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I don't find the thesis convincing. Bogs sound like a "gateway to the spiritual world" in the same way the Hudson River is for American gangsters - a great pla

by gozur88 10y ago

I don't find the thesis convincing. Bogs sound like a "gateway to the spiritual world" in the same way the Hudson River is for American gangsters - a great place to stash a body you don't want found. Particularly the guy whose throat was slit.

Fjolsvith 10y ago
Its the threefold death for someone given to Odhin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threefold_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threefold_death
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I would disagree with this analysis. Since the bog is so successful at preserving the remains it would be a horrible place for "gangsters" or anyone murdering someone else, to dump a body. A body which years later would still be recognizable as the victim. The notion of it being a "cheap" way to bury people which was unlikely pass disease along to the village and would be nominally odorless is more compelling to me. You need look no further than a modern equivalent in New York (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/15/nyregion/new-york-mass-graves-hart-island.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/15/nyregion/new-y...). So I am more likely to believe that it contains people who the elders dispatched or perhaps died in a crime without any family to claim.
- gozur88 10y ago
  >I would disagree with this analysis. Since the bog is so successful at preserving the remains it would be a horrible place for "gangsters" or anyone murdering someone else, to dump a body. A body which years later would still be recognizable as the victim. Except nobody would find it unless you put it near somewhere inhabited. Surely the fact they were there for thousands of years is a testament to that.
  - eric_h 10y ago
    I don't think the two hypotheses are mutually exclusive. A place well suited to a ritual burial (for the reasons of not attracting carion feeders or otherwise not poisoning resources normally used) would also be well suited to burying victims that people would want to hide. To me, a bog seems like a place that would leave little trace on the surface relatively shortly after a burial. It would, as a result, serve just as well as a means of symbolically "sending someone to another realm" as it would concealing a murder.
  - lawpoop 10y ago
    What if the few people mucking about the peat bog ran into it, said "Oh gross that's a dead guy", and went the other way, for thousands of years?

by gozur88 10y ago

Fjolsvith 10y ago

Its the threefold death for someone given to Odhin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threefold_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threefold_death

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I would disagree with this analysis. Since the bog is so successful at preserving the remains it would be a horrible place for "gangsters" or anyone murdering someone else, to dump a body. A body which years later would still be recognizable as the victim. The notion of it being a "cheap" way to bury people which was unlikely pass disease along to the village and would be nominally odorless is more compelling to me. You need look no further than a modern equivalent in New York (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/15/nyregion/new-york-mass-graves-hart-island.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/15/nyregion/new-y...). So I am more likely to believe that it contains people who the elders dispatched or perhaps died in a crime without any family to claim.

gozur88 10y ago
>I would disagree with this analysis. Since the bog is so successful at preserving the remains it would be a horrible place for "gangsters" or anyone murdering someone else, to dump a body. A body which years later would still be recognizable as the victim. Except nobody would find it unless you put it near somewhere inhabited. Surely the fact they were there for thousands of years is a testament to that.
- eric_h 10y ago
  I don't think the two hypotheses are mutually exclusive. A place well suited to a ritual burial (for the reasons of not attracting carion feeders or otherwise not poisoning resources normally used) would also be well suited to burying victims that people would want to hide. To me, a bog seems like a place that would leave little trace on the surface relatively shortly after a burial. It would, as a result, serve just as well as a means of symbolically "sending someone to another realm" as it would concealing a murder.
- lawpoop 10y ago
  What if the few people mucking about the peat bog ran into it, said "Oh gross that's a dead guy", and went the other way, for thousands of years?