bog mummies

We have alot of bogs in germany. Those are swamp like areas with a unique ecosystem:



Those bogs are very importat even today in german mythology. They appear extremly creepy.

The bog holes are very deep and the water is acidic. Corpses in the water stay preserved over thousands of years:







There are may ideas why they can be found there.

The most prominent teached in school here is sacrifice in religious rituals. It says our ancestors send young women into the bog as some kind of punishment. When they made it through with closed eyes they were innocent. If they died there it was their punishment.

The problem is that it doesnt work that way. Common myth is that you get sucked down. But many tests were performed here and a healthy human being might get stuck but you dont sink down.



We also made the test our own in our firefighter department. We have a bog nearby, i was secured with a rope and when i struggled i sunk down. Once i stopped moving i was pushed upwards. It seems to be impossible to sink down against your will.

I dont denie that maybe singular events like sacrifice happened or accidents but i guess most mummies we can find there are plain and simple victims of crimes.

If i take my village for example its located in a valley in the Thuringian bassin. That means it was next an old trade hub. Back then were some wild times...

If i imagine some strangers travelled through or near our settlement...i could imagine they could have been attacked, killed and their bodies dumped into the bog out of fear they could return and take revenge.

The swamp region is even today called "Mörderloch" which can be translated as murderer hole.

All this makes me doubt that those mummies are actual sacrifices but were just dumped there?

deaf tuner said:

I have a question: is it deep enough ?

I mean: if someone is panicking, and doesn't stop moving as You did, can he continue going down until he/she dies ?

Btw, thank You for sharing, it's interesting.

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it is deep. The surface is often swing surface which looks solid but is actually grass and moss floating on water. Below that is "Torf". Its several dozen meters.

But its so hard to sink. Im very trained and have very little fat. I guess my body has a higher density than others but i did easily stay on top. A bigger problem would be in more shallow areas when your feet get stuck in mud.

Rodger said:

I agree. Most fascinating. There have been a number of documentaries on this over the years here in the U.S. As posted in the O.P., most of the mummies found in the bogs were apparently ritually sacrificed. I thought I also heard that some "criminals" were sent to the bogs. I imagine some fell in by accident.

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I think it is impossible to die there by accident. Its plain and simple not working. The bog substrate actively pushs you upwards.

I also dont believe in sacrifice. I think most were propably dumped there to get rid of them.

That man for example had a broken leg and his throat slit:

Matthew Amt said:

But aren't there at least a couple that very nicely match descriptions of human sacrifices in Tacitus? Including things like the bodies being staked down in the bog. Certainly some could just be murders (or battle killings?), but the evidence for human sacrifice is pretty strong.

I could be remembering a description of an *execution*, actually. Though using criminals as sacrifices is not ruled out.

Matthew

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Tacitus never visited our lands. Most was hear say.

Bodies were staked down in the bog for exactly the erason i mentioned. The bodies starts to float upwards.

Tulun said:

what about the age of he bodies? if they are just disposed crime victims, wouldn't they be equally from more various periods, even from early modern, modern times?

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They are from evry time period. Some bodies found in bogs are just a few decades old.

Such bodies are found pretty often but in many cases the ground machines hacked them into pieces already.

authun said:

The main element is the sacrifice. It wasn't only humans that ended up in bogs. Often weapons were sacrificed, the weapons of the defeated army, not the victorious one. Even then, most of the weapons of the defeated army were kept by the victors, so the sacrifice element is symbolic or an offering of thanks for the victory. The ship from the sacrificial bog at Nydam is a sacrifice, not a ship burial.

Nydam Mose

There are many sites;

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I dont see it that way. No germanic god demanded such sacrifices.

Many bodies found have woulnds as if they felt victim to a crime. Be it a sliced throat or being killed with a rope.

Matthew Amt said:

If you're going to dismiss the only written evidence, how can you claim to know more than he did? If what he heard is wrong, why does it match the physical evidence?



Sure, understood. But that could have been done whether it was a murder, an execution, or a sacrifice. In fact, if it were a simple murder, I wouldn't expect that much effort being put into it. It's not like bogs were heavily travelled pathways, so it's likely a body could float there for some time before anyone found it. All the killer would need to do is get away quickly before being caught in the act.

And yes, all the OTHER stuff found in bogs is extremely strong evidence for ceremonial deposition!

Matthew

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when we slaughter a fox that attacked our chicken we dig a hole and throw it in. Guess later on it can be seen as cermonial deposition as well.

What germanic god demanded sacrifices?

Matthew Amt said:

So, the two large boats in the Nydam bog were just dragged overland from whatever coast or river may be closest, and laboriously sunk in that spot--why? Not to mention the THOUSANDS of usable weapons, armor, and accoutrements with them, including gilded and silvered items. All that stuff wasn't going after your chickens, eh?

These finds also align with Roman descriptions of Germanic warriors piling up captured Roman gear in sacred groves *as offerings*.

There are plenty of graves and tombs, of course, so sticking a body in a bog was clearly not the usual method for burial. And I'm certainly not the first in line to declare something "ceremonial", by any means! I think there are plenty of odd finds that get mislabeled or misinterpreted. But here the literary and archeological evidence agree with each other, so the safe route is to go with them. I don't insist that it's PROVEN, mind you! Feel free to be tentative.



Don't know, I haven't met any of them, ha! It could have been a particular annual holiday that wasn't for a specific god, or it could have been something that was done only in specific circumstances. I don't remember what Tacitus says, but that's the first place to start. Should be easy enough to look up (Perseus Online Library, etc.).

Matthew

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Bogs are rare in germany. They dont occur evrywhere, so of course pushing the dead there can not be the normal thing to do.
I dont trust anything romans said about our ancestors.

The thing is, that human sacrifice is something extremly costly for germanic cultures. It takes alot of effort to raise a human from childhood to adult. Losing one for small socities is a gigantic loss.