Literature12 Seamus Heaney: The Tollund Man

I

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,

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.

II

I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,

Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.

III

Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.

This poem is one of Seamus Heaney’s best-known works. The title references the name given to the body of a prehistoric man found in Denmark. The man supposedly died as part of a sacrifice. It is this sacrifice that Heaney relates to Ireland, specifically Northern Ireland. He begins the poem by wanting to visit the body and shows his interest in it by giving vivid descriptions of what it looks like. It symbolizes sacrifice, fate, and something dark in the minds of humankind. But, there is something hopeful in death as well. He was a devout man, dying in order to help those around him. It is at this point that Heaney relates the poem back to Ireland and the deaths of his people. They too died in order to protect the futures of those they loved.