The haunting stories of Britain’s ‘bog bodies’

Some believe that All Hallows’ Eve is adopted from a much older Celtic holiday, Samhain, that marked the change from harvest’s living richness to the darkness of winter. In its modern guise, Halloween still retains something of that pagan philosophy — a time when the borders between the living and the spirit world are supposed to be at their weakest. For our pre-Christian ancestors, this sense of the in-between was felt not only in the mulchy decay of autumn but also in the land around them.

Bogs were an in-between space for Iron Age Europeans. They thought that these muted open wetlands, with their sodden pools of still black water, exposed an opening to some other realm. Across Scandinavia, Germany, Britain and Ireland, the remains of hundreds of human sacrifices have been found in boglands. Peat cutters in isolated fens have discovered, often to their horror, the preserved faces of their early forebears.