The Tollund Man

The Tollund Man

The Tollund Man is one of Europe's best-known bog bodies. He was

found, alongside The Grauballe Man in the early 1950s. Bog bodies

recovered from the past are quite wide spread throughout Northern

Europe, especially in Denmark, Germany and Ireland. The peat perfectly

preserves the bodies due to anaerobic conditions, although the bodies

are found blackened, their fingertips, hair and clothing are all still

intact. Seamus Heaney uses the bog bodies in his poetry to "uncover,

in their meditations, a history of Ireland's conquest, first by

Viking's and later by the English".

'Tollund Man' opens quietly and effectively like Glob's initial

description, "an evocative and poetic prose", and it is mirrored by

the structure of quatrains which is divided into three sections. The

first verse is mostly monosyllabic, 'some day I will…to see his peat…'

making the words sound hard, which sets the scene as it is a serious

subject. There is also no repetition of vowels or consonants which

shows a lack in fluency. The repetition of p in the words 'peat' and

'pods' makes the verse sound very pronounced. Moreover, the smallness

of his head is defined by the short i's and alliterated p's of the

monosyllabic words in the first verse. "The balance of the initial and

final p's in the fourth line seals the verse around the repose of the

dead man". The description of the Tollund Man, 'peat-brown head' and

'pods of his eye-lids' relates back to the land and nature and the

natural 'farmyards' in Northern Ireland. Heaney compares Tollund Man

to a vegetable which is a very descriptive and sensory image. The next

verse, 'last gruel of wint...

... middle of paper ...

...and the

future. Heaney's work is rooted in Northern Irish rural life.

Reflections on his childhood have given way to darker commentaries on

the social and political problems in Northern Ireland.

Bibliography

* Article on The Living Dead by Michael Pitts

*

http://www.bbc.co.uk.bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/heaneys1.shtml

*

http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/h/Heaney,Seamus/xtra1.htm

* www.termpapers-termpapers.com/dbs/b4lems119.shtml

*

http://lorenwebster.net/In_a_Dark_Time/archive/cat_Seamus_heaney.html

* Selected Poems-Seamus Heaney book by Longman literature guides

* Seamus Heaney Selected Poems book by York Notes

* Seamus Heaney by Andrew Murphy-writers and their work

* A student's guide to Seamus Heaney by Neil Corcoran.