Seamus Heaney and Bog Bodies
The following is a reflection I wrote for one of the courses I took in Ireland. Even though it is not directly related to knitting, these are the types of things I think about while clicking away at the needles. It is a reflection on “The Tollund Man” by Seamus Heaney. Why am I posting this now? Is it because October is the season of skeletons and memento mori, thus bog bodies are on my mind again? Is it because I am a busy college student and have not had any recent knitting escapades to write about? Is this some morbid obsession? I’ll let you decide which answer you like best.
I first encountered bog bodies while doing research for a high school paper but had forgotten about them until I had the opportunity to go to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. Bog bodies are intriguing because, like all dead bodies, they once walked the earth, and interacted with other people, but now they are dead. The circumstances around their deaths are a bit of a mystery. They could have been murdered or sacrificed. Some faces have pain, while others died in peace. Their stomachs and tissue are so well preserved that scientists can even tell what their usual diet consisted of, as well as the last thing they ate.
While I think it is fascinating to see their leathery bodies, I also wonder what is the proper thing that should be done with their bodies? They can be used to help us understand the past, and to advance science. At Glasnevin the tour guide told us about the black market for dead bodies which were used to advance science and medicine, but most people today would agree that this is wrong. It makes me wonder what the difference is between a freshly dead body and a century old one. Perhaps the loss of the memory in the living is the primary difference.
In his poem “The Tollund Man” Heaney reflects on the bog body found at Aarhus in Denmark. The poem has an intriguing combination of the past, present, and future. Heaney writes about a body that has long been dead and the trip he imagines going on in the future to see the body. The narrator is in the present reflecting on the things of the past and anticipating the future. The present is also conveyed in the description and imagination of the bog body. The body has a “peat-brown head,” (2) almost no clothing, and the “last gruel of winter seeds/ Caked in his stomach,” (7-8). On his future journey he imagines the body still alive “As he rode the tumbril,” (34).
When I saw the bog bodies at the museum, I thought about the incorruptible bodies of saints. Many miracles that occurred in the scriptures have scientific explanations. The preservation of the bog bodies also has scientific explanations. I wonder if the incorruptible saints also have scientific explanations that we do not know yet. Heaney also thought of incorruptibility regarding the bog body when he wrote, “Those dark juices working/ Him to a saint’s kept body,” (15-16). According to Heaney the thought that the bog bodies are saints and that the bog is holy ground borders on blasphemy.
The poem has a rather gloomy ending. Once Heaney has set out on his imaginary journey of the future, he says, “I will feel lost, / Unhappy and at home,” (43-44). At first, I thought this was an oxymoron, but while pondering my own life on a journey to find out what it is I am supposed to become I often feel lost, unhappy, and at home simultaneously. Life and death are packed with mystery, and the bog bodies provide a tangible meditation on the circle of life, yet they are frozen in time. The Tollund man is every man; his poverty and nakedness have been preserved for all the world to see. The noose that killed him is still around his neck. While his body evokes thoughts of incorruptibility, his poverty and nakedness immortalize him in a vulnerable position that makes him fascinating in contrast to the incorrupt saints who lived perfect lives that the average human cannot live up to.
Plenty of poets have written about death, but “The Tollund Man” is about a dead body. I think Heaney’s poem is a more respectful remembrance than the photos I snapped of the bog bodies at the museum. Even my carefully chosen language demonstrates there is something sacred about the body after death, for it would be a bit shocking to write about taking pictures of dead bodies but adding “bog” before body reduces the fascination with corpses from a morbid one to a slightly less than sickening one.
I would love to know your thoughts on bog bodies in the comments to give me more to think about while knitting.
