Well, I can’t figure out how to get hello to post more than one picture per post.
But the above is a reconstruction of
the Yde bog girl, pre-bog.
My, what a big forehead she has.
People preserved for thousands of years in peat bogs were apparently for the most part human sacrifices, ritual murders of some sort, perhaps to ensure the fertility of the land (they alll had a last meal of seeds).
And what a great metaphor it is, too. Seamus Heaney has his own readings of Tolland Man and the various mysterious bog people.
She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,
Also Margaret Atwood has a story about The Bog Man and apparently so do many other fiction writers. Think of the possibilities. Preserved, leathery skin and melted bones, weird resonances of resistance and collapse. Violent sacrifice, hidden meanings, secrets to be dug up, unearthed, discovered. The foul filth of the peat, tomb, womb, shitlike source of energy. Or, bogged down.
Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.
