The bodies buried in the bog

When things fall into bogs, they sometimes wind up being beautifully preserved. This includes bodies, sometimes dating back thousands of years. We’re still trying to understand who was buried in the bogs and why. Guest: Anna North, journalist and author of Bog Queen To watch this episode on video, find us on ⁠Netflix⁠! For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠And please email us! ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠ We read every email. Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:17Speaker 02

  The word bog has never had a particularly charming connotation to me. It brings to mind a wetland with a lot of decaying plants and like poor water drainage. But a few years ago, my former colleague, Anna North, are kind of obsessed with bogs. She is a journalist who covers a range of topics, but she also writes novels. And she wound up getting so stuck on bogs that she wrote an entire book with a bog as like a central character, this book called Bog Queen. And talking to her, I started to realize why bogs were so compelling.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  They're kind of like time capsules, almost, full of scientific questions about both our past and our future, in a way. So I asked Anna to come on the show and talk to us a bit about what's lurking in the bogs.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Hi, Anna. Thank you for being on the show.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Maybe let's just start with like the simple, what is a bog exactly? How does it differ from other wet places?

• 2:48Speaker 03

  Yes, there are many different wet environments and they all have different names. And I have a little definition of bog that I like to use. A bog is a type of wetland made of peat. And peat is organic material that builds up faster than it decays.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Builds up faster than it decays. So normally, stuff just turns into dirt. Peat, for whatever reason, stays as plants and builds up in layers. And that becomes bog.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  That's right. So in the case of a lot of bogs in Northern Europe and also in the far north of North America, that stuff, that organic material, is sphagnum moss. And sphagnum moss is really amazing at holding on to a bunch of water. So it makes this really wet, squishy environment, preserves itself, and none of it ever really decomposes. So if you imagine just like throwing an apple on the floor, right? Like eventually, it's gonna rot. But peat behaves a little differently. In the case of, say, the bogs in Northern Europe, which are made of this type of moss, the moss gets so wet that it drives out most of the air. So it creates this environment that's mostly anaerobic,

• 4:02Speaker 03

  meaning there's no oxygen. And when there's very little oxygen, it's really hard for things to break down and decay. So instead of rotting, you kind of just get the old layers of moss pressed down under the new ones, and pressed down, and pressed down, and pressed down, until you have these huge stacks of moss. Sometimes it'll form big hills of moss. They're like peat mounds. Other times, it's just sort of, it's like a mat that's kind of underground, very spongy, kind of gooey, and very, very preservative of anything that happens to fall into it or be thrown there.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Have you seen one of these like stacks of peat in person?

• 4:43Speaker 03

  So as part of my research for my book, Bog Queen, I was actually able to go to a bog called Lindo Moss. And there, I met an environmental group called Transition Womslow. And folks from that group really, they did take me under their bog wings. And they showed me all around the area. And they showed me what sphagnum moss, what it's supposed to look like, when it's like bright green and forming these like, kind of like mats made of interlocking stars. In addition to seeing the moss itself, I also saw areas where it has sort of been dug out. And you could see, like, there was an area with layers of peat that was taller than me. And you could even see like the old peat and like the newer, fresher peat at the top. It's wild to see.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  So it does this anaerobic preservation thing that you were describing, where basically like the lack of oxygen means that all the things that fall into it are preserved. What kind of stuff is preserved in there?

• 5:43Speaker 03

  So I got into bogs through bog bodies.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Bog bodies?

• 5:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, so when you say bog bodies, people are either immediately really excited or they're like, what are you talking about? So for those of you who are like, what are you talking about? Sort of, starting thousands of years ago and moving all the way up to occasionally the Middle Ages, people would sometimes bury human bodies in bogs. This was something that happened throughout Northern Europe. We are still not sure why. But the fascinating thing is that because of the properties of these bogs, the bodies were wonderfully preserved. So every now and then, in the modern era, we'll dig up a human body and it looks like it might have died yesterday.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Wow. Is there like an example that you found particularly compelling of a bog body or like one that drew you in?

• 6:43Speaker 03

  So there is a bog body in the British Museum. I've seen him a few times. His name is Lindo Man. We don't know what his real name was, sadly. I wish we could know. That's not something that's preserved. They call him Lindo Man because he was found in a bog called Lindo Moss. It's incredibly beautiful and strange to visit him. You walk into this room and then you're basically face to face with this human body. He's kind of smushed, a little bit like a human bag. I know, I know, I know. But it's still, like, what's amazing is that because he was buried in this bog, like, he, this is gonna sound so horrible, you guys. But his flesh is still there.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  It's not, he's not a skeleton, even though he's thousands of years old. So you really are in the presence of like this man's body, a human person. And even though it is disturbing in some ways, to me, seeing him was really beautiful because it was so clear that I'm just like with another human being, even though he's dead and he walked the earth thousands of years ago.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Has anyone ever been found and mistaken for a, like a recent body?

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Yes, so that's happened multiple times. And the reason that I decided to really dig into this even more and ultimately write a novel about it is that I learned the story of Lindo Woman. So Lindo Woman was found in the same bog as Lindo Man, Lindo Moss. And when some people first found her, just these young men, they found her and brought her to the police. And soon, a local man came forward and he's like, okay, you got me. I murdered my wife 20 years ago. I threw her in the bog. I thought no one would find out, but obviously you found out. So I confess, it's over. The police took his statement.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  It was obviously a very shocking thing for the local community. But there are some irregularities in the remains. And so they send them to a university for further testing. The university calls back and is like, look, I don't know where this guy's wife is, but this woman is 2,000 years old.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  I know. So I think this case of mistaken identity just really stuck with me. And the reason, part of the reason that her identity could be mistaken in this way is because of the enormous, just really astounding preservative properties of the bog. And then I got into so many, so many other examples where people's faces have been preserved, their clothing, the contents of their stomachs. And there's also, one of my favorite things that's been found in bogs is butter.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Butter, like a lump of butter?

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Like a lump of butter. Sometimes in a barrel, sometimes like on its own. People dig this up kind of frequently, especially in Ireland. They call it bog butter.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Can you eat it?

• 9:44Speaker 03

  You can. You shouldn't, people have. They have eaten bog butter.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  What does it taste like?

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Cheese, reportedly. I have not done this.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  So they really are, they're like time capsules.

• 10:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  It sounds like. Is that sort of what you wanted to write about for your book? Or what, yeah, what was it that really made you feel like, okay, I'm going to write a whole book about this?

• 10:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I kind of wanted to write a murder mystery. I like to play with different genres in my fiction. And I realized I'd never tried to do a mystery. I liked this idea of a mystery where the victim is a bog body, where the victim is like 2,000 years old. And where ultimately, like, you're probably not going to be able to fully solve the mystery. Right? Like, you're not even going to be able to know the victim's name. There's so much that you'll never be able to find out. But there is also so much that you will be able to find out. It's like tantalizing. So I think it was all of that. And then the bog environment itself sort of emerged, like, as I did research, as something that was like increasingly important to the story.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  And so I knew that the bog would always be like very central and important to the story. But it took a while to figure out exactly how.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Interesting. I'm, I'm stuck on this idea of tantalizing information. I guess what can we learn beyond just sort of like the, oh, this is an exciting murder mystery type thing? What can we learn from a time capsule like this? From finding bodies or butter, whatever else?

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think what's really amazing about these environments is that they just preserve different kinds of things than other environments. So, you know, obviously, we can learn a ton from someone's skeleton. And bones and human remains have been found all around the world in all different kinds of places. Fossils have been found. But in a bog, what is preserved are things like hair or skin or clothing, leather, wool. And that gives us access to just this whole other realm of information that you just can't get anywhere else.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  After the break, a whole realm of information that you can't get anywhere else.

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• 15:49Speaker 05

  How can you be sure unless you have another piece? Sit down, fog.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  What is like your favorite example?

• 15:59Speaker 03

  One of my favorites is this woman called Haldremos Woman, who was found in Denmark.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  And she was actually found wearing beautiful clothing. And scientists have been able to do an incredible amount of analysis on those garments, like studying the fibers from which they're made, using the special isotope analysis to determine where those fibers came from. They found out that the fibers in this woman's clothes came from two different places, quite far away. And also that the woman did not come from the place where she was buried.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Wait, what about her clothes made them say, oh, they're not from here? Was it like the pattern wasn't correct or?

• 16:41Speaker 03

  No, it's even cooler than that. So they did reconstruct the pattern. If you look at her clothes, they're kind of brown now because like it's been a minute. They've been in the mud. They're sort of mud colored. But they were able to find out what the original colors were. And they're actually quite vibrant and patterned. So that is all cool. But no, they actually studied the fibers. So like some of her clothing was made of wool. And you can study the isotope, the radioactive isotopes that are laid down in wool when the sheep eat grass from the ground. And then you can test the soil. And so you can be like, this wool comes from sheep that grazed in Denmark. And that's what they did.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  They know, I think, that she traded because some of the wool is from different places. And they also can know that she traveled. So then a question that we have about her becomes, was it common for a woman of Iron Age Denmark or Iron Age Scandinavia to travel around to different places? And wear clothing that was made in several different places? Or is this like an important dignitary who, you know, traveled around her world to like visit her many castles or, you know, whatever? We don't know if she was important in her time or not. And we don't know why she was put in the bog. Because not every Iron Age person was buried in that way. There are other methods of burial.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  So we think that the bog bodies were special in some way. We just don't know how.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  For some reason, I thought, my impression was that they, it was like a criminal sentence?

• 18:17Speaker 03

  A really common belief for a long time was that the bog bodies were criminals. A lot of them have signs of violence on their bodies. We're not always sure that the violence is pre-mortem. What if it happened in the bog? And there have been these really interesting new hypotheses more recently about why people were chosen for a bog burial. In particular, there's like a striking number of bog bodies who have visible disabilities that show that they might have needed care during their lives. And so some people actually speculate that these are people who were perceived as really special and deserving of special care during life and then also during death. These people might even have been seen as sacred or holy.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  It's this really interesting alternate interpretation that I really like.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  And the more you describe, it's like it's mysteries on mysteries on mysteries on mysteries.

• 19:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, what's interesting is that, you know, I'm just a layperson, but I sort of feel like it is, it could be possible that one day we'll find out exactly what killed each of these bodies. Right? Like the actual cause of death. That's sort of, that's what the main character is working on in the book, is trying to find a cause of death for this body. And that feels within reach to me. But like, there's other things about their lives that we're never going to know. Like, well, if they, this is one, this is how they died, but why did they die that way? If they were executed, why? What was the, what was the crime? What was the law? If they were seen as special, what was the belief system behind that? Even just what was their name? We're never going to know their names. And something about that is really like heartbreaking, but also fascinating to me.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, because obviously their names are not Haldremos.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  Right. No, yeah. I mean, some of their names, like the names that we call them are sort of beautiful. There's a girl that they call the Raspberry Girl because raspberries were found in her stomach. I know. But she had a name too. And since her people probably didn't have writing, we're never going to know what that was.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  I guess any remains in a museum.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  There's always sort of a question about would someone who was buried in the bog, for whatever reason, want to be disinterred and have their stomach examined or be put on display? And I don't know, something about the Raspberry Girl really brought that home to me.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's an interesting question. There definitely have been protests around the display of the bog bodies in museums. So there's people who feel that Lindo Man, for example, should not be on display and that he should be returned to the bog where his people buried him, which I think is a really valid view. I think seeing human remains in a museum is really complicated. To me, I feel a difference when I see Lindo Man in the British Museum in London, not that far from his home, versus if I were to see remains, for example, that were found in Egypt and potentially stolen and, you know, taken by a colonialist culture to a

• 21:25Speaker 03

  totally different place and displayed in a completely different context. You know, I've seen Lindo Man a few times now, and I don't get that same kind of ick that I might feel when there's all these other issues at play. But you are still looking at a person, and I think it's valid to say, to ask whether we should do that.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Are there other questions we can ask from the bog, sort of unrelated to history or human remains?

• 21:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like a big, like, sort of other thread that really pulled me into the bog, sorry, everyone, is they have this enormous, like, climate importance. The thing about things not breaking down is that means they're not releasing their carbon up into the atmosphere. So all the carbon from all the moss that goes in there over centuries and centuries and millennia is just staying there, all packed in. So it's actually like this incredible sort of bulwark against climate change, even more efficient than forests.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  For some reason, in my mind, bogs are mostly in the UK. Are they actually all over?

• 22:39Speaker 03

  There are, there's peatlands all around the world. So I think for Americans, we often think of bogs as being sort of an English or Irish phenomenon. I think some of that might be about the poet Seamus Haney, who wrote these famous bog poems that people studied in school. But there are peatlands in northern Canada, there are peatlands in Africa in the Congo Basin, there are peatlands in Southeast Asia, there are peatlands in Panama, really all over the place.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Are we doing a good job of sort of supporting them as carbon sinks, I guess?

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Bird, do you think we are doing a good job of supporting?

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Everything I know suggests that we may not be doing a good job supporting them as carbon sinks. But I'm curious, I guess, how bad of a job we are doing, supporting them as carbon sinks.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  So I, I mean, I think the interesting thing about this is that I think bogs suffer from not being charismatic in the way that rainforests are, or I think they're charismatic. But I think they have like a bit of a PR problem where it's sort of very visible and legible to people why you should save the rainforest. And I think the bog environment is sort of, you know, is like overlaid with ideas of like fear and falling in. It's not, I think, not often portrayed in pop culture as like a place of great beauty or a place you need to save. So they haven't been, you know, there's not as much fundraising around them. That's starting to change. Like, bogs are really, I think, having a moment.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Annie Prue wrote a book about wetlands that I think has helped raise their profile. There's a lot going on in the bog world, but I think it's still kind of like this unsung climate hero. And so there's a lot of bad stuff going on. A lot of bogs have been places where peat has been harvested. So either for fuel, you can burn it, or for potting soil, just for use in gardening. And so Lindo Moss, the bog in England where Lindo Man and Lindo Woman were found, had been really kind of cut up and degraded by industrial equipment over the course of many decades. At that time, when I went, which was in 2021, a lot of it had been basically destroyed, and a lot of that original peat was gone.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  In some places, peatlands have been cleared for oil palm. As peatlands dry out, then they do release some of their carbon into the atmosphere. They're also vulnerable to fires, which is really bad, because then tons of carbon goes up into the atmosphere really quickly. And then also, those fires can be really dangerous because there's so much fuel down there, and they can smolder for a long time. So there's a lot of threats to peat and bog ecosystems that people all around the world have to worry about. I have also had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people who are working on conservation in peat environments, and that has been really cool to see, including, you know, people who have been sort of stewarding these areas for generations.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  There are indigenous nations in northern Canada who work on the peatlands there and who are doing a lot of work to sort of catalog and advocate for them. So even though I think like bogs have not gotten as much love from the international community as they deserve, I think there is sort of a growing awareness of how important they are.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  What about the, the Lindo Moss, this bog that you sort of, you went to visit, you saw? How is, how is it doing now?

• 26:05Speaker 03

  It's doing better. So I'm really happy to report that I have kept in touch with some of the environmental groups that take care of it. And since 2021, when I visited, they've actually gotten a grant, and they've started a project to restore it. And they are going to be able, they hope, to turn it back into this, like, really vibrant bog ecosystem that it was thousands of years ago.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Hannah, thank you so much.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  Hannah's book is Bog Queen, and it's a great book about the box.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Thank you so much, Bird. Thank you for having me.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Anna North's book is Bog Queen. This episode was produced by Valerie Schenkman and me, Byrd Pinkerton, with help from Meredith Hodnot, who also runs the show. It was edited by Joanna Slataroff, our editorial director. The video edit was done by Jacob Reynolds and Valerie Schenkman, with animation from Kareem Koreya. Sam Mutin and Davon Howard were our studio engineers. Christian Ayala did the mixing and the sound design for the podcast. Melissa Hirsch checked the facts. Kim Slaughterback did the video copy edit, and Noam Hasenfeld does our music. Thanks also, as always, to Brian Resnick for co-creating the show with me and Noam.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  If you have thoughts on bogs or topics that you would like us to explore, we are at [email protected]. If you would like to support this show and the journalism that Vox does, we would love it if you would become a member. It is very easy to do. Just go to vox.com/members, and you will get access to all of Vox's journalism, but you will also know that you are supporting all of Vox's journalism. Thank you. For those of you who have emailed us to let us know that you signed up because of Unexplainable, thank you. It is genuinely very helpful for us to know that. Thank you also to those of you who left a nice review on your podcast platform or just told someone in your life about the show. You are all the best.

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  Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we will be back very soon with another episode about everything that we do not yet know.

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