* 1984 – Commercial peat-cutters discover the preserved bog body of a man, called Lindow Man, at Lindow Moss, Cheshire, northwest England

Lindow Man on display at the British Museum

Lindow Man is not the only bog body to have been found in the moss ; Lindow Woman was discovered the year before, and other body parts have also been recovered.

At the time of death, Lindow Man was a healthy male in his mid-20s, and he may have been someone of high status, as his body shows little evidence of heavy or rough work.

There has been debate over the reason for Lindow Man's death, for the nature of his demise was violent, perhaps ritualistic ; after a last meal of charred bread, Lindow Man was strangled, hit on the head, and his throat cut.

Dating the body has proven problematic, but it is thought that Lindow Man was deposited into Lindow Moss, face down, some time between 2 BC and 119 AD, in either the Iron Age or Romano-British period.

Investigations have not yet discovered settlement or agricultural activity around the edge of Lindow Moss that would have been contemporary with Lindow Man ; however, analysis of pollen in the peat suggests there was some cultivation in the vicinity.

Lindow Man is one of 27 bodies to be recovered from such areas.

The area of Lindow Moss where Lindow Man was discovered

Rick Turner, the Cheshire County Archaeologist, was notified of the discovery and succeeded in finding the rest of the body, which later became known as Lindow Man.

The owners of the land on which Lindow Man was found donated the body to the British Museum, and on 21 August it was transported to London.

documentary about Lindow Man broadcast by the BBC in 1985 attracted 10 million viewers.

Lindow Man's official name is Lindow II, as there are other finds from the area: Lindow I ( Lindow Woman ) refers to a human skull, Lindow III to a " fragmented headless body ", and Lindow IV to the upper thigh of an adult male, possibly that of Lindow Man.

Some mistletoe pollen was also found in the stomach, indicating that Lindow Man died in around March or April.

The rib fracture may also have occurred after death, perhaps during the discovery of the body, but is included in some narratives of Lindow Man's death.

Such reconstructions have also been made of the heads of Lindow Man ( British Museum, London, United Kingdom ), Grauballe Man, Girl of the Uchter Moor, Clonycavan Man, Roter Franz and Windeby I.

In Hervarar saga, the dísablót is also held in autumn, and is performed by a woman, the daughter of King Álfr of Álfheim, who " reddens the hörgr with sacrifices and is subsequently rescued by the god Thor after she has been abducted ; John Lindow suggests that the passage depicts a model of heathen behaviour.

Scholar John Lindow comments that whether the dökkálfar and the svartálfr were considered the same at the time of the writing of the Prose Edda is also unclear.

" Lindow Woman ", as it became known, dated from around 210 AD.

Lindow continues that " his use of Sleipnir in the kenning may show that Sleipnir's role in the failed recovery of Baldr was known at that time and place in Iceland ; it certainly indicates that Sleipnir was an active participant in the mythology of the last decades of paganism.

Regarding the information given about Sjöfn in Gylfaginning, John Lindow says that the word sjafni does indeed appear listed in the þulur as a word for " love ", yet that outside of this description no information about the goddess is known.

John Lindow says that it is unclear why the gods decide to raise Fenrir as opposed to his siblings Hel and Jörmungandr in Gylfaginning chapter 35, theorizing that it may be " because Odin had a connection with wolves?

John Lindow states that most details about Hel, as a figure, are not found outside of Snorri's writing in Gylfaginning, and says that when older skaldic poetry " says that people are ' in ' rather than ' with ' Hel, we are clearly dealing with a place rather than a person, and this is assumed to be the older conception ," that the noun and place Hel likely originally simply meant " grave ," and that " the personification came later.

Lindow Moss () is a peat bog in Mobberley, Cheshire, which has been used as common land since the medieval period.

Lindow Moss is a lowland raised mire ; this type of peat bog often produces the best preserved bog bodies, allowing more detailed analysis.

The close proximity of the discovery sites, coupled with the fact that the remains were shown to come from an adult male, means that Lindow IV is probably part of Lindow Man.

While some preserved human remains may contain DNA, peat bogs such as Lindow Moss are generally poor for such a purpose, and it is unlikely that DNA could be recovered from Lindow Man.

Dating Lindow Man is problematic as samples from the body and surrounding peat have produced dates spanning a 900-year period.

In some interpretations of Lindow Man's death, the sinew is a garrotte used to break Lindow Man's neck.

Although the bone was not as well preserved as that of Lindow Man, the other tissues survived in better condition.

Lindow Man's last meal was preserved in his stomach and intestines and was analysed in some detail.

It was feared that once Lindow Man was removed from the peat which had preserved him for nearly 2, 000 years, the body would start to decay.

They even preserve human bodies for millennia ; examples of these preserved specimens are Tollund Man, Haraldskær Woman, Clonycavan Man and Lindow Man.

The discovery of Lindow Man marked the first well-preserved bog body discovered in Britain ; its condition was comparable to that of Grauballe Man and Tollund Man from Denmark.

Before Lindow Man, it was estimated that 41 bog bodies had been found in England and Wales and 15 in Scotland.

Encouraged by the discovery of Lindow Man, a gazetteer was compiled and revealed a far higher number of bog bodies: over 85 in England and Wales and over 36 in Scotland.

Prior to the discovery of the bodies in Lindow Moss, British bog bodies had been a relatively neglected subject compared to European examples.

The study of bog bodies, including these found in Lindow Moss, have contributed to a wider understanding of well-preserved human remains, helping to develop new methods in analysis and investigation.

Archaeologists John Hodgson and Mark Brennand suggest that bog bodies may have been related to religious practice, although there is division in the academic community over this issue and in the case of Lindow Man, whether the killing was murder or ritualistic is still debated.

Some of the most notable examples of bog bodies include Tollund Man and Grauballe Man from Denmark and Lindow Man from England.

In about 1911, an adult male skull was found in the moss ; it was thought to belong to the Romano-British period – similar to the Lindow Man bog body – until radiocarbon dating revealed that it dated from 1, 320 – 970 BC.