On May 8, 1950, police in the Danish town of Silkeborg received a message: A body — a murder victim — had been found under more than two meters of peat in a nearby bog with a rope around the neck, the flesh still smooth and intact. Two brothers had discovered it while digging peat to use as fuel.
When the brothers shared the location of the body — more than 60 meters away from solid ground, under two-and-a-half meters of undisturbed peat — investigators realized that it might be an issue for archaeologists instead, and called the Silkeborg Museum for assistance. When police and museum staff arrived together at the scene, they knew that this was much more than a simple cold case or a forgotten grave site — the body was hundreds or perhaps thousands of years old, but so well-preserved that he appeared recently dead. It was a very cold case indeed — and maybe the find of a century.
Tests revealed that the corpse, now known as the Tollund Man, died around 400 B.C. Though he was far from the first ancient body recovered from a peat bog, he remains among the most famous for his remarkably well-preserved remains. Over decades of examination, researchers have concluded that he died by hanging after a last meal of porridge and fish, perhaps cooked in a clay vessel. After death, his body was carefully arranged in a sleeping position in the peat, which archaeologists interpret as evidence of human sacrifice instead of an execution or crime of passion. After thousands of years in the peat, he still wore his wool cap.
The Tollund Man is old, but still just a youngster compared to the oldest bog body discovered so far. The Koelbjerg Man, found in the same bog as the Tollund Man, lived in Denmark about 8,000 years ago and is also thought to have been sacrificed.
