Let's talk about bog bodies.

I'm going to put it out there right now. Bog mummies are so cool. I mean, I've always had a thing for mummies, but there's something intriguing about these accidental mummies that isn't present in the mummies of ancient Egypt. They feel like ancient Europe's dirty little secret, buried and not meant to be seen again. Egyptians, on the other hand, wanted to make damn sure they were seen again. Even the ones buried in hidden tombs like King Tut. Gold death masks are not designed to be inconspicuous.


Bog bodies are formed naturally in the peat bogs of Northern Europe. The water in the bogs is highly acidic, the temperature is low, and the water is anaerobic. Nearly 2000 bog bodies have been found to date, most from the Iron Age. And I didn't realize this until I was doing a little research today, but bog mummies don't have skeletons. Apparently the minerals in the water eat away bone, so the mummies are empty skins.


No one knows why so many people ended up dead in the bogs. Clearly, they did not meet happy ends; many show signs of having been stabbed, bludgeoned, strangled (often the noose is still around the neck), tortured (one man had had his nipples removed), or beheaded. Some people theorize that the bodies were sacrifices buried in the bog, others theorize they are criminals. But not all the bodies are from the Iron Age (1200 BC- AD 300). In Ireland, they found the body of a 16th century woman who committed suicide so could not be buried in the churchyard. A Stone Age woman who dates from 8000 BC was found in Denmark. Corpses of WWI soldiers have also turned up; that would creep me out. WWI is too recent for me. And I read once in an article about bog mummies that workers found part of a body in the bog and they turned it into the police because they thought it was a murder victim. Police thought it was the body of a woman who'd been missing since 1959. They hauled her husband in for questioning and he confessed to killing her and dumping her body in the bog. Then the test results came back; it wasn't his wife at all, the body was 2500 years old.


By the way, yesterday there was a problem with the blog. It only saved half of the entry.


Always,
Callie