In 1966 it was translated into German by Thyra Dohrenburg and published by Winkler Verlag Munich under the title Die Schläfer im Moor (English: The Sleepers in the Bog).

In subsequent decades, it has received both praise and criticism from specialists in the field, who have lauded the publicity which it brought to the subject, but rejected many of Glob's conclusions as being based on insufficient evidence.

[1] The second chapter, entitled "The Grauballe Man", deals with the eponymous bog body found in 1952 at Nebelgård Fen, located 11 miles (18 km) east of Tolland.

[4] "How They Lived" is the title of the fifth chapter, and explores the wider context of life in Iron Age Denmark, dealing with such issues as class divisions, houses and garments.

He proceeds to note that there is much in the book that would be of interest to anthropologists, and he hoped that they would not be put off by its use of "gossip and anecdote" and its "intensely personal and culturally ultra-Danish tone", which he attributes to Glob's attempts to reach a wider, non-academic audience.

In particular, they highlighted that he ascribed many bodies to the Iron Age when they had not been securely carbon dated and that he overconfidently proclaimed the Drumkeeragh Lady from Medieval Ireland to be a Danish Viking despite a lack of supporting evidence.

[11] In their 2007 edited volume on the reinvestigation of Grauballe Man, Pauline Asingh and Niels Lynnerup stated that Glob's book had represented a "major contribution" to the study of bog bodies which "awoke many people's interest in prehistory".

[12] Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney wrote a series of poems inspired by the book, finding contemporary political relevance in the relics of the ritualistic killings.

"[13] In her 2009 study of the cultural and artistic reception of the bog bodies, Karin Sanders noted that she had first become interested in archaeology through reading a copy of Mosefolket in her primary school's library, near to Copenhagen.