Tollund Man
Iron Age bog body from Denmark that was hanged before death
A man dead since 400 BC, pulled from a Danish bog in 1950 looking so intact police thought they'd stumbled on a fresh crime scene.
Tollund Man is read about 827 times a day, in 46 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 9 November 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 108 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?Media & music
About this person
He died by hanging sometime between 405 and 384 BC, during the Pre-Roman Iron Age in Scandinavia. His body went into a peat bog on Denmark's Jutland peninsula, where the chemistry preserved skin, features, and expression across twenty-four centuries. When farmers cutting peat near Silkeborg unearthed him in 1950, the face was so lifelike authorities assumed murder. Whether he was sacrificed or executed remains unknown. Twelve years earlier the same bog had given up another body, Elling Woman, but Tollund Man's preservation made him the rarer case - a person you can still meet.