Bog Bodies are cadavers preserved in peat bogs. The oldest known BB is Koelbjerg Man, who dates to 8000 BCE. The most famous is probably 2400yo Tollund Man (pictured). The Nazis were fascinated with them & used them to justify their persecution of LGBTQ+ ppl.
A thread
CW. Bodies & Nazis 🚨
The water in peat bogs is very acidic with no oxygen. These conditions mean any bodies in them are very well preserved. The acid bleaches the hair & tans the skin. Many died violent deaths & it’s unclear if this was ritualistic, punishment, or murder
(This is Grauballe Man)
Side note: BB are so well preserved they are often mistaken for recent murder victims when they are discovered. In Macclesfield, in 1983, the head of a woman was found buried in the ground, some 300m away from the house of local man Peter Reyn-Bardt.
When the police asked him to explain the head he immediately confessed to the murder & burial of his wife, Malika de Fernandez some 20 years earlier. Further testing revealed the woman had actually died in the late Iron Age.
Reyn-Bardt was convicted of his wife’s murder, even though her remains were never found. The discovered head became known as Lindow Woman.
Back to the story.
The Nazis went to extraordinary lengths to appropriate Norse & Germanic history & mythologies to prove themselves the “superior race”. For example, a lot of nazi propaganda pushed the idea they were descended from Vikings, who they portrayed as “racially pure”, noble savages.
Another side note - this still happens today in far right groups who still appropriate Norse iconography & mythology.
The effort to rewrite their history was considerable. How does this fit in with bog bodies? Well, the two leading theories about BBs were that they were, A. killed as ritual sacrifice, or B. punished for some kind of criminality. (Pictured. Yde Girl’s body & reconstruction)
The criminality theory comes mostly from the work of the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus, who wrote Germania in ACE 98, a work that portrays social customs in the northern parts of the empire. (Facial reconstruction of The Girl of the Uchter Moor)
It’s not known if Tacitus ever actually went to Germany, but his work described the Germanic tribes as being very noble, honourable, brave, restrained, etc. Basically all the things the Nazis thought they were, so they loved this.
(Red Franz found in Bourtanger Moor)
These were the “noble savages” the Nazis wanted claim descendent from. So desperate were they to “prove” this that Heinrich Himmler established an archaeological institute, the Ahnenerbe, to do just that.
(The Osterby man, or Osterby head, dates to 70 ACE)
Tacitus doesn’t write about BBs but he did write this about Germanic laws, “The punishment varies to suit the crime. Traitors and deserters are hanged on trees; the cowardly, the unwarlike and those who disgrace their bodies are drowned in miry swamps under a cover of wicker.”
Well, that was enough for the Nazis. The BBs were CLEARLY the “cowardly, the unwarlike, and those who disgraced their bodies” - or, to the mind of mass murdering, nazi fuckheads - gay people.
This was viewed by Nazis as proof that they descended from ppl who punished homosexuality. I don’t need to tell you how powerful history can be, so the idea that there was a precedence for homophobia & murder was soon pushed as the *only* explanation for BBs
(The Windeby girl)
In a 1937 speech about the homosexuality, Himmler referred to the bog bodies to justify the persecution of gay people. He said:
The research of the Ahnenerbe was also used to justify the Holocaust, Germanic imperialism, and all manner of crackpot nazi ideas. Following the end of WW2 & the defeat of the Nazis, new research was allowed to flourish
(The Elling woman was found in a bog in Denmark)
It was eventually proven the BBs are widely dispersed across Europe & are not uniquely Germanic. It was also shown that they vary greatly in date - some from 8000 BCE & some to the 20thC. The reasons these ppl ended up in the bog will never be fully understood
(Tollund man)
If you would like to read more about the bog bodies of Europe, this article is a great place to start smithsonianmag.com/science-nature…
Final thought - Indiana Jones was pretty spot on with claim the Nazis were pillaging the globe for fabled, lost artefacts. In fact, as well as making up crap about gay ppl & BBs, they really were searching for the holy grail - and for Thor’s hammer
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history.co.uk/shows/lost-rel…
Judging by my DMs, I seem to have sent many ppl down an Internet rabbit hole in search of bog bodies. I make no apologise for this, in fact, I encourage it. This documentary is one of my favourites - History Cold Case, The Skeletons of the Windypits
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