The Bog People of Denmark: Vittrup Man
“He was true to the name we gave him, Stígandr,” said the old woman, barely more than a few wisps of color and light in the holographic assimilation unit.
“A wanderer.”
I’d been studying bog people in Denmark through my entire PhD. Archaeologists believed that Vittrup man — like Grauballe man, Tollund man, and Elling Woman — died by ritual sacrifice. But unlike the others, Vittrup man — sorry, Stígandr — was bludgeoned in the head eight times by a wooden club found nearby. When he was discovered two feet under the peat in 1915, scientists didn’t yet know that the broken bones in most of these cold case victims were caused by the weight of the peat.
Even in 2024, when archaeologists analyzed his dental plaque and determined he “ate fish and other coastal creatures before switching to a farmer’s diet of sheep or goat sometime in his teen years,” they didn’t know why (but that didn’t stop them from branding him as the hunter-gatherer-to-farmer poster-child).
Hell, they didn’t even know his name.
Now, even though the over-saturation of content consumption throughout the last century meant the information would be of utterly no importance to anybody, the latest technology in holographic resurrection meant I could answer my unresolved questions about the mysterious Vittrup man. Since the technology didn’t allow for the resuscitation of decapitated bodies, the next genetic match assimilated wisps of his mother to the laboratory, who offered to tell me about his life. As much as a parent can know anyway.
Finally, finally, finally, I would know why he left his coastal town, why he didn’t allow himself to be sacrificed without a fight, why, why why… I braced myself for the truth.
“What happened?” I asked.
The wisps became wistful.
“His love for cured fish, his love of the salt air, his love for even the gods…” she trailed off.
“They were no match for his love of Astrid.”
Astrid. No doubt a farmer’s daughter that captured his affection and pivoted his worship. I wonder if she was proud of him for his sacrifice, or broken for life. I wonder if Stigandr’s death brought the rain they all needed to survive that year. I wonder if she moved on.
The wisps disappeared.
I thought throwing myself into work would take my mind off my recent breakup. There are no farms here anymore, yet love is still grown and heartbreak persists. There will be no catharsis for me.
