I’d never heard of Tollund Man until yesterday.

Soul Man, yeah. Iceman, sure. Even Slender Man (thanks to Law & Order SVU).

But Tollund Man? It took one of Mom’s poems to awaken my interest:

Remarks upon reading a chapter on the Tollund Man,
found preserved in a Danish bog in 1950

Only the head preserved in glass now, but the face tells all,
or did, until the lump of peat fell from the neck, showing the rope there.
Gentler than in life, this miracle removed for study;
skin and bones revered here more than then. One more
died from strain during the excavation: a life exchanged.
Still do we bury men that we might live;
or like to think we may.
~ Joan Vayo 19 March 1971

Tollund Man slept in a Danish bog from roughly 400 BC until his discovery 71 years ago.

His head and body were incredibly well preserved in his boggy grave. So much so that a family of peat diggers thought they’d come across a crime scene and called police.

There was a rope tied around his neck, poor guy. But because his eyes and mouth were closed, it is believed he was not being punished for a crime, but rather he was a human sacrifice to the gods. He was laid to rest in the bog in a sleeping position.

Tollund Man is on display in the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark, which has numerous pages on its website dedicated to telling the story of the sleeping man from the nearby bog. Only the head is original, though, Tollund Man’s body had deteriorated enough by the time of its discovery that the decision was made to preserve only the head and use the rest for testing. They discovered partially-digested porridge in his belly and narrowed down his time of death (405-380 BC) using radiocarbon dating. They even figured out some of the ingredients in the porridge came from a “manured field.”

While thinking about how Tollund Man spoke to us from his grave, it occurred to me: so does Mom with her poetry.

In the year following her passing, Dad spent time each day sorting through Mom’s decades of writing. He told me he experienced a number of “I didn’t know that” moments during that often emotional process. A few weeks ago, Gary and I packed up three steamer trunks with her files to ship back to Indiana. We’re fully expecting many “I didn’t know that” moments in the months ahead as we gently unpack the deep insights and expressions of love she left behind.

“Remarks upon reading a chapter on the Tollund Man, found preserved in a Danish bog in 1950” © 1971 Joan Vayo. All rights reserved.

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