The Tollund Man

‘I did ‘The Tollund Man’ in Ballydavid in Kerry at Easter in 1970. Marie and I had gone there for holidays regularly …’ (DOD124); I Heaney makes the pledge he will fulfil in 1973 a year after Wintering Out is published: Some day I will go to Aarhus. His pilgrimage will aim to bring him face to face with Tollund Man his body recalled now (from photographs taken by PV Glob): his stained peat-brown head; the gentle swellings (mild pods) of his eye-lid; the leathery crown (His pointed skin cap). The body had been miraculously preserved by the Jutland peat bog (the flat country nearby/ Where they dug him out), leaving, too, remains of the thin food he consumed prior […]