Archaeologists are currently investigating the gruesome discovery of a sacrificed Iron Age army in a now dried-up wetland in East Jutland. New finds show that some of the men were laid to rest as skeletons and others intact. This post-war ritual points in the direction of Celtic sacrificial traditions

Josephine Schnohr

An entire Iron Age army has been laid to rest in the Alken Enge bog.  Here you can see one of the skulls the archaeologists have to work with.  –

An entire Iron Age army has been laid to rest in the Alken Enge bog. Here you can see one of the skulls the archaeologists have to work with. 

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Danish bogs and wetlands hide unique treasures thanks to their unique conservation conditions. At Alken Enge in Illerup Ådal near Skanderborg in East Jutland, a sensational but also brutal discovery was made: a sacrificed army consisting of approx. 240 young men aged 13-45. A find without parallel in Europe.

The first excavations took place in the late 1950s. But now archaeologists from Skanderborg Museum and Aarhus University have resumed the investigations to fully uncover and understand this unusual find. Already after the first digging season, new knowledge emerges, and at the archaeological annual meeting in Kolding in mid-November, the first startling results were presented.

Archaeologist Ejvind Hertz from Skanderborg Museum has acted as excavation manager both on two preliminary investigations and the excavation this summer.

The discovery and uncovering of an entire Iron Age army is something almost unbelievable. It is the first of its kind, and the many bone finds give us huge basic material that will bring a lot of new knowledge with it. Both about the sacrificed soldiers, the army and its structure and about Iron Age man in general, says Ejvind Hertz.

Alken Enge around the time of Christ's birth

The archaeologists assume that a great battle took place on an as yet undiscovered battlefield somewhere in the vicinity of Alken Enge around the time of Christ's birth. Two armies clashed, and the local army led by one or more East Jutland chieftains emerged victorious from the battle. The outside warriors ended up being sacrificed at Alken Enge. But surprising bone finds this summer showed that not all warriors received the same treatment.

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The bones found during the excavations in the 1950s and our preliminary investigations in 2008 and 2009 had the same dark brown colour. The color and position of the bones suggest that they had been skeletonized and then sacrificed. But during our excavation here in 2012, we came across some skeletal remains with a completely different color. They were lighter, which may mean that they originate from an individual that was sacrificed in a whole state, explains Ejvind Hertz.

The archaeologists have thus demonstrated both skeletonization and whole individuals at the sacrifice of the army at Alken Enge. It has brought to mind Roman sources describing the treatment of a defeated army. In many cases, the army commanders were initially spared and taken alive. At Alken Enge they still had to give up their lives and become part of the great sacrifice, but the army commanders were allowed to be killed whole rather than being skeletonized like the other warriors.