Scandal, Fairies, and Famous Poetry – The Secret History of Bogs and Why We Need Them
29/09/2025
Bogs. Bogland. Peat bogs. Wetlands. We’ve all heard about them in some form or another, from Shrek’s swamp to (fingers crossed) our latest season of ReRooted – but how many of us know about their incredible history and important future?
“I live in a swamp! I’m a terrifying ogre! What do I have to do to get a little privacy?!” Says Shrek, when uninvited visitors start turning up to his boggy home. It’s a fair point. Would you want to go in there? Probably not unless you have a decent pair of waders.
As in much literature, bogs aren’t often painted as the softest, most inviting places, but beneath their mysterious appearance lies a magical ecosystem. These often-overlooked, climate-change-fighting spaces, teeming with biodiversity like the Large Heath Butterfly and carnivorous Sundew, not only have a secret past but also an incredibly important future.
Wait, what actually is a bog?
Freshwater wetlands, generally found in cool, northern climates. They’re formed when a lake slowly fills with dead plants, and they often develop in poorly draining basins created by glaciers during the most recent ice age.
There are quite a few different types, from blanket bogs that develop in highlands to raised bogs, where the decaying vegetation makes a slight dome shape, but today we’ll be diving into peat bogs, where thick, spongy layers of dead plants – peat – make up layers in the bog.
The interesting thing is that these spaces take hundreds or thousands of years to develop, which is why they often host many mythological tales. For example, on the northern coast of County Mayo in the west of Ireland, a 5,500-year-old agricultural community has been found hidden and preserved under a bog. A lot can happen in that time.
Spiritual, potentially haunted, and possibly a bog body or two – the history of peat bogs
Peat bogs’ spongy soils are full of mysteries, including the ancient phenomenon of bog bodies. These are the remains of people who died in bogs or were placed there after their deaths; more than a thousand have been found throughout northern Europe. Bogs are known for their ability to preserve through acidic and anaerobic conditions, so naturally, bodily remains have been naturally mummified, with skin, hair, clothes, and stomach contents preserved. (Including hairstyles, tattoos, and even some stubble!)
Archaeologists and anthropologists have found that these ancient people may have been murdered – some were found with arrows in their chest – but could also have been victims of ritual sacrifices. See, there’s more than meets the eye with the ol’ bog.
Folklore, mythology, and poetry – bogs as places of inspiration
Ancient spaces like bogs often have a rich history of folklore surrounding them, especially in the UK. Long ago, tales would be told of mischievous fairies, also known as Irish ballybogs, mudbogs and bogles, whose main purpose was to protect the bogs. Any ideas of what they’d look like?
As you can imagine, this is rich ground for creativity over the years. Artists, writers, and poets, including Seamus Heaney, have looked to the bog for inspiration, with one poem standing out…
Extract of Bogland by Seamus Heaney
We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening -
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encroaching horizon,
Is wooed into the cyclops' eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.
No doubt that history is incredibly fascinating, but it’s the future of bogs that could prove crucial to us, especially our need to protect them.
Why are peat bogs important?
They hold a lot of precipitation – rain, sleet, hail and snow – which is crucial for flood prevention. Most importantly, they are carbon sinks, storing enormous amounts of carbon collected from the atmosphere. Peatlands in the UK are estimated to store 5.5 billion tonnes of the stuff; globally, the world's peat bogs sequester more than 200 billion tons!
These spaces store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined, even though they account for only 3% of the planet’s land area. Peat bogs specifically have been drained, burnt, built on, farmed and dug up for fuel and garden compost, which isn’t ideal, because draining a bog for development or peat extraction destroys the ecosystem.
Extensive peat extraction in England, for example, has permanently destroyed more than 75% of the country's bogs. Unlike other wetlands, these spaces take thousands of years to develop and hundreds of years to recover.
How can you help protect peat bogs?
Going peat-free in your garden is one of the best ways you can help protect our peatlands and send a clear message to compost manufacturers that change is needed. Peat-free compost is available from some suppliers; alternatively, you can use bark or wood fibre.
ReRooted – the beat behind the bog chat
As part of our ReRooted series, which takes musicians into the wild to record the sounds around them and create a track from the samples, we invited Iglooghost to Risley Moss peat bog in Warrington, England. Formed 10,000 - 15,000 years ago during the last ice age, the place is alive with history, and needless to say, he turned that energy into a club banger.
More of the latest from the Edge zine… ↴
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