Seamus Heaney as an Archeologist

Archeology in Seamus Heaney’s “The Tollund Man”, “Punishment”, and “Digging”

Seamus Heaney is among Ireland’s most recognized and respected poets. Consequently, he won the Noble Prize for Literature in 1995. Heaney alludes to Irish politics in many of his poems but he does not make many active political statements. According to Michael Parker, author of Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet, Heaney instead is able to “insinuate through his descriptions of the land, the use of mythology and history, and the all-pervading religious atmosphere the images of prejudice, violence, and intolerance” (Parker). Heaney uses archeological symbols to show the “prejudice, violence and intolerance” of the Irish government in many of his poems. Three poems in which Heaney does this are: “The Tollund Man”, “Punishment” and “Digging”. Heaney’s inspiration for both “The Tollund Man” and “Punishment” came from a book he read in 1969 called The Bog People. As, Paul Williams of The Authors Den tells us, It was written by G.V. Glob, “an archeologist who had unearthed the preserved remains of several ritually slaughtered Iron Age Europeans” (Williams). In “Digging”, Heaney’s most anthologized poem, Heaney uses his pen to show us the internal struggle to choose between the war, and farming.

The first of these three poems to be published was “The Tollund Man” in 1972. “The Tollund Man” was written about four brothers whose near-perfect corpses were found by a turf-cutter as seen in these lines from Heaney, “Those dark juices working/Him to a saint's kept body, /Trove of the turfcutters'” (Heaney). The four brothers to have been ambushed for no apparent reason other than for sacrifice to a fertility goddess. Heaney compared this type of killing and sacrifice to the violent actions that had been going on in Northern Ireland. A great deal of violence was going on between the Protestant and Catholic citizens of Northern Ireland and Heaney used the case of The Tollund Man to allude to the conflict.

The poem begins with Heaney’s proclamation to one day go to Aarhus “To see his peat-brown head,/The mild pods of his eye-lids,/His pointed skin cap” (Heaney, l.1-3). Although the four brothers found in the peat bog were in very good condition, due to the preserving nature of the bog, for some reason archeologists only kept one head. The head belongs to The Tollund Man. Heaney then goes on to describe the highly sexual manner in which The Tollund Man was found, “Naked except for /The cap, noose and girdle” (Heaney, l.8-10). The men were sacrificed to their goddess of fertility in this manner. This act shows the injustice and violence of the people who murdered these four men.

Aside from just the Tollund Man himself, Heaney alludes to the conflict that occurred in Northern Ireland. Just like the four brothers died at the hands of someone else’s religion and beliefs, countless of Northern Ireland citizen were dying for and because of their beliefs. Heaney refers to the four brothers as martyrs. The way in which their bodies are preserved in the peat bog are reminiscent of the way saint’s bodies were preserved in Catholic churches around Ireland. As Parker notes, “these stark images obliquely create a political and religious impact that is strongly representative of Heaney's works” (Parker).

In Heaney’s poem “Punishment” was published in 1975. The poem is written about a girl who was found in a bog in Northern Germany. Some time during the decaying process, she became part of a tree that surrounded the bog. She had literally become part of the tree. Heaney compares this anonymous girl to the Irish women who fraternized with the British, the enemy. In Ireland at the time, women were being humiliated and punished for associating with British soldiers. Often times the women were assumed to have been adulterers. Heaney clearly lets the reader know that the bog person is being compared at the by saying, “I who have stood dumb/When your betraying sisters,/cauled in tar,/wept by the railings” (Heaney, l.37-40).

In the beginning of the poem, Heaney uses a distanced third person voice as he explains the appearance of the young bog person. He detaches himself from her emotionally as well by describing her naked body in a very sexual demeanor, “I can feel the tug/of the halter at the nape/of her neck, the wind/on her naked front./It blows her nipples/to amber beads/it shakes the frail rigging/of her ribs” (Heany, l.1-8). The tone of the poem shifts however once Heaney begins to move away from the bog person and starts to talk more directly to the women who were being punished