This classic book about the remains of iron-age people preserved in peat-bogs throws fascinating light on ancient ways of life, religion and rituals. During the last two centuries, workers in bogs throughout Europe have often accidentally exposed sunken human bodies that looked to them like incarnate devils. Actually, they were being confronted with their own ancestors of two thousand and more years ago. The bog waters have kept the bodies from decay, sometimes even preserving the facial expression at the moment of death. Most of these bog people bear signs of violent ends. Are they murder victims, sacrificial victims, or executed criminals? Acting as a consultant after the discovery of one such body, Professor Glob noted that the anguished face seemed peaceful when viewed apart from the means of death: the rope still tight around the neck. Later he perceived a connection between these bodies and a fertility goddess often portrayed with neck chains. In The Bog People, Glob unravels the dark, forbidding background of their story.

One spring morning two men cutting peat in a Danish bog uncovered a well-preserved body of a man with a noose around his neck. Thinking they had stumbled upon a murder victim, they reported their discovery to the police, who were baffled until they consulted the famous archaeologist P.V. Glob. Glob identified the body as that of a two-thousand-year-old man, ritually murdered and thrown in the bog as a sacrifice to the goddess of fertility.

Written in the guise of a scientific detective story, this classic of archaeological history--a best-seller when it was published in England but out of print for many years--is a thoroughly engrossing and still reliable account of the religion, culture, and daily life of the European Iron Age.

Includes 76 black-and-white photographs.