The Sound of Silence : Experiencing the memory grove as a site of commemoration

Abstract: The memory grove [in Swedish: minneslund] is becoming an increasingly popular custom of burial in Sweden. Unlike traditional Swedish burial customs, the memory grove is a collective and anonymous gravesite, unmooring the obligation and cost of traditional grave maintenance. The absence of religious, institutional, or individualized symbols or displays leaves the memory grove with few indicators of death, in fact, death has been minimized and made discrete to the extent that the memory grove is hardly recognizable as a place of burial. Consequently, the memory grove raises unique emotional, ontological, and social concerns for the bereaved. The purpose of this study was to examine how individuals experience the memory grove as a site of commemoration. Drawing from the theoretical framework of lived religion and a phenomenological approach, the study provides a perspective vacant from previous research, mapping experiences of the memory grove based on seven qualitative deep interviews with individuals who have relatives or acquaintances resting at a memory grove. The findings demonstrated how experiences of the memory grove are governed by the emotional, social, and ontological assumptions that the respondents negotiate and enact as they commemorate on the memory grove. Furthermore, the results demonstrate how customs of burial have significant implications for how the bereaved maintain and experience post-mortem relations, and the extent to which they are able to experience the presence of the deceased. Lived religion was used to recognize how individuals negotiate, experience, and make meaning of that which is absent, invisible, intangible, and silent.