Displaying the Dead

The British Museum is an incredible institution and there is no doubt about that. The depth and breadth of the collection is truly astounding, and despite visit after visit I will always find something new to delight and educate me. However, my most recent trip there left me with an uneasy feeling about the way that bodies are displayed and how the visitors interact with such displays.

There were two distinct cases which caused my uneasiness. The first was the neglected and hidden display of Lindow Man, one of the only bog bodies on display in the British Museum.

Lindow Man, displayed at the British Museum

Hidden in a corner you would barely notice his presence, even on a second glance. Nor was there any lead up to the display, a discussion or even a warning of what you were about it see. Bog bodies are preserved in a way which is far more visceral than viewing a skeleton. Irish bog bodies are often so well preserved that the hands are perfectly intact and the distinct Celtic red hair is swept up in an Elvis-like coiff [see Clonycavan Man at the National Museum of Ireland]. 

The Hand of Old Croghan Man, National Museum of Ireland

They are a direct and tangible link to out ancient ancestors, and as such demand our respect. The Lindow Man has little information to put it in context, and so those who did take notice of him simply took pictures and barely took a moment to contemplate the life lost before them.

Gebelein Man was a totally different experience. As I walked into the room I was confronted with a tour group being paraded around him, while cameras and iPhones snapped away. No information was provided to the tour, resulting in a nasty voyeuristic taste in my mouth. The tour group disappeared into the text, allowing me more space to consider the physical display of Gebelein Man, who appears unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the room, again with no preparation for the visitors as to what they are about to see. However, there is at least more information provided for Gebelein Man, especially through a clever interactive autopsy display. Yet, there was still the feeling that there was a lack of sensitivity in the display.

Gebelein Man, British Museum

Perhaps this is down to the fact that I grew up in Dublin, and would frequently drop into the National Museum of Ireland when I had spare time. And when people ask me what they should do in Dublin, the bog bodies at the NMI is usually top of my list. The display treats the bog bodies with respect, while also allowing the visitor time to prepare to see these bodies. They achieve this through a "pod "system, whereby the bog bodies are not simply laid out in a room for all to see. Each individual pod has information about each bog body before entering, allowing the viewer to read about the life of Old Croghan Man, for example. Upon entry to the "pod" you are confronted with the bog body, with no information to distract the viewer from the individual before them. It is deeply respectful, far less voyeuristic, and even reverent at times.

Example of the "pod" display for Clonycavan Man

There are no words that I can give to adequately end a post about bog bodies, when Seamus Heaney has so eloquently written about them. Reading his poem The Tollund Man as a schoolchild, I never fully appreciated the meaning of his words. Now I do.

I                                                         II                                                    III

Some day I will go to Aarhus           I could risk blasphemy,                 Something of his sad freedom

To see his peat-brown head,             Consecrate the cauldron bog         As he rode the tumbril

The mild pods of his eye-lids,          Our holy ground and pray             Should come to me, driving,

His pointed skin cap.                        Him to make germinate                 Saying the names

In the flat country near by                The scattered, ambushed               Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,

Where they dug him out,                  Flesh of labourers,                         Watching the pointing hands

His last gruel of winter seeds           Stockinged corpses                        Of country people,

Caked in his stomach,                      Laid out in the farmyards,              Not knowing their tongue.

Naked except for                             Tell-tale skin and teeth                   Out here in Jutland

The cap, noose and girdle,               Flecking the sleepers                     In the old man-killing parishes

I will stand a long time.                   Of four young brothers, trailed      I will feel lost,

Bridegroom to the goddess,             For miles along the lines.              Unhappy and at home.

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.

The Tollund Man