Bog people are human remains preserved by a unique set of conditions in peat bogs. Examples of bog bodies have been found around the globe — although these peat-preserved people are most commonly found in northern European countries where the conditions for preservation are optimal.

However, the preservation of these unique human remains is not the only thing the bog bodies of northern Europe have in common. For many of the bodies seem to share common features suggesting their deaths were anything but natural or peaceful. 

Violent Deaths

Most of the bog people discovered in northern Europe appear to have died violently and/or showed signs of abuse before death. For example, iron Age Clonycavan Man and Old Croghan Man had slashed nipples, while CT scans showed that the spine and arms of four-thousand-year-old Cashel Man had been broken by multiple violent blows before his death, with cuts along his back that appeared to be axe wounds. The weapons that likely inflicted the wounds lay not far from his body. 

Some of these wounds suggest the victims attempted to defend themselves or escape. For example, Kayhausen Boy — one of the few bog children discovered— and Old Croghan Man were both found to have slash marks on their left arms, indicating an attempt to ward off blows. Graubelle man suffered a heavy premortem blow to the leg, possibly to incapacitate him.

Strangulation was the most common method of killing. For example, Haraldskaer Woman was discovered pinned to the bottom of her bog. It was initially believed she drowned in situ. However, a narrow ligature line around her neck was identified during the woman’s autopsy in 2000, suggesting she was garrotted. Yde Girl appears to have suffered the same fate — with the fabric that killed her still wrapped around the neck of her partly clothed body. 

Leaving the instruments of strangulation attached to their victims seems to have been common. Tollund Man went to his grave naked — apart from his belt, sheepskin hat and the platted noose about his neck. A CT scan identified a scar at the back of his neck, possibly caused by the body’s weight pulling on the noose, suggesting he was hung rather than garrotted. 

Other bog people suffered different kinds of deaths. Grauballe man’s throat was slashed with such force he was almost decapitated, while German bog neighbours Osterby Man and Datgen Man actually lost their heads. In Osterby Man’s case, his head is all that survives of him, found staked to the bottom of the bog in a bag. The rest of his body is lost. An axe blow to his head killed Clonycavan Man before he was disembowelled. 

Other bodies display signs of multiple potential causes of death. For example, old Croghan Man seems to have been stabbed in the left lung and then decapitated. However, the clearest example of “overkill” is Lindow Man from northwest England. Not only was his skull fractured by one of several blows to his head, but he also appeared to have been garrotted, and his throat cut before he finally took his final breath face down in the bog. 

Murder Victims or Executed Criminals?

Some have suggested that the violent, irreverent nature of the deaths suffered by many bog people suggests they were murder victims. Many bodies were interred in their bogs without grave goods or clothing, displaying signs that they had fought before being subdued and killed. Furthermore, their burials in a bog were marginal and isolated. The case for murder made from this evidence is simple: the victims were robbed and stripped of their valuables. Blows to the head and defensive knife wounds occurred as they fought off their attackers, who then killed them and dumped the bodies in the bog to hide their crime.

However, the lack of clothing on the bodies is probably because cloth often rots in the bog. Robbers certainly would not have taken a tunic but left the likes of Tollund Man with a valuable leather belt and hat. Neither would they have stripped Old Croghan Man but overlooked the intricate leather armband decorated with metal La Tene style motifs he wore to his grave. The mode of death is also often too complicated. Murder, therefore, is not a satisfactory explanation for the majority of the bodies. 

The next possibility is that bog people were executed criminals or those who were socially suspect or marginalised. Tacitus provides us with a description of execution amongst the German tribes, which contains elements that find their echo in the deaths of the bog bodies. “The punishment varies to suit the crime,” he explains. “A traitor and deserter are hanged on trees, the coward, the shirker and the unnaturally vicious are drowned under swamps under a cover of wattle hurdles (Germania 12).

While the evidence of some bog bodies does verify details from Tacitus’s accounts, there are some variances. Many of the bog bodies — Tollund Man, Lindow Man, Haraldsvar Woman and Yde Girl — do show evidence of strangulation, and all the bodies fit the notion of “drowning”, with some pinned with hurdles or staves, as in the case of Old Croghan man and Haraldsvar woman. However, this securing occurred after death; drowning did not kill them. 

Tacitus may have been writing about an area roughly corresponding with the regions in mainland Europe where bog bodies have been found: Germany, the Netherlands and southern Denmark. However, we should beware of using his account as blanket evidence for the exact circumstances of every bog person’s death. Regional variances in custom must be considered — as well as changes through time (Tacitus was writing in the first century AD but many bog date from several centuries earlier). 

It does not make sense to assume that the death of every bog person was caused by the same cultural motivations. However, they have one thing in common: their internment in a bog. 

 The Sacred Nature of Bogs

Bogs were marginal places. Composed of earth and water, they occupied a hinterland in nature as they were neither one thing nor another. To the ancient people of northwest Europe, such places were sacred as they were nexus points — places where two different states of being met, where one world met another. 

Although local people would harvest bog plants and raid the peat for bog iron, which was essential for making tools and weapons, these remote, damp spots could not be cultivated. Strange miasmas and lights could lead the unwary to a watery death. Simply put, bogs were a realm of the gods and, as such, were treated with respect.

The bogs of Schleswig- Holstein, Germany, have yielded a number of bog bodies. They have also given up other things. In 1947, a bog near Braak bog yielded two naked, larger-than-life carvings; one styled as male, the other female. Each was carved from a single tree branch sometime around the second century BC. The huge figures were originally fixed upright and would have been visible from some distance away. They would have dominated and terrified any onlookers with their wide staring eyes and open mouths. Evidence of fires and feasting around them suggest that they were the centre of ceremonials and represented the gods of the bog.

If the bogs were the place of the gods, it is hardly likely that anyone would unceremoniously dump unwanted bodies in them. However, they did make offerings in them. Along with the bog people, Europe’s peat bogs have yielded various spectacular finds that were unlikely to have been accidentally lost. Swords — deliberately broken or “decommissioned” — have been found in the bogs, as well as household objects and royal regalia. The offerings made represented the best people could afford. One of the most spectacular rediscovered bog offerings was the Gundestrop Cauldron, deposited in Denmark’s Borremose bog around 100 BC. 

Even food like bog butter was deposited in the bogs — possibly as an offering or because the people recognised the preservative properties of peat.

Either way, the sacred nature of bogs suggests that bodies deliberately deposited there were of value to their communities.

 Sacrificial Victims?

Routine prehistoric burials — whether remains were buried or cremated — involved the decomposition of the flesh, as this was believed to release the spirit. And while bogs may have been sacred liminal spaces where offerings were made to the gods, it could also be that ancient people knew of their preservative powers.

Miranda Aldhouse Green believes that bodies were placed in bogs to preserve their flesh and prevent the spirit from moving on. The fact that many of the bodies were staked down reinforces this idea. 

Additionally, certain bodies such as Cashel man, Old Croghan man, and Clonycavan man were all buried along the borders of tribal boundaries within sight of hills where the tribal chiefs were inaugurated. This significant coincidence suggests that whoever the bog people were in life, in death, they may have been chosen to eternally guard these important areas. In the cases of the Irish bog remains, the fact that they were staked down with spancels — bands used to hobble livestock — is particularly significant because of the Irish folk belief that spancels could protect boundaries from invading armies.

Irish mythology also portrays kings as mediators between the supernatural and the early realms, who were sometimes sacrificed by a threefold death that could feature hanging strangulation, bludgeoning or death by axe or sword. All of these methods of death appear to apply to many bog people to a greater or lesser extent, with the contents of some of the bog people’s stomachs suggesting they may have been drugged — the mistletoe in Lindow Man’s stomach could have acted as a sedative, while the ergot in Graubelle Man’s last meal that could cause convulsions, hallucinations and eventual death.

Who Were the Bog People?

Despite the speculation and suggestive nature of the evidence, there is no conclusive reason why bog people were killed and deposited in their watery resting places. Maybe they were criminals. Or perhaps they were specifically selected for sacrifice. The disabled Yde Girl could have been sacrificed because of her youth — or because her community fell on hard times and could not sustain her any longer. 

Those identified as of high standing could be interpreted as offerings not just for a single community but a whole tribe to mark a significant event. Old Croghan Man is believed to have been a king sacrificed for the good of his tribe. Suckling at the king’s nipples was a way of showing fealty in ancient Ireland, and Old Croghan Man’s nipples were slashed, suggesting he was “decommissioned” — rather like the broken swords also found in the bogs.  

Or maybe there is no uniform explanation for the deaths and burials of bog people. Perhaps some were valuable individuals sacrificed by their communities, while others were marginalised, disposed of, and deposited in the bog. 

Or perhaps these explanations are not the whole story, and only further scientific investigation will persuade the bog people of northern Europe to give up their stories.

Resources

Aldhouse-Green, M (2015) Bog Bodies Uncovered: Solving Europe’s Ancient Mystery. Thames and Hudson Ltd.