Talk:Tollund Man

Vegetarian

I'm not sure if I'm disagreeing with the author of this article or the people who conducted the autopsy and discovered no meat in his stomach, but I don't agree that the man was a vegetarian simply because he had not eaten meat for his last, or even his last several, meals. He may have not had meat for reasons completely unrelated to choice: he may have been imprisoned and eaten only what his captors chose not to eat themselves, or there may not have been any meat available that he wished to eat near the end of his life. And yes, I am a vegetarian so no, I'm not just being contentious for political reasons, though I am being contentious.  ;-) --KQ

No, you're right, I clearly stepped over the mark. Will edit. --drj

Trivia

This is appropos of nothing whatsoever, but I just wanted to say that it was cool to see this article, because I've been to the museum in Silkeborg, and I've seen the Tollund man, and it was really cool to look at and this article reminds me of what a great vacation I had in Denmark that year.  :)

Yes, it is quite amazing isn't it? Did you get to the viking museum at Roskilde while you were there? It's a fascinating place as well. sjc

Cause of death

How do we know he was hanged?

The Tollund man was hanged, as an act of sacrifice! If it's an update then there's conclusive new evidence for this statement not found in the above article. What is it? How do we know he was hanged?

I have seen enough reliable supportive evidence to convince me that he was hanged. The ritual food which he had consumed is supportive; there are remarkable similarities with Elling Woman; there are rope marks on the neck; this is moreover an uncontroversial subject. Pretty much the entirety of the archaeological world is happy with it being a hanging and a ritual one at that, and to get any form of consensus there is an achievement in its own right, which kind of marks this line of enquiry as a dead letter. Anyone know whether water is wet, by the way? user:sjc

PS I forgot to mention, when discovered there was a noose around his neck. user:sjc

Much of that was in the article already; I was just moving the complaint off the article page itself.  :-) --KQ

I surmised as much. It was addressed to the original inquirer rather than yourself KQ. user:sjc

I would not dispute that the man was hung. But my initial speculation, having linked here while researching ergot, was that he very likely may have been displaying many of the symptoms of ergotism (ie psychotic episodes, hallucinations, increased libido, etc). Such manifestations could easily induce panic in small towns and villages of the time. Ergotism was prone to striking such places in plague-like waves (based on intermittent infection of local food crops), but it's correlation to food was centuries from being understood at the time. It would not be a stretch to theorize that some small communities might resort to the 'removal' of infected individuals in an effort to curb such seemingly infectious outbreaks.... I find this absolutely fascinating and am compelled to know if there was, subsequently, a thorough excavation of the particular bog in which this body was found? K10wnsta (talk) 21:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Unreferenced contents

I believe that the wikipedia contents have been taken from the book "The Bog People" by P.V. Glob without accrediting him. I don't know the legal blarb about putting information from books on the internet, I'm sure it's ok to quote, but I think the author of the work should be given credit for his words. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.252.32.11 (talk • contribs) 17:58, 28 October 2004 (UTC)

Discussion moved from article

I removed this discussion from the article itself: Saintswithin 19:50, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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?? the two statements above appear to be mutually exclusive

I don't think so, for what I understood is that all seeds come from the same place but from either different times of harvest or simply a mixture of natural and cultivated ones. Am I right?

yes, conquer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.8.54.101 (talk) 23:41, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

The novel

The statement: The story of this discovery is likely to have been the basis of a thriller novel by US author Erin Hart titled "Haunted Ground" is not very accurate. From the information given it could taken from just about any discovery of a bogbody. They were almost all found in connection with peatdigging and they all have remarkably wellpreserved facefeatures (although adimttedly the Tollund mans face features are probably the best preserved), and they all have red hair on account of the chemical reactions in the bog. I suggest that if there is a consensus for having this kind of irrelevant information, at least it should be moved to the article Bog body. --Saddhiyama (talk) 10:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Huh?

These two points seem remarkably contradictory:

• ...Because these seeds were not readily available, it is likely that some of them were gathered deliberately for a special occasion.
• The soup was made from seeds only available near the spring where he was found.K10wnsta (talk) 21:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

(hmmm, it seems this may have been mentioned a couple lines up, but I'm not sure if it was addressing the exact same issue...)K10wnsta (talk) 21:54, 6 November 2008 (UTC)