period. It is likely that the body had shrunk in the bog.

He was probably hanged using the rope around his neck. The noose left clear marks on the skin under his chin and at the side of his neck but there was no mark at the back of the neck where the knot was found. Due to skeletal decomposition, it is impossible to tell if the neck had been broken.

The stomach and intestines were examined and tests carried out on their contents. The scientists discovered that the man's last meal had been a kind of soup made from vegetables and seeds, some cultivated and some wild: barley, linseed, gold of pleasure (Camelina sativa), knotweed, bristlegrass, and camomile. The barley he had ingested contained large amounts of ergot fungus, an hallucinogenic substance, leading some researchers to argue that this may have been deliberately taken to alter his mental state before death. Ergotised barley was possibly the source of the visions and revelations granted to the initiates of the Classical Eleusinian Mysteries.

There were no traces of meat in the man's digestive system, and from the stage of digestion it was obvious that the man had lived for 12 to 24 hours after this last meal. In other words, he may not have eaten for up to a day before his death. Although similar vegetable soups were not unusual for people of this time, two interesting things were noted:

The soup contained many different kinds of wild and cultivated seeds. Because these seeds were not readily available, it is likely that some of them were gathered deliberately for a special occasion.
The soup was made from seeds only available near the spring where he was found.

At first, Tollund Man was believed to be a rich man who had been ritually sacrificed, but recent analysis suggests that he may simply have been a criminal who was hanged and buried in the peat bog.

The body is displayed at the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark, though only the head is original. Conservation techniques for organic material were insufficiently advanced in the early 1950s for the entire body to be preserved. Consequently, only the head was conserved – the rest of the body was not. As displayed today, the original head is attached to a replica of the body.

Similar bog chemistry was at work in conserving Haraldskær Woman, also discovered in Jutland as a mummified Iron Age specimen. Forensic analysis also suggests a violent death, or perhaps a ritualistic sacrifice, due to presence of noose marks and a puncture wound.