The Mysteries of the Marshes: The Ancient Textile Secrets of Europe's Bog Bodies

If we need proof that textiles can rewrite human history, then it lies with the bog bodies of northern Europe. Textile archaeologists are revealing a whole new past about people who, in some cases, are older than Tutankhamen, but much less celebrated. Across northern Europe there are hundreds of bog bodies, who long ago were buried in marshlands and were preserved down the centuries by acidic conditions and lack of oxygen. We will never know all their secrets, but slowly we are discovering more about who they were, and how they lived. It is their textiles that bring us closer to them and tell us, not just about their skills, but also how they thought and designed cloth and clothing. In Denmark more than a hundred marsh bodies have been found - some in extraordinary states of preservation. They date from the late Bronze and early Iron Ages, and are between 1,500 and 3,000 years old. But what some of them are wearing can take us back much further than that, into a time when humans first started to cover their bodies with clothing. For this episode, Jo travelled to the National Museum of Denmark, in Copenhagen, to explore the textiles of two of the world's most famous bog bodies. For more information about this episode and pictures of the people and places mentioned in this episode please go to . And if you would like to find out about Friends of Haptic & Hue with an extra podcast every month hosted by Jo Andrews and Bill Taylor – here's the link:

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The Mysteries of the Marshes: The Ancient Textile Secrets of Europe's Bog Bodies is an episode from Haptic & Hue by Jo Andrews.

This episode is 38:59 long.

This episode was published on Sep 4, 2025.

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