Silkeborg

He has been called the perfect corpse by various scholars because his head is so remarkably well-preserved, even by the standards of bog bodies.

People from the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark, where the Tollund Man is on permanent display, have reported visitors being awestruck, others breaking down in tears, and rarely even fainting when looking into the face of this man who appears to have died peacefully just a few years ago.

But in reality, he's been dead for well over 2,000 years.

The Tollund Man is a completely unique glimpse into our ancient past, and today, we're gonna bring you his story.

[Instrumental music] It was a Monday morning on May the 8th, 1950, in the town of Silkeborg in Denmark, and the police received a distressing message about a potential murder victim that may have been killed and then dumped in a nearby peat bog at Stengade.

I can't possibly pronounce about 10 kilometers away.

This message came from two brothers who were professional peat cutters named Viggo and Emil Hovgaard.

On Monday, police arrived on the scene.

And still the owner of the company, Søren Hvidvid Larsen, who's actually quite sick at the moment, and I wish him every health.

He and I have been friends for years, and we actually opened up our new, what we call our localisation centre in Silkeborg in Denmark, the same town that we actually ran the companies in for Søren and his family at the time.

And Søren was the one that actually came and cut the ribbon to open up our first factory outside of Ireland.

And, you know, that's something I'm extremely proud

Anyone trying to understand how he got here has to account for that, as well as the face, because a recent death and an undisturbed depth of peat are beginning to tell very different stories.

[suspenseful music] That is an imagined version of a real discovery made near Silkeborg, Denmark, on May 6th, 1950.

We do have an account of Greta Hoygaard putting her fingers beneath the forehead and cap, and the family did initially suspect a recent murder.

By the time the police went out with museum staff, the burial circumstances had already raised the possibility that they were dealing with something archeological.

Getting access to the evidence begins another part of its history, one in which our own decisions become much harder to ignore.

[Instrumental music] Tollund Man's history after discovery includes a decision I find difficult to get out of my head.

Museum Silkeborg's account describes a request to conserve the whole body for exhibition, followed by an objection from the head of the National Museum's Prehistoric Department, who considered that display too macabre.

Preserving the head was offered instead, and after examination and autopsy, it was separated from the body for treatment.