Dödens nya kläder: En etnologisk studie av nutidens begravningsseder i förändring

Sammanfattning: The essay, The New Clothes of Death is about the funeral customs in Sweden from a culture-historical perspective with an ethnological touch. The essay deals with our present day relation to death and how this can be transformed to the dead person. The questions are highlighted with observations from two funerals, one cremation and, studies of the cemetery environment and the culture of the graves. Furthermore, some changes over time are presented and how a person’s practical way of acting may be realized by both personnel and mourners when they deal with cultural customs related to different aspects of death in a social and materialized way. The main path is about customs, traditions, rites, religion, rules, and, things and places. These may together or privately be used in different ways on a mutual arena when we bid a last farewell and bury someone. It is also discussed how these customs eventually may change in the foreseeable future. The result shows that cultural change with the fast-paced information society occurs rapidly over large geographic areas. Noticeable changes seen over time have been the clothing and music selections and pronounced at civil funerals, but even church funerals have received more secular music on CD. Funeral participants use less traditional mourning and this is most evident in younger participants from the lower class segment. Photography has by mobile cameras become extremely common in direct connection to the act. Furthermore, freer personally chosen words and symbols, and greater freedom in the design of the funeral as well as the opportunity to create a digital platform even if you are dead. New forms of interment, for example, decrease of the anonymous grave and a large increase in cremation. More common are also influences from immigrant funerals.