#bog body

[victusinveritas]

[takataapui]

'bog body, watching', by Riwhi Kenny.

this is a drawing game about change, rot, and legacy. to play, you'll need something to draw with and a deck of cards.

you play as a body in a bog, watching the world change around you, while you remain deep within the peat of your wetland. explore how the things you once knew are different now, in the changing years following your burial in the bog.

download for free/pay what you want/koha here!

[veiligplekje]

The Yde Girl memorial, the Netherlands

[valdevia]

These large organic remains, nicknamed "the Bog Body", were unearthed in a quarry in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1907.

Once exposed to the elements, the delicate state of the body quickly deteriorated, leaving little trace.

[aardbrein]

Brb ik ga het veen in springen, zie jullie over 2000 jaar

[world-of-mummies]

The Tollund Man (also Tollundmann; Danish Tollundmanden) is a bog body discovered by peat cutters on 8 May 1950 in a raised bog in Bjældskovdal, ten kilometres west of Silkeborg, Denmark. He is now on display in the ‘Hovedgården’ museum in Silkeborg.

The Tollund man was lying in a relaxed position on his right side, his legs drawn up to his stomach. With the exception of a sheepskin cap sewn together from eight pieces and a 77 cm long leather belt, he wore no clothing. It is possible that he was originally clothed in textiles made from plant fibres such as flax, hemp or nettles, which were decomposed by the acidic environment of the bog. He was estimated to be around 40 years old. At 161 cm, he was rather short, but probably also shrunk in the bog so that his skin lay in folds. His arms and hands had been damaged during peat cutting, but his feet and one of his fingers were well preserved. The papillary lines and skin line patterns on the soles of the feet were no different from those of modern humans.

The head was particularly well preserved. The facial expression was calm, mouth and eyes closed, and gave the impression of a sleeping person. He appeared well groomed. His hair was cut short and 2 to 3 cm long. The leather cap covering his scalp was fastened with two leather strips under his chin. The neck of the bog body was in a plaited leather sling, which had left clear marks in the skin on the sides and under the chin. The free end of the strap under the corpse was about a metre long and had been cut off at the end. Most of the upper body was still covered in skin. However, the left side of the chest and shoulder in particular were poorly preserved and partially decomposed. The genitals were well preserved, as were the internal organs such as the heart, lungs and liver. The stomach, small intestine and large intestine of the Tollund man still contained the remains of his last meal.

The noose still around his neck suggests that Tollund Man died violently by strangulation, although the doctor who carried out the forensic examination was certain that the man had not been strangled but hanged. The way he was laid in the bog - in a sleeping position with his eyes closed - suggests that he was not killed by enemies. It is likely that it was a human sacrifice, perhaps in gratitude for the peat or in winter as a plea for the coming spring. His death is dated to 405-380 BC.

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

art history playlist moodboard – entering my bog body era

Ophelia – Victor Müller // The Cottage – Vincent van Gogh // Hazy Day on the Marshes, New Jersey – Martin Johnson Heade // Vanitas: Flowers and Tiny Creatures – Abraham Mignon // The Fairy that Disappeared – Theodor Kittelsen// Large Moorland Landscape – Eugen Jettel // The Great Swamp – Martin Johnson Heade // Ophelia – Thomas Francis Dicksee // Peat Bog at Jæren – Kitty Lange Kielland

[grimmborg-in-the-bog]

[lilystrations]

"Beware The Whispers"

I finally got around to some swampy murky goodness, and these oh so lovely bog ladies couldn't be happier about it. 🔥👀🔥

[peggy-sue-reads-a-book]

[bloodandflame]

[thevampiricnihal]

Catherines and Bogs and Transitions and Death

“We ran from the top of the Heights to the park, without stopping—Catherine completely beaten in the race, because she was barefoot. You’ll have to seek for her shoes in the bog tomorrow.”

(Chapter 6) (italics mine)

“The place of Catherine’s interment, to the surprise of the villagers, was neither in the chapel under the carved monument of the Lintons, nor yet by the tombs of her own relations, outside. It was dug on a green slope in a corner of the kirk-yard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry-plants have climbed over it from the moor; and peat-mould almost buries it.”

(Chapter 16) (italics mine)

“‘Eh, dear! Mrs. Dean!’ she exclaimed. ‘Well! there is a talk about you at Gimmerton. I never thought but you were sunk in the Blackhorse marsh, and missy with you, till master told me you’d been found, and he’d lodged you here! What! and you must have got on an island, sure? And how long were you in the hole? Did master save you, Mrs. Dean? But you’re not so thin—you’ve not been so poorly, have you?’

‘Your master is a true scoundrel!’ I replied. ‘But he shall answer for it. He needn’t have raised that tale: it shall all be laid bare!’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Zillah. ‘It’s not his tale: they tell that in the village—about your being lost in the marsh; and I calls to Earnshaw, when I come in “Eh, they’s queer things, Mr. Hareton, happened since I went off. It’s a sad pity of that likely young lass, and cant Nelly Dean.” He stared. I thought he had not heard aught, so I told him the rumour. The master listened, and he just smiled to himself, and said, “If they have been in the marsh, they are out now, Zillah. Nelly Dean is lodged, at this minute, in your room. You can tell her to flit, when you go up; here is the key. The bog-water got into her head, and she would have run home quite flighty; but I fixed her till she came round to her senses. You can bid her go to the Grange at once, if she be able, and carry a message from me, that her young lady will follow in time to attend the squire’s funeral.”

(Chapter 28) (italics mine) (I will forever wonder whether Heathcliff spread the rumor himself at the village he merely took advantage here of an already existing one).

“He turned abruptly to the fire, and continued, with what, for lack of a better word, I must call a smile: ‘I’ll tell you what I did yesterday! I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there: when I saw her face again—it is hers yet!—he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change if the air blew on it, and so I struck one side of the coffin loose, and covered it up: not Linton’s side, damn him! I wish he’d been soldered in lead. And I bribed the sexton to pull it away when I’m laid there, and slide mine out too; I’ll have it made so: and then by the time Linton gets to us he’ll not know which is which!”

(Chapter 29) (italics mine)

From Janet Gezari’s The Annotated Wuthering Heights

“Her father-in-law went up, held the light to Linton’s face, looked at him, and touched him; afterwards he turned to her.

“Now—Catherine,” he said, “how do you feel?”

She was dumb.

“How do you feel, Catherine?” he repeated.

“He’s safe, and I’m free,” she answered: “I should feel well—but,” she continued, with a bitterness she couldn’t conceal, “you have left me so long to struggle against death alone, that I feel and see only death! I feel like death!”

‘And she looked like it, too!”

(Chapter 30) (italics mine)

For both Catherines, bogs seem to signify a transition from one house to the next and the death caused by this transition. Catherine Earnshaw is literally buried in a bog. It is apparent that Catherine Linton’s metaphorical death is a manufactured fake one by the fact that she was never really lost in the bog, it was just a rumor probably spread by Heathcliff.

Just some thoughts I had ahead of reading @vickythestrange ‘s short story about bogs.

[gwinwe]

weerdinge men

[aodhan-art]

Bog body wip

[themaybug]

tollund man, two-toned lino print on A5

[veiligplekje]

The Yde Girl memorial, the Netherlands