Origins of the Dead Marshes

[Sharkû]

Moors, which once formed a major part of Germanic Europe, were commonly the place to execute certain criminals:

<size=-2">"Proditores et transfugas arboribus suspendunt, ignavos et imbelles et corpore infames caeno ac palude, iniecta insuper crate, mergunt. Diversitas supplicii illuc respicit, tamquam scelera ostendi oporteat, dum puniuntur, flagitia abscondi.

[Traitors and deserters are hanged on trees; the coward, the unwarlike, the man stained with abominable vices, is plunged into the mire of the morass with a hurdle put over him. This distinction in punishment means that crime, they think, ought, in being punished, to be exposed, while infamy ought to be buried out of sight.]" Tacitus: Germania, §12</size>

If I recall correctly, some, if not many, of the bog mummies found had marks such as a rope around their neck.


Incidentally, in those very regions, tales of the moor in general seem only to appear, or to have been unearthed and recorded in later centuries (especially in the romanticist period), when moors were no longer part of the common environment, and no longer held a special meaning either.