Preserved in Death - 400BC (777 hits)
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Submitted by Axolotl (View user info) at 2008-02-11 08:05:19 EST
He woke up in a bleary daze, shaken gently by some shadowy indistinct figure hovering above his soft bed. It was already light out, and beams of light came in through the windows and door. A voice called to him, and he sat up in his bed.
"Gava," said the voice. "Wake up. Thy time is come."
Gava let his feet dangle over the edge of the bed, and he closed his eyes tight. The guard had a naked knife in his hand. At first he felt hunger. It had been twelve hours since he had barley and porridge in his house with his wife and children, before the warriors had entered his house and taken him away for judgment. The memories came flooding back in a bitter wave of sorrow, and Gava stood up and opened his eyes.
He grabbed his garment and pulled it up his legs to clothe his nakedness, and ran his hands through his closely-cropped hair, and over his stubbled chin. He wouldn't have time to shave, not before his presentation to the Chieftain.
"Must I go now?" Gava asked, feeling awkward and naked without a weapon, and without shoes.
"Yes. Come with me," the guard pronounced, opening the door for him. Gava stepped out into the early-morning sunlight.
It was quiet outside. Across the verdant pastures and plains of nature birds sang and deer moved silently in the forests. The village of small houses with thatched roofs and mud walls was tiny, only a hundred and fifty people, and barely forty men out of that. Gava paused to reflect on the grey skies out of which the shadowed sun gave bleak cold light onto his land, before the guard drew a rope around his hands, pulling tight. "Walk with me to the Chieftain," the guard said.
Gava was now able to get a good look at his guard. He was young, in his teens, and at 5'3, just a little shorter than Gava. His red hair was cropped and spiked from the gel the guard had run through it. His chest was bare and smooth, and held no scars, due to his youth.
Gava was a much different picture. His grey eyes had seen the leaves change thirty and seven times, and his bare chest held the marks of battle. His stomach wasn't flat anymore, but his biceps still bulged like boulders, and his nose was broken from a life of violence. He walked across the flat path leading from the house toward the center of the village where the Chieftain lived.
At this moment, Ilsibet and the children would be feeding the cows and horses. Ogi, his eldest, would have to take care of most of the work now; a hard burden, especially to afford an acceptable bride-price. Gava thought of all the people who would come to the village today to watch him die for his crimes, and prayed to the Sky-gods that his son would not look on him in disappointment.
Those who offended the Sky-gods by acts of ignorance, cowardice, or falsehood, were destined to die in the air, their feet off the ground, and their necks bound with tight rope. The Water-gods punished coldness, treason and inhospitality by decreeing the offender must be held down in the water under a mat of branches until cold and murky water flowed in his lungs. Those who displeased the Fire-gods with fiery crimes of rape, adultery, and evil language had to be burned alive. Because man was soil and to the soil he must return, the Earth-gods punished violence and murder with living burial.
It was the Sky-gods that Gava had offended. In the war-time, every man with hair in his privy place had to take up iron for the village. Gava's community and three local villages—Hel, Arah, and Norod—had been threatened by a group of yellow-haired barbarians from across the northern sea, who set foot on the shore in long boats to rape and steal. Gava remembered the same men attacking from his youth; naked human pyramids outside burning houses, children slain before their parents, and perversity and blood everywhere. So the four villages had banded together, in full two hundred men, led by the Chieftain. With knife, sword and spear they had came across the barbarians in the morning of yesterday, and they slew many in the bright sun. Gava sailed into the enemy and did not fear death; he was brave and his spear was long. Clearly he remembered how they had driven the barbarians, but he had done an evil thing.
As the battle raged all around, and many young and old men escaped the cursed bonds of life to enter the shadow-world, Gava found himself fighting a barbarian with long yellow hair and a young face. Despite the barbarian's dagger and wooden shield, Gava had run him through with his spear, and as the barbarian lay dying, Gava had slit his throat with the dagger. As Gava looked up, he abandoned his weapon and attempted to pull the spear from his defeated foe; at that moment a host of evil men of the North charged him, and Gava fled. He ran away from the battle, and realizing what he had done, he returned home in shame.
Upon his return home from the battle, he spoke with his wife Ilsabet, who immediately began to cry, for she knew that by evading death, he had committed an act of cowardice. The warriors, drunk in victory, came that night to capture Gava.
No more would Gava love-make with his wife, or run through the woods with his children and dog, hunting wild beasts. Gone were the days of youth, and the days of life and love. Only the shadow-world awaited him. Gava already had forgotten his fantasy about being an old man, and sitting around the fireplace on freezing winter nights passing on the stories and legends of his forefathers. The tedium and monotony of his life had departed; all now was black. His future, which had stretched before him in a seemingly endless blur of grey memory would be stopped in hours.
The birth of a child was mourned in the village, and death was celebrated. It was the way Gava had been brought up, but a lump was still in his throat. Gava feared no man, or so he would like to believe, but he was anxious about death as he sat before the Chieftain.
The Chieftain was only a few years older than Gava. Surrounding him were the victorious warriors, numbering twenty-nine—seven had died in battle, and three were injured. At least two hundred from his village and the neighboring villages had also arrived, abandoning their work for the day to witness this death. The morning was growing later.
"Gava, son of Wimma," said the Chieftain. "You have been found a deserter and a coward by the witness of your brother-men. Verily, your crime hath been one of great offense to the most reverent and most puissant Gods-who-dwell-in-the-sky, and by their will you must hang from your neck until dead, and let not your feet toucheth the ground until your spirit be given up to the Gods."
Gava was tired, down to the deep core of his soul, where he kept his secrets and that of his family. The ritual called to him, and he said, "Verily the pronouncement of my brother-men is a true one and must be carried out in the will of the Gods."
A murmur of assent came from the crowd. Gava scanned the faces; Ilsibet wept, but most people looked either grim or nonchalant. Death was common in the villages. However, no face showed hatred, or loathing for Gava's plight. The Chieftain sighed and said, "Methinketh it not so long before you are in the shadow-world. Once therein, may it be longtime before you are once more cast back here to Earth."
"May the Gods will it," Gava said. "Take me now, and let me steel myself before cowardice one more seizeth me."
The warriors came down upon him, and removed the rope from his hands, allowing him to walk like a man toward the tree by the main hall of the village nearby. A moan of despair came from his wife, quickly hushed by Ogi. Gava walked as if his legs were trees rooted in the ground, and the procession finally reached the tree. People were standing up, and even on the roofs of houses to watch.
The Chieftain stood before Gava, as the warriors wrapped the rope around his neck. "You are a good warrior, and have shown us valor in the past. I shall see you in the shadow-world, friend; there may we slay foes and deflower virgins together bravely."
"No greater honor could I wish for," Gava said, his heart pounding. "Slay me fast, that I may get there speedy. First, allow me to speak with my wife."
The Chieftain stepped back and Ilsibet rushed forward and nuzzled her cheek into Gava's chest. "Wilt thou wait for me in the afterlife?" Ilsibet said.
"If thou livest a hundred more years, I will wait," Gava said. "Live well when I am gone, and let Ogi follow a braver path than I. Tell him, feareth not death, as death merely begins a new life in the shadow-world. Let him be brave, love."
"O Gods-who-dwell-in-the-sky," the Chieftain intoned. "As sacrifice to your noble and mighty power we, lowly and earthly, slay this man Gava, son of Wimma, as recompense for the imbalance he hath caused. Sky-gods, take this man, and let him die in your arms."
A band of warriors pulled the rope, and lifted Gava inches off the ground. He kicked wildly in the gulf, trying to touch the soil, but he couldn't do it. Blood was trapped in his face, in his head, making his eyes bulge, and his tongue swell. He choked and gasped, straining his fingernails on the rope.
"Sky-gods," the Chieftain cried. "Take Gava, son of Wimma, and receive his life as payment."
Gava strained, and collapsed on the rope, his face hot with head-rush. The rope was tight around his neck, and his lungs halted their fiery spasms. Life exited his body, and he went limp. To those around him, it was cause to celebrate his entrance into the shadow-world, as ignoble his final few days were. They took him down and cracked his neckbone, and bore his body away to the bogs. The villages watched as Gava was interred beneath a cover of branches and sticks. His body disappeared in the mud, his bloodshot, splotchy face swallowed by the cooling, redeeming water.
He died four hundred years before Christ was born. At the time of his death, the Peloponnesian War was just ending. Rome was conquering Veii, its first expansion. Sophocles was penning his final play, Oedipus at Colonus. Socrates was being executed. Aristotle would soon be born.
For almost two-and-a-half thousand years Gava lay in the bog, the earth preserving him entirely intact. Though the water shrank his skin and tinted his hair and face, he was very little changed from the day he died. His heart, lungs, liver were all well-preserved by the natural mummification process. On a cool day in Denmark, in 1951, two men dug up his body in the bog. He was so well-preserved they called the police to report that a murder victim had been buried recently in the bog. It was only after the police were baffled by the body that they discovered that Gava had died millennia ago.
User Reviews
Submitted by William_Q_Percy (user info) at 2008-02-15 16:11:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Cool.
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2008-02-12 18:10:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I never knew there were black people in Denmark.
Submitted by HellRazer (user info) at 2008-02-12 13:55:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
We come from the land of ice and snow
with the midnight sun where the harsh winds blow
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-02-12 12:42:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by woolfe (user info) at 2008-02-12 05:02:22 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2008-02-11 22:55:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Is this about the bowel movements of 15th century monks?
Submitted by Falafel (user info) at 2008-02-11 21:11:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by jimboruckus (user info) at 2008-02-11 17:28:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by beat_raven (user info) at 2008-02-11 16:13:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by rorrim (user info) at 2008-02-11 13:39:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
awesome
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-02-11 13:23:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2008-02-11 11:35:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Another educational/entertaining gem. Keep it up.
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2008-02-11 11:34:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I didn't read this. I bet it's rubbish.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2008-02-11 10:22:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Ltap (user info) at 2008-02-11 10:21:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Does everything Axolotl write pwn?
Submitted by locksly (user info) at 2008-02-11 10:15:22 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Tollund in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings.
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Submitted by JMG114 (user info) at 2008-02-11 10:14:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No comment.
Submitted by skrapmetal (user info) at 2008-02-11 09:04:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Har Har Peater.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2008-02-11 08:32:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollund Man
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2008-02-11 08:15:08 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
It's a fixer-upper. What's the problem? We get a bunch of priests in
here ...
-- Homer Simpson
Treehouse of Horror
Submitted by orphelia (user info) at 2008-02-11 08:12:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I love the Tollund man and other such peat people. Seamus Heaney wrote some excellent poems about this. Lovely idea.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2008-02-11 08:09:42 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2008-02-11 08:06:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
BEST 370TH POST EVAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!