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Swedish Offerkast and Recent Roadside Memorials

2009; Routledge; Volume: 120; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00155870802647841

1469-8315

Anna Petersson,

Literature and Cultural Memory

Abstract The erection of roadside memorials in Sweden is commonly considered a novel practice. However, it bears certain similarities with earlier traditions, especially, the so-called offerkast, a pile of sticks or stones thrown on the site of a death on the road. Notes [1] This practice was also dealt with at the conference entitled "Creating Identities: Funeral Monuments and Public Memorials in Europe," 31 October–2 November 2003, held in Kassel, Germany, and in the section "Roadside Memorials to the Dead," at the 7th Conference on the theme: "The Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal," 15–18 September 2005, held in Bath, UK. [2] The survey is a part of my ongoing PhD thesis and will be described briefly later in this article. [3] The Folklife Archive in Lund is an archive for traditions and customs of southern Sweden, maintained in close collaboration with the Department of Ethnology, Lund University, Sweden. The archive was founded in 1913 by the folklorist Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, and contains material collected by means of questionnaires, fieldwork, and interviews. However, the archive's oldest records are from 1905, since the founder added his own collection. A special thank you to Göran Sjögård, archivist and director of the LUF for his assistance. (See http://www.lu.se/folklivsarkivet [accessed 14.12.2008].) [4] Although Olaus Magnus's texts generally are creative writings, rather than scientifically correct works of history, they have some historical value. [5] For a recent publication, with illustrative photographs, on the subject of "cross-trees" in contemporary South-Estonian funeral customs, see Torp-Kõivupuu (2003, 91–125). [6] Thanks to Oyuki Matsumoto, one of the producers of "Festival of the Dead" and "Altar of the Dead," 30 October–5 November 2006, in Malmö, Sweden, for pointing this out to me. [7] This could very well be the other way around; that is, the home could be seen as burdened with too many memories and therefore impossible to live in. Thanks to doctoral student Martin Avila for pointing this out to me. However, this was not a perspective expressed by any of my interviewees. [8] My interviews showed that four out of six rated the grave as the main memorial place while the home-based memorial, or simply the home in general, was second; two out of six rated the home as the main memorial place and the grave second; the accident site was considered the least important. A similar evaluation is found in a study of roadside memorials in Texas, where the grave is seen as a more important memorial place than the accident site (Everett 2000 Everett, Holly. 2000. Roadside Crosses and Memorial Complexes in Texas. Folklore, 111: 91–118. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 91–103). However, in an Australian study, the memorial at the accident site is seen as more important than the memorial in the cemetery (Clark and Franzmann 2006 Clark, Jennifer and Franzmann, Majella. 2006. Authority from Grief, Presence and Place in the Making of Roadside Memorials. Death Studies, 30: 579–99. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 588–94). [9] Thanks to doctoral student Despina Christoforidou for providing this information. [10] The same practice existed in France where a series of crosses, called montjoies, marked the stages of Louis IX's burial cortège in 1271 (Parsons 1994 Parsons, John Carmi. 1994. Eleanor of Castile: Queen and Society in Thirteenth-Century England, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. [Google Scholar], 209). [11] Buddhist countries also have a tradition of "roadside gods" erected for the convenience of travellers and pilgrims—for example, statues of the deity Jizo in Japan. According to Kunihiko Shimizu, the earliest record of Jizo in Japan is from the eighth century, but most of the Jizo statues along Japanese roads date to the Edo period lasting from 1603 to 1867 (Gordenker 2005). [12] The use of rock-piles to mark sites of death is so widely attested around the world that some scholars suggest—and Erixon is in partial agreement—that it may have originated at a very early stage in human culture as a universal burial custom, which, in some parts, later became restricted to the construction of cairns over the bodies of victims of accidents or murders, or criminals (Erixon 1988 Erixon, Sigurd. 1988. Offerkast och bjudhammare: Uppsatser om folklig tro och sed, Stockholm: Nordiska Museet. [Google Scholar], 18 and 149).