Written by Caitlin Tambini.
The super rich are obsessed with being preserved. They used to be obsessed with being remembered, slapping their names on good things like libraries and scholarships, and bad things, like stolen land. Now, scientific advancements have created a world in which the brains or bodies of the elite could be preserved, reincarnated, or even loaded onto microchips and placed inside robots. For a minute population, legacy is no longer an issue- and neither is rot.
Cryonics, for example, is the newly popularised practice of freezing corpses in the hope that future technology will one day be developed to resurrect them. The Cryonics Institute offers a new life for you, and even for your pets- if you can afford it. Over 500 bodies are currently frozen in the US, despite the process costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, with potential costs extending eternally, as it is impossible to say if, or when, this resurrection technology will emerge. Ironically, these super rich people do not seem to care about the future into which their corpses (and pet-zombies) will be revived. If they did, you would think they would do more to redistribute their wealth and curb the climate crisis, rather than directly exacerbating inequity and ecocide.
A friend once told me that she would only ever want to be cremated—the idea of being left to slowly rot felt, to her, like spiritual, as well as physical decay. But, the idea of denying one's return to the earth after death feels somehow worse. While no one wants to picture the decay of their own flesh, that fate seems somehow preferable to your physical form being observed, studied, and visited in such a clinical and impersonal way. The idea of remaining, potentially for eternity, submerged in a tank of liquid nitrogen makes me feel sick. The idea of anyone having to live in a world in which an antifreeze-soaked Peter Theil and his robot dog are walking around makes me feel worse.
I am not saying, of course, that this is the worst indignity in death. Seeing the brutal war crimes the Israeli military are committing against people alive and dead, to the indifference of many world leaders, makes it clear that in Palestine, and all over the world, the right to dignity in death and in life have not been absorbed into the international world order. And yet often, the same people who negate the rights of marginalised, living people, expect to carry their wealth and privilege into some kind of future, planetary afterlife. They passively observe people dying as they seek personal immortality.
From mummification to Jeremy Bentham, elites across history demonstrate a clear and ongoing desire for preservation. Is this to make their physical form into a site of veneration? To extend their relevance even after death? We can’t say. But with the phenomenon of bog bodies, this preservation is accidental. Bog bodies were not intentionally immortalised, they simply failed to rot.
On a spring morning 1950, Viggo and Emil Hojgaard went to cut peat from the Bjældskovdal bog for fuel. When they found a dead body in the bog, they went to the Danish police. However, the police in turn called archaeology professor PV Glob, who determined that the body was not of a recent murder victim, as previously believed, but was in fact around 2,400 years old. Despite its age, the Tollund Man, as the body has become known, is entirely recognisable: curled like a cat but undeniably human. His eyes are closed lightly, and have smile lines emanating from them. He even has a light dusting of stubble across his chin. He had grains for his last meal and died in the spring.
Peat bogs are environments unique in their ability to preserve. Three main factors—cool temperatures, anaerobic conditions, and high acidity contribute to their ability to prevent decay. Furthermore, the sphagnum mosses which make up raised bogs release a compound called sphagnan, which starves bacteria, preventing them from decaying the body, and turning the human skin to leather. It is because of this unique preservation process that we know such specific facts about the life and death of Tollund Man, though as with many aspects of his being, these scraps of information raise more questions than answers.
Tollund Man was found naked, but for a small sheepskin cap, with a noose around his neck. He died a violent and likely undignified death, and was dumped in a bog. It is widely believed that many bog bodies were victims of ritual sacrifices, though others theorise that they were criminals. As it stands, we don’t know. The stories of these bodies remain largely buried, like the people themselves.
Is it because our understanding of Tollund Man is so limited that he has so captured the imagination of so many; from researchers to poets? Perhaps if we knew his story, we would be less intrigued, not care so much. Yet we are still somehow more concerned with assigning humanity to those who died thousands of years ago than recognising the humanity of those being killed today.
‘That’s the problem I have with all history’, a friend said when I was telling her about this article. ‘No one cares about people until they’re dead’. While a debatable statement, I think it can bring us back to why bog bodies are so interesting and important. We care about them not just because they are old, and dead, but because they offer a rare glimpse into a historical narrative that was never designed to be remembered.
Does it offer hope, then, that we remember this man, and not those that killed him? Perhaps. Maybe our fascination with bog bodies can bring hope in a world where history and humanity are being stripped from so many people—where the media and academia decide which stories to tell and which to bury.
But it is not hopeful, not really. The idea that maybe, in 2,400 years, someone will be interested in the stories and lives of those who are currently being killed by systems of colonialism, capitalism and white supremacy is not deeply comforting. Not when we need to fight for the living, right now. But remembrance, and particularly, the commemoration of those not ‘supposed’ to be remembered, reminds us of the absolute humanity of every person who has ever shared our planet. (Except Peter Thiel).
Like the Tollund Man, we will all have a last meal, we all smile, and we all die. What happens after that is not in our power. It is the responsibility of those who can to remember the dead and fight for the living.
Down with the cryogenically frozen tech bro brains. Up with the bog bodies.
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