![]() The first time I saw him in his glass case at the Silkeborg Museum, a kind of embarrassed hush came over me, as if I had intruded on a sacred mystery. ![]() Otherwise, Tollund Man, as he would be called, looked pretty much like you and me, which is astonishing considering he lived some 2,300 years ago. His skin was tanned a deep chestnut, and his body appeared rubbery and deflated. Oh yes, there was also a plaited leather thong wrapped tightly around his neck. The dead man wore a belt and an odd cap made of skin, but nothing else. A wooden post was planted to mark the spot where two brothers, Viggo and Emil Hojgaard, along with Viggo’s wife, Grethe, all from the nearby village of Tollund, struck the body of an adult man while they cut peat with their spades on May 6, 1950. We tramped out to a desolate stretch of bog, trying to keep to the clumps of ocher-colored grass and avoid the clingy muck between them. I drove here on a damp March day with Ole Nielsen, director of the Silkeborg Museum. A child would put it more simply: This place is really spooky. The bog itself is little more than a spongy carpet of moss, with a few sad trees poking out. It lies six miles outside the small town of Silkeborg in the middle of Denmark’s flat, sparse Jutland peninsula. If you’re looking for the middle of nowhere, the Bjaeldskovdal bog is a good place to start.
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