Bog Man’s Last Supper: the Archaeology of a Meal

May I have some more, please?

A man’s last meal—from 2400 years ago. Researchers analyzed the stomach contents of “Tollund man,” a well-preserved “bog” body. Roughly speaking, the bog man ate barley porridge with a good deal of weed seed in it and some fish. The photo at the top shows Tollund man’s eerily bog-mummified face.

“What is absolutely fantastic is that, based on the very degraded material, we have been able to reconstruct the Tollund man’s last meal with such a great degree of detail that we can almost reproduce the recipe,” says Nina Helt Nielsen, head of research at Museum Silkeborg and has spearheaded the research project. That way we get really close to what happened 2400 years ago – you can almost imagine how they have been sitting by the fireplace and cooking the porridge.”

A Waste-full Meal?

The weed seeds, primarily willow herb, appear to be threshing waste. Archaeologists found containers of this waste stored with threshed and un-threshed grains. So they valued it enough to keep it. Why some of the “bog bodies” show high weed seed levels in their stomachs—that is ate porridge cut with it—puzzles researchers.

“Whether the threshing waste has been stored for special occasions such as human sacrifices, or whether it has just been an ingredient that was sometimes added to the meal – perhaps to thin the grain – we can not decide yet. It is clearly something that one also should look for in future studies, ” says Nina Helt Nielsen.

The Mystery behind Bog Man’s Death

But for me the intriguing question is: What were the circumstances that lead to this man’s death? Because we know how he died.

The Iron Age man finished his meal about 12 hours before they hung him. So why a hanging?

The most prominent theory says that he was killed as a human sacrifice.

Excuse me? So many questions. Why that conclusion? Did he agree to this? Was he a captive? I’m hoping someone of you out there knows more about this than I do and can enlighten me. I don’t know Danish Iron Age history, but this story has grabbed my attention.

The article says that nutritionally, the meal was “quite good.” People have eaten grain porridges as their main meal all over the world across the ages. The fish probably made it downright luxurious. But personally, if he was the communal sacrifice, I think someone should have given him a more exciting last meal. What do you think?

Click here for Archaeology News Network “The Tollund man’s last meal.”

Here for a post about Bronze Age beads found in Denmark manufactured by the same Egyptian workshop as Tut’s jewelry.