The GRAUBALLE Man

The Grauballe man is one of the best preserved bog bodies in the world. He was found on April 26, 1952, in a bog near the village of Grauballe in Jutland, Denmark, by a person digging for peat. Carbon dating has determined him to be from around 290 BC. Grauballe Man is currently on display at the Moesgaard Museum near Aarhus, Denmark.

The Grauballe Man is very well preserved with nails and hair in evidence. His fingers were even in good enough condition to allow his fingerprints to be taken. While his hair and beard is well preserved, it has been discoloured by time, as is his skin. No clothing or jewellery was found on or near the body.


His was not the only bog body to be found in the peat bogs of Jutland: with other notable examples Tollund Man and the Elling Woman, Grauballe Man represents an established tradition at the time; it is commonly thought that these killings, including that of Grauballe Man, were examples of human sacrifice, possibly an important rite in Iron Age Germanic paganism.

Right hand of the Danish bog body known as Grauballe Man, discovered in 1952.
"Grauballemannen3" by Sven Rosborn - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - 

Facial reconstruction of the Grauballe Man's face

The Grauballe Man died from having his throat cut deeply, but he also had a fractured leg and had been bashed on the head, not long before he died. It is assumed that either a sacrifice or execution as punishment for a crime was the cause of his injuries. He also had a mysterious cord around his neck as discovered by National Geographic. Recent scans have reconstructed his face and revealed a lot of facts about him, including that he was beginning to develop gout and already had arthritis. Other than that, he appears to have been a healthy male, about 30 years old.

Other information about the Grauballe Man's life have been ascertained from his remains. His hands were smooth and did not show evidence of hard work, indicating that Grauballe Man was not employed in hard labour such as farming. Study of his teeth and jaws indicated that he had suffered from "periods of starvation or a poor state of health during his early childhood." The man's skeleton showed signs of significant calcium deficiency, and his spine also suffered the early stages of spondylosis deformans, a generalized disease of aging that is secondary to the degeneration of intervertebral disks.

Due to the shrinkage that the corpse suffered in the bog, the man's actual height is not known. It is known that he had dark hair, although this too was altered in the bog, and now appears reddish in colour.

The corpse was not found with any artifacts or any evidence of clothing, indicating that when he died he was entirely naked, or his clothing had deteriorated, something that had also happened with the Tollund Man. The actual manner of his death was by having his neck cut open, ear to ear, severing his trachea and also his oesophagus. Such a wound could not have been self-inflicted, indicating that this was not suicide. A damaged area to the skull that was initially thought to be inflicted by a blow to the head, has since been determined by a CT scan to be fractured by pressure from the bog long after his death. He was around thirty years old when he died.

Discovery and Preservation

The body of the Grauballe Man upon his discovery.

When one of the workmen, Tage Busk Sørensen, stuck his spade into something on April 26, 1952, he knew it was not peat; upon revealing more, they discovered the head protruding from the ground, and the local postman, who was passing, alerted the local doctor as well as an amateur archaeologist named Ulrik Balslev. With the body still in the peat, various locals came to visit it over the next day, one of whom accidentally stepped on its head. The following morning, Professor Peter Glob from the Prehistory Museum at Aarhus came to visit the body, and arranged for it to be removed to the museum, still encased in a block of surrounding peat.

Glob and his team decided that they should not only research the body but that they should also attempt to preserve it so that it could be exhibited to the public. This concept was new at the time for most of the bog bodies previously discovered had been re-buried, sometimes in consecrated ground, with the Tollund Man which had been discovered two years earlier having only its head preserved. Despite the warnings of some scientists who believed that the corpse should immediately undergo preservation, it was exhibited straight away in order to capitalise on public interest. Indeed, the scientists' fears were proved right, as, the body having to be kept permanently moist, mould started to appear on certain areas.

The body then underwent research, including a post-mortem, and then preservation, which was organised by conservator C. Lange-Kornbak, who had to decide which was the best way to do this. (No entire bog body had ever been preserved before.) He examined various methods for doing this, before deciding on a programme of tanning the body to turn it into leather and then stuffing it with oak bark. In 1955 the body went on display at the Moesgaard Museum near Aarhus, only to be removed for a time in 2001-2002 when it underwent more modern scientific study, including radiological study, CT scanning, 3D visualisation, stereolithography and analyses of the gut contents.

The Grauballe Man is the subject of a poem by Seamus Heaney. 

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Source: wikipedia