Today while visiting some used book shops I was browsing and came across P.V. Glob's book The Bog People. I did a flip through the whole thing, and while I believe I'd heard of this practice having been identified in Scotland I had never heard of Tollund Man, and all the other mummies.
But one thing struck me while scanning the book and after having done some searching online - the primary work here is concerned with manner of death and general historical knowledge gained from having a preserved human body from that age (Suebian knots in perfectly preserved hair, etc). While interesting and chilling, I am surprised that I have found no inquiries into the religious practices associated with the supposed sacrifices.
There must be very little to go on, but surely someone has to have been curious - why are there bog bodies? It seems to be neatly summed up by saying "Ah, it was probably a sacrifice to Mother Earth in the spring" - but I'm looking for some more well-defined thinking on the subject. Are there later rituals that are similar to this, that we have more knowledge of?
I have trouble imagining the circumstances which would lead people to pick someone, have them eat a ritual last meal, and then hang them and throw them in a bog. Firstly, I wonder: what is the importance of the bog? The wiki entry on Tollund Man identifies the man's last meal as having been composed of seeds from plants around the bog. I am very curious as to what sort of nature-bound importance a bog would have to these people, that would make them pick it out as a place for rituals.
Secondly, is there any evidence that this sort of behaviour would be tied to periods of poor harvest? ie do we have examples of sacrifice to the harvest from other cultures which follow the pattern of occurring during hardship (or any other).
I realize the evidence is scarce, but I'm interested in what sort of informed speculation there's been.
You might also be interested in (mine and others) posts in this older thread. Note that Globs book is pretty old, and from an era when his kind of speculations were more in fashion than currently. That this book is not a peer-reviewed scientific publication also helps, though his ideas are still extremely widespread in the museum community. As a few loose notes: while human sacrifice also occurs in the Viking Age, there are a few centuries of discontinuity between the two distinct practices. Iron Age bog bodies are more related to the significance of bogs as 'portals to the underworld' (or 'otherworld', to distance yourself from the Greco-Roman notion), which is also reflected in the widespread practice of depositing all kinds of stuff, valuable and mundane, in bogs during the Neolithic and Bronze Age.