Cemeteries in Sweden: Difference between revisions

Within the Swedish culture there has been a long standing practice to re-use burial plots. By law there is a person or family that is responsible for the care and upkeep of a grave. This right is preserved by contract for normally 25 years. This responsibility includes a fee to the parish or cemetery for the grounds keeping etc. When the duration of the contract has expired, the cemetery authority will contact the responsible party to see if they are interested in renewal. If the responsible party decides to release their right, then the cemetery will remove the grave marker and reuse the burial plot. As the practice of reusing burial plots has been happening for over 100 years, finding a very old ancestral grave with the grave marker is unlikely. On the other hand you can search the cemetery sexton records (or even in databases such as [[Begravda_i_Sverige|Begravda i Sverige]]) to locate a burial place. Although gravestones have been removed, and burial plots have been re-used, people still feel a reverence as they pay respect in visiting a churchyard or cemetery.  

People of different religious beliefs (other than the Swedish Lutheran Church) have also had their own cemeteries in Sweden. The first Jewish cemetery was created on the island of Kungsholm in Stockholm in 1776. The first Catholic cemetery since the reformation was created within the Norra begravningsplaten in Stockholm in 1847. Immigration to Sweden after the Second World War led to the creation of cemeteries for Muslims and Orthodox Christians. Historically Stockholm has had the highest rate of cremation. The first crematorium in Sweden was built in the Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm in 1909. As the preference for cremation has increased, the cemeteries have created places for the placement of urns in the ground, columbarium’s, and memory groves. The urnlunder are places where the urn has been buried and a grave marker has been placed. Columbarium’s are places where the urns have been placed in a structure built onto the church or even a separate building for that purpose. The memory groves are places where the urn has been buried without a grave marker, or in some cases spread in a designated area.