Norwegian psychedelic folk band Tusmørke have, with their latest release, Nordisk Krim, realised an idea as old as the band itself. The double concept album, wrapped in the mysteries of bog bodies, revels in their singer, Benedikt ‘Benediktator’ Momrak’s lifelong fascination with gruesome finds, inspiring the band’s most extraordinary record yet. Prog finds out more about it.

Words: Phil Weller Image: Terje Skar

On May 6, 1950, three Danes were piercing peat with their spades out on the Jutland peninsula, near Tollund, when one of them struck something: a man’s body. He lay in the fetal position, wearing a cap of sheepskin and wool with a belt of hide wrapped around his waist. A noose was tight around his neck. Stubble jutted from his chin. His face, despite what looked a dire death, looked calm and strangely peaceful. The trio believed they had stumbled across a recent murder victim. Scientific analysis, however, would later conclude that the body was 2,300 years old. It had been remarkably preserved by the bog in which he had laid for more than two centuries before his discovery.

Benedikt ‘Benediktator’ Momrak was seven when he saw the Tollund Man’s body in Denmark’s Silkeborg Museum, where it now resides. He was transfixed by his blackened form and by the frightening definition of a face so old. This was years before the bassist/vocalist discovered heavy metal and become obsessed with music, ultimately leading to Tusmørke’s formation. Several decades on and that face, along with many others long preserved in boggy graves throughout Europe, has formed the lyrical backbone to the band’s ninth studio album, Nordisk Krim. It’s a concept as old as the band itself that can at last, like the Tollund Man himself, be displayed to the world.