The Tollund Man

## The Poem

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.
In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,
Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,
She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,
Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.
I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate
The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,
Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.
III
Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names
Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.
Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.

## Context

Tollund Man
is a naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 4th century BC,
during the period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He
was found in 1950 on the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, buried in a peat bog
which preserved his body. Such a find is known as a bog body. The man's
physical features were so well-preserved that he was mistaken at the time of
discovery for a recent murder victim.

The
body is displayed at the Silkeborg
Museum in Denmark, although only the head is original. Because conservation
techniques for organic material were insufficiently advanced in the early 1950s
for the entire body to be preserved, the forensic examiners suggested the head
be severed and the rest of the body remain unpreserved. Subsequently the body
desiccated and the tissue disappeared. In 1976, the Danish Police Force made a
finger-print analysis, making Tollund
Man's thumb print one of the oldest finger-prints on record.

## Action

The poem
is divided into eleven stanzas, and three parts. The first part has five
stanzas, and the second and third three. The first part of the poem is a
description of what Heaney will see when he views the body. The second part is
the relationship between the religious sacrifice and the dead Irish, and the
third Heaney in the country of Denmark.

The Heaney
wants to go to Demark to see the wizened remains of the bog-body at Aarhus. He
was executed with his last meal still in his stomach. He wants to worship him,
against all religious constraints. He wants to call upon his to raise the dead
Irish. He wants to derive a sort of power from the body, from the country, from
being alone.

## Form

**Structure**

The poem
is divided into eleven stanzas, and three parts. The first part has five
stanzas, and the second and third three.

**Speaker**

The poem
has a first person persona, an "I". The Tollund Man
is never named except in the title, it is only "he". Despite this,
the bog is personified as "she", the divine worship of the primitives
takes on the same identity as the people themselves. The poem is narrated in
the future tense - with a sense of a perhaps, a distant. Heaney never wanders
in his conviction that he will go, and he will do exactly this and that, but it
is not a trip he is contemplating with urgency. It is a "Some day"
poem.

**Rhyme**

There
is no obvious rhyme structure, but Heaney employs assonance and alliteration
throughout

**Tone**.

The
opening tone of the first part is "mild" - Heaney will passively
"see", and "stand for a long time", the meticulous
observer. The description of the primitive "goddess" to whom the man
was sacrificed makes the tone more ominous, more fateful. She
"tighten[s]", "work[s]", and only away form her can he
"repose". Heaney's tone is more emphatic in the second part, his
verbs and language becomes stronger. He "could risk", "consecrate",
"pray". His voice is doom-laden.

The tone
of the last stanza is mournful. "Freedom" is "sad", a man
who is "a home" must also be "lost,/Unhappy". He is
passive, accepting.

**Mood**.

The opening
of the poem is expectant, determined - "Some day I will", and
respectful, he intends to "stand for a long time" in the presence of
the dead, the "bridegroom to the goddess". There is a sense of
powerlessness on the part of the corpse, of larger forces drawing him along. He
is consumed by the "torc"
and "fen" of the "goddess". He is then left to chance, to
the "turfcutters'/Honeycombed
workings". He becomes anguished in the second part, calling upon words
such as "blasphemy" to describe his impotent longings obliterate the
wrongs of the past. In the third part the Heaney-persona feels quiet despair,
quiet strength, "sad freedom".

## Symbolism

The
first image is that of the corpse, who is quiet and impersonal, the poem's
victim of fate, caught in the "torc" of others. He is "mild",
and everything is done to him. He is "dug... out",
"worked", left as a "trove". He is exposed -
"naked", and finally he sleeps. He is described in a wizened state,
careful emphasis made on his brown skin, the workings of the fen. He is
destroyed and yet elevated at the same time.

There
is a bleak, harsh feeling associated with the surrounding country, the
"cauldron bog", the "tumbril". They are the "old
man-killing parishes", the larger for which the smaller is sacrificed. The
"goddess" is part of the country - it absorbs and strangles, alone or
destroyed at will. The only marks it leaves on its victims are the remains of
their death "cap, noose and girdle".

The
first victim of fate is extended to the others, "the scattered,
ambushed/Flesh of labourers", of victims "trailed/For miles along the
lines." Their fellow in the Tollund Man
should be somehow spiritually akin, his preservation making him their saint.
His paradoxical survival and "repose" should give him the power to
raise the others.

Heaney's
primary use of Denmark (and foreignness) as imagery is in the third part. The
isolation from society is emphasised by dwelling on the strange names "Tollund, Graubelle, Nebelgard,",
"not knowing their tongue". The "at home" is not supposed
to be comforting, it is just the persona's normal state. He is always
"lost,/Unhappy". But at the same time, the isolation from language
gives a "sad freedom", too highly priced.