The Tollund Man: The World’s Most Famous Bog Body

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We’re all familiar with mummies. Whenever we say the word, we typically think of the ones from ancient Egypt, wrapped in linen and placed in sarcophagi. We find them fascinating because they represent a distinctive aspect of an ancient civilization. However, the Egyptians didn’t have a monopoly on mummies. In fact, in recent decades, scientists have been growing increasingly enthusiastic about a different kind of mummy: the bog bodies.

What are bog bodies? As their name implies, they are human bodies found in peat bogs. These environments have unique characteristics that are amazing at preserving organic material for hundreds or even thousands of years. Cadavers that have been thrown into the bog have been naturally mummified and remained in excellent condition for ages until they were finally excavated.

One of the most famous bog bodies is the Tollund Man. He has been called the “perfect corpse” by various scholars because his head is remarkably well-preserved, even by the standards of bog bodies. People from the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark, where the Tollund Man is on permanent display, have reported visitors being awestruck, some breaking down in tears, and even a few fainting when looking into the face of this man who appears to have died peacefully just a few years ago. In reality, he has been dead for well over 2,000 years. The Tollund Man provides a unique glimpse into our ancient past, and today we’re going to share his story.

It was a Monday morning on May 8, 1950, in the town of Silkeborg, Denmark, when the police received a distressing message about a potential murder victim that may have been killed and dumped in a nearby peat bog. This message came from two brothers, Viggo and Emil Høggard, who were professional peat cutters. Alongside Viggo’s wife, Grete, and her stepson, John, they had spent the weekend deep in the bog. On Saturday, May 6, Grete was the first to notice something strange buried in the peat. They dug it out just enough to realize it was the body of a human, mummified and exceptionally well-preserved. Initially, the family thought they had stumbled upon a crime scene, as there was a boy in Copenhagen who had gone missing around that time.

The body was still covered in peat, making it difficult to distinguish notable features, but they could tell that it had a rope around its neck. When the police arrived, they learned from the Høggards that the body had been buried about 60 meters away from solid ground, in a location that showed no signs of recent digging. Given that it was buried beneath two and a half meters of peat, the authorities suspected that the body might not be as fresh as initially thought and might be a matter for the museum rather than the police.

Museum representatives confirmed their suspicions the next day; they had a bog body on their hands, and there was no way of telling how old it truly was without laboratory analysis. This was due to the unique natural environment found in peat bogs. The main culprit is peat moss, which creates bog acid that impedes the development of bacteria. This, combined with the anaerobic or low-oxygen environment, creates an ideal scenario where organic material barely decomposes, allowing bodies to remain remarkably well-preserved for countless years.

The local press needed a catchy name for the unidentified body. Some called it the “Man from Bogville,” although it was still uncertain whether the body belonged to a man or a woman. Archaeologist P.V. Glob decided to name the body after a small nearby village, and thus the world was introduced to the Tollund Man.

At the time of the discovery, bog bodies were not a new concept. In fact, a different body known as the Elling Woman had been found just 12 years prior, and many others had been discovered throughout Europe, with Denmark proving to be a rich resource for such anomalies. However, the natural preservation of these remains was only the easy part; the difficult task was removing the Tollund Man from the bog without completely destroying him. Just like the mummies of Egypt, great care was needed when removing these bodies from their environment. Otherwise, exposure to regular atmospheric conditions could have an immediate and irreversible damaging effect on the remains.

Up until then, this had not been done successfully on a bog body, especially one in such good condition as the Tollund Man. There was one notable exception: the Haraldskær Woman, found in 1835. This body was so well-preserved that it still contained every organ. People at the time believed it must belong to Queen Gunhild of Norway, an important figure in the Icelandic sagas. King Frederick VI ordered that she be given an examination worthy of royalty, and her remains were carefully removed intact and placed inside a fancy coffin. Although completely unintentional, this preserved the body in good condition. However, she was not Queen Gunhild; she came from the Iron Age and lived about 1,500 years earlier than the queen.

Danish authorities wanted to be extra careful with removing the Tollund Man from the bog because specimens like him did not come along often. His head, in particular, was in a state of preservation unlike anything seen before. Other examples, like the Haraldskær Woman, still looked like mummies, but the Tollund Man did not. His nose retained its shape, his eyelids had not sunken into the sockets, and you could still see the furrows on his brow, his hair, and even faint traces of beard stubble.

The transportation of the body was handled by people from the Silkeborg Museum, the two brothers who found it, and a few policemen. They carefully dug around the remains, leaving the Tollund Man elevated on a peat platform. They then placed a box around him without the top or bottom, inserting planks underneath to create a bottom, and finally placed the lid on. This way, they had the Tollund Man in a box ready to be transported to the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, without anyone having touched him, still encased in the same peat he had been in for countless ages.

At the museum, the examination of the bog body began as scientists laboriously removed the peat bit by bit to avoid causing damage. Eventually, they were able to get a full picture of what the Tollund Man actually looked like. The first thing to notice was that the body was not as well-preserved as the head; it had shrunk, which was expected. The left side, in particular, was partially decomposed because it faced upwards in the bog while the body sat in a fetal position. The arms and hands were almost completely skeletonized, while the right side of the face fared much better, with the skin remaining intact for the most part.

The Tollund Man had a pointed leather cap on his head, made from eight separate pieces of sheepskin sewn together, with the fur side turned inward. There were also two leather straps on the sides tied together under the chin to keep the hat in place. Underneath his cap, the Tollund Man had short hair, a few centimeters in length, which appeared red due to the bog water, not his natural hair color. Other than his cap, the Tollund Man was naked, which was odd since most other bog bodies had been found either wearing clothes or having their clothes placed on top or next to them. There are a few possible explanations for this: he could have been thrown in the bog naked, his clothes could have been placed next to him and drifted away over millennia, or the most likely scenario is that his clothes simply rotted away. He might have been wearing only a simple tunic made of vegetable fibers, which would not have survived in the acidic environment of the bog. The idea is reinforced by the fact that the Tollund Man had a leather belt made of oxide tied around his waist.

Lastly, there was also the rope tied around his neck, which likely served as the murder weapon. By examining the body, scientists were able to determine the age of the Tollund Man when he died, mainly by analyzing his teeth and other tell-tale signs such as adhesions on the skull and coccyx, and arthritis of the sternum. These symptoms would suggest a person of about 40 today, but biological aging occurred at a faster rate a thousand years ago. Therefore, the Tollund Man’s age was estimated to be between 30 and 40 years at the time of his death. He measured 161 centimeters in height, or about 5 feet 3 inches, but he likely lost a few centimeters due to shrinkage during his time in the bog.

X-rays revealed that the interior had been just about as well-preserved as the exterior. All the organs were still there, although they had lost volume and had been flattened by the pressure inside the peat bog. The brain was intact, although it too had shrunk due to moisture loss. The vertebrae were unbroken, although all signs pointed to the Tollund Man having been hanged. Scientists found some distension at the tongue, consistent with suffocation. Multiple forensic specialists examined the bog body and agreed that he was killed by hanging.

The big question is: why? Scholars can only speculate since we have little information about the people of Northern Europe from that time period. Tacitus, the Roman historian, provided some insight when he wrote about Roman traders who ventured into the north and encountered the tribes there. He mentioned that “traitors and renegades hang in those trees.” While Tacitus wrote about 400 years after the Tollund Man was already dead, his point remains valid. Could the Tollund Man have been executed for being a criminal or a traitor? It is possible, but scholars think it’s unlikely due to the care shown to him after his death. They believe that if the Tollund Man were despised by those who killed him, they would not have carried him to the peat bog and placed him in a sleeping fetal position. Some even think they closed his eyes and mouth to give him a more peaceful demeanor.

The alternative that most scholars consider most likely is that the Tollund Man was some kind of human sacrifice. They don’t know why he was chosen or what god he was sacrificed to, but circumstantial evidence seems to point in that direction. For starters, we know from Roman historians that human sacrifice was practiced by various tribes of the north. Additionally, the circumstances of the Tollund Man’s bog burial are significant. Archaeological evidence indicates that Northern European tribes during the Iron Age mainly practiced cremation, while some high-status individuals were placed in caskets and buried alongside their treasured possessions. Neither of these applied to the Tollund Man, which suggests he belonged to a special group, likely those involved in human sacrifices.

The story of the Tollund Man has continued to evolve in the decades since he was excavated, with new chapters being added as technology progresses. Despite their best efforts, scientists were unable to preserve the Tollund Man as they found him; they simply did not have the technology or know-how back in 1950. Some scholars were concerned that it looked too carbonized to display, as the left half had partially decomposed. This is why they focused on saving the head. They successfully severed the head from the rest of the body and developed a new preservation technique that involved replacing all the bog water cells in his head with wax to retain its exact shape.

However, this could not be done directly, so they first placed the head in alcohol to replace the bog water, then in a dissolution liquid named Tullalol to replace the alcohol, and finally in liquid paraffin to replace the Tullalol. Only after that could it be placed in melted beeswax, which inserted itself into the cells of the head and replaced the paraffin. This new process was successful, and the head of the Tollund Man remains looking just as it did the day it was dragged out of the bog, although it had shrunk by 12%. The limbs and torso, however, did not undergo this process; instead, they were dried out, split into pieces, and sent for various tests and autopsies.

A few decades after the discovery, during the 1980s, scientists thought they might try to assemble the whole body. This began the bizarre quest to find all the missing parts, which had been sent to various museums and institutes. Eventually, they managed to find everything except the internal organs and one toe from the right foot, which had clearly been sawed off. The location of the toe remained a mystery until 2016 when a woman named Bert Borsen Christiansen contacted the Silkeborg Museum and informed them that she had the Tollund Man’s big toe. Tests showed that the mummified toe in her possession was a perfect match for the one missing from the foot.

So how did she end up owning the severed toe of a 2,400-year-old bog body? It turns out her father, Borg Borsen Christiansen, was one of the people who worked on researching new preservation methods for the Tollund Man. She remembered that when she was growing up, her father had a whole foot in a jar of blue liquid on his desk, and the toe he kept in a smaller jar, which he liked to carry around with him, even bringing it to the dinner table. After he died, his widow kept it, and it eventually ended up with Bert, who reunited the toe with the rest of the Tollund Man’s body.

Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, the reassembled body of the Tollund Man was not fit for display. The one on display today at the Silkeborg Museum is a replica, but the head is still the genuine article. The internal organs are still missing, so if you happen to encounter a jar full of mummified organs on your travels, the Silkeborg Museum might be interested in hearing from you.

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