Bog bodies: mysteries of the Iron Age
Some believe All Hallows’ Eve (October 31) is adopted from a much older Celtic holiday, Samhain, that marked the change from harvest’s 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 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.
