Interactive world map

Interactive World Map

Scandinavia

Greenland

Japan

California

Madagascar

Australia

Argentina

Japanese Urban Tree Burials

What is a tree burial? During a tree burial, or Jumokuso, Japanese people will opt to bury their loved one's cremated remains in a 'forest cemetery’ which is a large woodland area where headstones are replaced with trees (Södergren, 2020).

Benefits of Tree Burials

My Personal Thoughts: I think tree burials are an incredibly sustainable practice. I have no ethical qualms with this method of body disposition and would not be opposed to being buried this way.

• eliminates obligations for descendants to tend the grave.

• takes up relatively little space in a graveyard & is cheaper than traditional burial.
• enables memorialization while also providing an opportunity for the dead to remove one’s self fromhousehold constraints (Södergren, 2020).

Famadihana in Madagascar

In this sacred ritual, which occurs every five to seven years, the Merina tribe exhumes the remains of their ancestors from their crypts. Then, living family members carefully peel the burial garments off the corpses and wrap them in fresh silk shrouds.

Interesting aspect of this burial practice: After the bodies have been rewrapped in silk, family members dance with the corpses while they decompose before returning them back to the crypts at sun set.

Click the arrow icon to access a short Youtube video on the ritual.

"Mixed groups of men and women carried the bodies...this time stopping and starting dancing more violently than they had before-even violently," recounts author David Graeber after witnessing his first Famadihana (Graeber, 1995).

My personal thoughts: While I do appreciate how Famadihana honors family lineage and ancestral pride, I feel uncomfortable with the concept of dancing with the deceased. Personally, I view burial as a form of final rest, and I feel that exhuming the body to dance with it is distubing the peace of those who have passed.

Scandinavian Ship Burials

Ship burials usually took the form of laying either cremated remains or the dead sea-rover in their ship before setting it on fire and sending it adrift to go where the winds and tides take them (Major, 1924).

This map shows the approximate locations of the large ship burial mounds located in central Norway. Photo courtesy of ZME Science (January 6, 2024).

Herlaugshaugen (depicted as a red dot above) is the oldest ship scientist found in Leka, a municipality in Norway's Trøndelag county.

My Personal Thoughts: I think returning the deceased back to the sea is a nobel way to reconnect the body with nature. For Scandinavians, especially the Vikings, the sea was central to life. It was both a pathway for exploration and a source of sustenance. So, by returning the body back to a revered element the burial method is giving the deceased an honorable resting place.

Fun Fact: Herlaugshaugen measures a whopping 23 feet tall and 197 feet in diameter (Kuta, 2023).

All information on this slide is gathered from the journal article “Death, Burial, and Associated Ritual at Ooldea, South Australia" by Berndt, R., and T. Harvey Johnston.

Reburial Parties in Australia

Who Practices This? Aboriginal Tribes

Photo of aboriginal sand, courtesy of MyTributes (January 25, 2023).

Step 1: The men approach the grave from one side, the women from the other, both calling " Kuh I Kuh ! " and waving small bunches of bushes as though driving the spirit of the deceased into the grave.

My Personal Thoughts: I think that the reburial parties are a unique way to continually honor the deceased. One interesting aspect of this practice is how the tribal members rub the grave sand on their bodies to strengthen their limbs. While I find this a bit unsanitary, I also believe it to be a great way to physically and spiritually connect with those who have passed.

Step 2: Children were then made to lie beside the grave, in pairs, and their calves were rubbed with sand taken from the inside of the grave. This was said to make them strong and fast runn

Step 3: After all had been rubbed with the grave sand, each member took his or her turn to push earth into the grave until only a saucer-shaped depression remained. Logs were replaced and the conical mound left intact on the western side.

Step 4: The re-burial party then dispersed and returned campwards. When the members arrived, they decorated themselves with white ochre markings and wore head- dresses of upright sticks with wood shavings at intervals.

Photo of white ochre markings. Photo by Gunther Deichmann.

Wampo Burials in Argentina

The use of funerary containers of worked wood, typified as ‘canoes’ (Mapudungun wampo), is well established in the archaeological repertoire of the Mapuche culture. This method of burial dates from 1280 ± 80 AD (Pérez, Tesmer...2022).

The Mapuche typically bury their dead in a flexed position to symbolize the return to the fetal state, which is seen as a form of rebirth or transition to the afterlife.

The wampo is made from a tree-trunk, generally roble or pellín, which is split into two and hollowed out to make two sections of coffin.

They follow the mapuche custom of dressing the dead in their finest clothes and putting their most treasured possessions in their coffins when they set off on their voyage to the other side. (hence the pottery vessel to the left of the cranium in the image above)

Finally, they place the freshwater mollusc, Diplodon chilensis, at the base of the wooden container before laying the body in it.

In the framework of the Mapuche cosmovision, the wampo or canoe is conceived to be a means for passing to the other life.

California Drive-In Funerals

Benefits of a Drive-In Funeral Service:

• Elderly or disabled mourners do not have to exit the car to see the body of their loved ones.

• Those who are sick can “attend” the funeral without infecting others.

• Mourners can avoid getting out in unpleasant weather by staying in their climate-controlled vehicles while viewing the body.
• People can view the body of the deceased even if they are estranged from the rest of the mourners.

Mourners can drive up to the window, you can view the body from your car or exit the vehicle and stand near the window.

You may be able to sign a traditional or electronic guestbook from the comfort of your vehicle and there may be a place for you to deposit condolence cards (McLeod, 2020).

Link to a news story on drive-in funeral homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

My Personal Thoughts: I think drive-in funerals are an innovative, socially-distanced way for loved ones to pay their respects. This is especially helpful for those who are elderly or are immunosuppressed, making it an inclusive service.

What U.S. States Currently Offer This Service? California, Georgia, Tennessee, Michigan, and Illinois.

Stone Cairn Burials in Greenland

Burial cairns date primarily from the Neolithic Period and the Early Bronze Age (Williams, 2012).

How to Build a Cairn:

• Stack rocks with each layer sloping toward the center of the cairn.
• As the cairn rises make sure that every stone has atleast three points of contact to maintain the stability of the structure.

Original Use: In Norse Greenland, cairns were initially used for hunting. They marked a game driving "lane", used to direct reindeer towards a game jump.

The stones protect the body from scavengers and the elements, serving as a practical solution in an environment with permafrost that makes traditional burial in the earth difficult.

Bodies were typically laid out in supine positions, facing east, a common tradition in medieval European Christianity (Williams, 2012).

Archeologists excavating cairn burial site. Photo by Larry Riemenschneider.

Grave Goods: During the burial, loved ones will place hunting tools, like harpoons or knives, and symbolic items such as carved figurines into the bottom of the cairn. The inclusion of tools indicates a belief in the continuation of daily activities or spiritual needs in the afterlife.

Where to build a cairn: cairns are almost always built on a hillside or a ridge and are usually near a potential source of water.

Fun Ways to Say Cairn

"ahu" is Hawaiian for rock cairn "steinmann" is German for stone man / rock cairn "ometto" is Italian for small man / rock cairn

References

Scandinavia Sources:

Japan Sources:

Mikles, N. (2021). ‘Tree Burials’ Are Gaining Popularity in Japan as Gravesite Space Decreases. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/tree-burials-are-gaining-popularity-in-japan-as-gravesite-space-decreases-180977994/

Andrie, M. (2024). Scandinavia’s oldest ship burial may rewrite Viking history. ZME Science. https://www.zmescience.com/science/scandinavias-oldest-ship-burial-may-rewrite-viking-history/

Kuta, S. (2023). 1,300-Year-Old Ship Burial Unearthed in Norway. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1300-year-old-ship-burial-discovered-in-norway-180983508/

Södergren, L. (2020). Japanese Urban Tree Burials: Diversity and Individualization. Lund University. https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=9026106&fileOId=9026108

Major, A. (1924). Ship Burials in Scandinavian Lands and the Beliefs that Underlie Them. Folklore, 35(2), 113-150. https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.1924.9719279

Madagascar Sources:

Madagascar: GRAEBER, D. (1995), Dancing With Corpses Reconsidered: an Interpretation of Famadihana. American Ethnologist, 22: 258-278. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1995.22.2.02a00030

Australia Sources:

Berndt, R. M., & Johnston, T. H. (1942). Death, Burial, and Associated Ritual at Ooldea, South Australia. Oceania, 12(3), 189–208. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40327948

Argentina Sources:

Greenland Sources:

Pérez A, Tesmer R., Reyes J., Lanata J., Medina A., Chapanoff M. (2022). A Pre-Hispanic Canoe or Wampo Burial in Northwestern Patagonia, Argentina. PLoS ONE 17(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0272833

Williams, D. B. (2012). Cairns: messengers in stone. Mountaineers Books. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zj8UCgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT10&dq=greenland+burials+in+stone+cairns&ots=j2Xo39gQnC&sig=5Py49WS28sZiYfqt2_YwO62yNjg#v=onepage&q&f=false

Lacerda, S. (2022). Some Indigenous Peoples in South America Used Canoes as Burials. Sciences Avenir. https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/archeo-paleo/anthropologie/les-peuples-autochtones-d-amerique-du-sud-utilisaient-des-canoes-en-guise-de-sepulture_166222

California Sources:

McLeod, B. (2022). Why (and Where) Do Drive-Thru Funerals Exist? Cake. https://www.joincake.com/blog/drive-thru-funeral/