Bog People....

[fajrdrako]

Yesterday I went to see the exhibit on the Bog People at the Museum of Civilization.

Bog People are people who were thrown into bogs in northern Europe from approximately 12,000 B.C. to approximately 1,000 A.D., for reasons of ritual. Goods were put in the bog too, and due to the chemical properties of bog, these things were preserved - randomly it seems, or whimsically, depending on the chemical nature of the bog in any location.

Here's a picture of a bog person and here's what the museum has to show us.

Sometimes the bodies were mummified and pretty much intact, like the one above. With some, all the bones dissolved. With others, the skin. Hair seems to have been good at staying as it was and in some cases the hair colour is obvious.

Because they had to keep the rooms dark to preserve the artifacts, the exhibit it a little spooky to start with - especially since the subject is ritual human sacrifice. The designers of the exhibit decided to play that up, so the spookiness is intensified. While we were there, a French tour guide was giving a commentary that was basically performance art - with the aid on an actor who was the ghost of a bog person, appearing in difference eras.

Two bog people had names and identities: the Yde girl, who decayed rather badly after she was dug up, and Red Franz, named from his red hair and from his being found in a place called Franz. The Yde girl was killed at about the age of 16. Her ghostly reconstructed face was one of the creepier items of the show.

A few highlights:

1. A piece of cloth more than six feet long - I'm not sure how long - woven about 1,700 years ago to wrap around two corpses. Most of the colours had faded but the fibres were intact and you'd think it was woven recently. I've never seen anything like it.
   
   
2. The "trackway" - felled treetrunks that were used to make a boardwalk into the bog.
   
   
3. Photographs by an artist named Wolfgang Bartels, who specializes in photos of bogs. His pictures were haunting, fascinating and beautiful - who would have thought bogs were beautiful? I was reminded of scenes of the Dead Marshes in "The Two Towers". Here's his picture of a modern trackway, looking very like the ancient one:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. The lur, a remarkable bronze musical instrument that looks like this:
   
   
   
   We were able to hear what it sounded like by pushing a button for a recording. Very eery - I had to think of Roland and Olivier, or perhaps Boromir of Gondor.
   
   
5. The beautiful jewellry, mostly of gold or bronze. At one case a woman near me said to her young daughter, "Look at the jewellry!" and the daughter, reading the sign, said loudly, "Those aren't jewellry. Those are brooches."
   
   
6. The temple, that the wooden trackway led to, circa 1470 B.C. Reconstructed, it looked very Japanese to me.
   
   
7. There was a lurid drawing of a man stabbing a bog victim before throwing him into the water. Some people were weighed down with logs. The artifacts - most of it very valuable, like coins and golden ornaments and fine weapons - were not grave goods and not associated with the human remains, which is why they think all these items were sacrifices. They made a theme of it - "What do you wish for? Throw a coin into the well and make a wish!" Or, I suppose, "Throw a man into the bog and make a wish!" I thought this trivialized the subject a little, but I guess it got the point across.
   
   
8. One of the sponsors of the show was AIM - not AOL Instant Messanger, but a finanical institution. But what those initials mean to me is Advanced Idea Mechanics - a villainous organization of the Marvel Universe. Uh-oh.
   
   
9. One exhibit wa of "two male bodies found lying together". Of course that seemed slashy to me, and possibly even romantic.
   
   
10. I was interested in the Suebian knot - a hairstyle many bog people wore, presumably a common one in northern Europe in pre-classical times. It was unclear to me whether everyone wore this style, or just men. It could, I suppose have been a status thing, worn only by warriors. The hair was long and tied in a knot on the side of the head - leaving a pony-tail to the side. There was a head with a red-haired wig to illustrate this style. Ironically, the drawing above showed men with very short hair. I thought of the 'rois fais-neants' of medieval France - dark age Merovingian kings whose power lay in their hair, and who, if their hair was cut, were deposed. I love the Merovingians. Was this the same tradition?
    
    
11. Some of the written notes about artifacts were misleading or inaccurate. One item looked like a bronze grown, but was described as a necklace. It would never have gone over the head, but it would fit around a neck. I asked the expert who was there to answer questions how they would be able to put it around the neck - was it hinged? He said that it was not actually a necklace but a belt, and explained how bronze or gold objects could be melted down and made into something else as the need arose - a knife, a belt, a necklace, a cup, whatever. He was very articulate, interesting, and detailed in his replies to questions, but as we left, Lisa murmurred, "He never did answer you." No, he didn't. I think there must have been either a hinge, or the crown-like belt object came apart and could be put together again somehow.
    
    
12. Woad is actually a yellow flower. Who knew?
    

Comments

[lyra-sena.livejournal.com]

omg. My mouth dropped open when I read this. My historical fic for Nerodi's challenge is set around 15,000 B.C. and I have been searching for any information about how those people lived, how they dressed, what tools they used. My fic centers around gods and rituals, and this post just gave me some great ideas.

Gah. thank you for posting this! *goes to re-read*

Hey, email me if there is more, would you? lyrasena@aol.com or on AIM lyrasena. Thanks!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad I gave you some ideas! Yes, those were fascinating times, ritually. I wish I had a picture of the "temple", which was a sort of open box with no sides and shaped beams curving upwards at the upper corners.

If I find or remember more of interest I'll let you know.

[leela-cat.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's an amazing website. The exhibit must have been incredible.

Wow.

Thanks for sharing.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It really was. I was so glad I went to it. They say more than 150,000 people have come to the exhibit. I'm surprised it wasn't more crowded yesterday!