Bog Bodies, Art and Reality

There are three hundred and sixty-nine human "bog bodies" that have been excavated from bogs around the world. They are hundreds and sometimes thousands of years old, strangely preserved by the oxygen-deprived bog waters: Instead of the flesh decaying to leave skeletons, the bones of these bog bodies dissolved, leaving behind flesh, organs, and even hair -- natural mummies. Remarkably many of these mummies are in private collections.

Tollund Man's remains had been found in a bog in Denmark. A 2,000-year-old man (or perhaps a bit older), Tollund Man, like other bog bodies, appeared in a state the reverse of most corpses: although his skeleton was dissolving, his body tissue remained, stained brown but otherwise in remarkable condition. His expression is peaceful, in spite of the braided leather rope around his neck.

The most famous is likely Windeby Girl, an Iron Age bog body found in Schleswig, Germany about which the poet Seamus Heaney wrote the poem "Punishment." (He saw an allegorical female victim of modern Ireland--regrettably science triumphed over art and Windeby Girl was eventually revealed to be a boy--but, in these times, the distinction may be less important. Anyway, sometimes facts make for poor art.)

Tollund Man         Punishment I can feel the tug of the halter at the nape of her neck, the wind on her naked front. It blows her nipples to amber beads, it shakes the frail rigging of her ribs. I can see her drowned body in the bog, the weighing stone, the floating rods and boughs. Under which at first she was a barked sapling that is dug up oak-bone, brain-firkin: her shaved head like a stubble of black corn, her blindfold a soiled bandage, her noose a ring to store the memories of love. Little adulteress, before they punished you you were flaxen-haired, undernourished, and your tar-black face was beautiful. My poor scapegoat, I almost love you but would have cast, I know, the stones of silence. I am the artful voyeuur of your brain’s exposed and darkened combs, your muscles’ webbing and all your numbered bones: I who have stood dumb when your betraying sisters, cauled in tar, wept by the railings, who would connive in civilized outrage yet understand the exact and tribal, intimate revenge.