Discovery, Preservation and Exhibition
The Grauballe Man's body was first discovered buried in the bog on 26 April 1952 by a team of peat diggers. One of the workmen, Tage Busk Sørensen, stuck his spade into something that he knew was not peat; upon revealing more they discovered the head protruding from the ground, and the local postman, who was passing, alerted the local doctor as well as an amateur archaeologist named Ulrik Balslev. With the body still in the peat, various locals came to visit it over the next day, one of whom accidentally stepped on its head. The following morning, Professor Peter Glob from the Prehistory Museum at Aarhus came to visit the body, and arranged for it to be removed to the museum, still encased in a block of surrounding peat.
Glob and his team decided that they should not only research the body but that they should also attempt to preserve it so that it could be exhibited to the public. This concept was new at the time for most of the bog bodies previously discovered had been re-buried, sometimes in consecrated ground, with the Tollund Man which had been discovered two years earlier having only its head preserved. Despite the warnings of some scientists who believed that the corpse should immediately undergo preservation, it was exhibited straight away in order to capitalise on public interest. Indeed, the scientists' fears were proved right, as despite the fact that the body was kept permanently moist, mould started to appear on certain areas.
The body then underwent research, including a post-mortem, and then preservation, which was organised by conservator C. Lange-Kornbak, who had to decide which was the best way to do this (no entire bog body had ever been preserved before). He examined various methods for doing this, before deciding on a programme of tanning the body to turn it into leather and then stuffing it with oak bark. In 1955 the body went on display at the Moesgaard Museum near Aarhus, only to be removed for a time in 2001-2002 when it underwent more modern scientific study, including radiological study, CT scanning, 3D visualisation, stereolithography and analyses of the gut contents.
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