Mrs. von Elling
In the wife of Elling ( Danish : Ellingkvinden ) is a female bog body . The woman was buried in a moor in Jutland near Silkeborg in what is now Denmark during the pre-Roman Iron Age .
Discovery
In the Bjaeldskovdal, a moorland 10 km west of Silkeborg, the farmer Jens Zakariassen found a human body while cutting peat in 1938 . As a bog corpse had already been found in the same area in 1927, Zakariassen immediately recognized what his find was and notified the responsible authorities.
Location: 56 ° 9 ′ 54 ″ N , 9 ° 23 ′ 35 ″ E
examination
The relatively well-preserved body was recovered from the block and examined in the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen . It was found that it was the corpse of a woman with a cloak of sheepskin was clothed. A piece of cowhide was wrapped around the legs, which might have been part of a second cloak. When the investigation was over, von Elling's wife was drawn, photographed and then stored in the National Museum.
It was not examined again until 1976 at the Silkeborg Museum . The dead body, which had meanwhile been mummified for lack of conservation , could still be autopsied. In the scientific investigation participated coroner , radiologists and dentists .
The dead
The examination revealed that von Elling's wife was around 30 years old and healthy at the time of her death. There were also no pathological changes that would indicate previous illnesses. The cause of death was very likely to be hanging or strangling : There were clear strangulation marks on the neck that exactly match the leather loop that was found. Thus, the wife of Elling, like the Tollund man who was found only 90 m away in 1950 and who was also strangled, was sacrificed and sunk in the moor.
A C-14 dating could put the dead in the moor at 210 BC. Chr. (± 70 years) can be narrowed down.
hairstyle
The dead woman had about 90 cm long hair, which she wore in a complicated braided hairstyle . The hair, with the exception of the hair on the back of the neck, was combed up on the head and braided into a three-strand braid . The rest of the hair was also added at the level of the neck. The hair was divided into seven strands, which were twisted in order to be braided again (2, 2, and 3) into a three-strand braid. This braid was then wrapped around the braided braid twice above the nape of the neck, the rest hanging loosely down the left side.
dress
The shoulder cloak that the woman wore was made of fine, close-cropped sheepskin. The cloak reached over the hips, was tied at the neck with a thin leather cord and was neatly sewn together with fine thread from several square pieces of fur. Around the front edge and the neck, the leather had been reinforced with a narrow strip of leather. There are several surviving comparative finds for this cloak, such as those of the boy from Kayhausen , the girl from Dröbnitz , the wife from Haraldskær or the man from Jürdenerfeld . In addition, Frau von Elling wore a belt about 4–5 cm wide and 67 cm long, woven from sheep's wool.
Due to the special conservation conditions for organic material in the peatland , no remains of clothing made of plant material have been preserved - but it cannot be ruled out that originally z. B. a blouse and a skirt made of linen belonged to the clothes of the woman. Such a combination of skirt, blouse and fur cape is from some simultaneous finds, e.g. B. in the wife of Huldremose known. This could also explain the existing belt.
literature
- Christian Fischer: The Tollund man and the Elling woman . Silkeborg Museum, Silkeborg (ca.1980).
- Wijnand van der Sanden : Mummies from the moor. The prehistoric and protohistoric bog bodies from northwestern Europe . Batavian Lion International, Amsterdam 1996, ISBN 90-6707-416-0 (Dutch, original title: Vereeuwigd in het veen . Translated by Henning Stilke).
- Christian Fischer: Tollundmanden: gaven til guderne: mosefund fra Danmarks forhistorie . Ed .: Silkeborg Museum. Hovedland, Århus 2007, ISBN 978-87-7739-966-4 (Danish).
Web links
- Christian Fischer: Elling Woman. In: The Tollund Man. Silkeborg Museum, accessed November 30, 2011 (English, with photo of the woman).
- Tollund Man and Elling Woman. Museum Silkeborg, accessed on March 5, 2016 (information about the find).
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mrs. von Elling |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ellingkvinden (Danish) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Bog corpse |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 3rd century BC BC or 2nd century BC Chr. |
| DATE OF DEATH | between 280 BC BC and 140 BC Chr. |
| Place of death | near Silkeborg , Denmark |