Urban burial groves can become public parks
– In Copenhagen, I visited the cemetery where HC Andersen is buried, and I was surprised at how different it looked compared to my own experience from Russia. There the burial ground is more sacred, it is a place to mourn and to remember. In Copenhagen, the burial groves are used much more actively for recreation. People walk there, air their dog, ride bikes. At the same time as they also visit the graves, says Pavel Grabalov, research fellow at the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU).
At the same time, he observes a clear lack of conflict between the very different ways of using a burial ground that surprised him.
– It is very interesting with someone using the graveyard to jog to stay healthy and live longer, right where the dead lie. And how harmonious the various uses of the burial ground seemed to be.
These observations became the starting point for the doctoral degree that Grabalov is pursuing. Comparisons are made with the planning, design and use of Scandinavian and Russian burial groves. He has observed the same use of burial groves in Oslo as he saw in Copenhagen.
Own strategies for burial groves in Oslo
– Norway and Denmark are quite similar in their approach to planning and use of burial groves, but in Copenhagen they tend even more towards recreational use. In Moscow, it is clearly more traditional how to use the cemeteries, he says.
As part of the doctoral dissertation, Grabalov and Helena Nordh, then professor of public health science at NMBU, publish articles on the role of cemeteries in Oslo and Copenhagen as public spaces and how this role may change in the future.
– Oslo and Copenhagen are particularly interesting since they actually have documents, plans and their own strategies for their burial grounds. This is quite unusual, since burial groves are often not considered central to urban planning and strategic development work is often more preoccupied with more traditional public spaces, such as parks, places and streets.
The researchers analyzed the municipality’s strategy documents and interviewed people who work with burial groves, such as landscape architects and employees in the municipality, and supplementary document analysis with these in-depth interviews.
Touch the use of green areas
– It was interesting that the two cities are so similar in their reasons for why the burial grounds should have more functions. The cultural context is very similar, the size of the cities is quite similar, and the planning policy is quite similar: they both place great emphasis on densification as the main strategy for spatial development. At a time when more and more people are living in cities, the pressure on existing green spaces is still increasing. This means that politicians, case processing authorities and planners are re-evaluating what green areas can be, including burial groves, Grabalov says.
The researchers found an important difference between Copenhagen and Oslo:
– In Copenhagen, climate was not mentioned in the plans. There they were more concerned with how they could make burial groves more accessible – as a public outdoor space, but with distinctive qualities. In Oslo, the strategy is clearly in line with the green shift that the authorities in the city are aiming for, and it prescribes the development of burial groves that will support work on climate adaptation and migration.
Will keep it distinctive
Use of burial groves
One examination done by NMBU researchers in 2014 at Gamlebyen gravlund in Oslo showed that:
- Only 5 percent of those who were at the burial ground were there to visit a grave.
- 66p percent used the graveyard as a walkway on their way to another location.
- 11 percent used it for dog aeration
- 13 percent stated recreation as the reason for the stay
- 5 percent of the visitors performed cultural activities of social or cultural art
From 1 January 2021, it was permitted to use urn walls (columbariums) to make better use of the space on burial groves. Previously, the ash trays had to be surrounded by soil on all sides.
Both cities were concerned with retaining precisely the distinctiveness of the burial grounds and not just turning them into ordinary parks.
– When you enter a cemetery, many people think about the spiritual or religious aspect. That something is bigger than us. It is part of the cemetery and the atmosphere. And although in 50 years we may have changed the way we conduct funerals and larger memorial sites, the two cities will continue to retain burial grounds as burial groves. It is also a political wish not to re-regulate burial groves into clean parks.
But we will probably see major changes in the years to come in how we use burial groves. Not too many years ago, for many, the idea of sunbathing or having a picnic with friends at a cemetery – possibly for others to do so – was difficult to reconcile with. A lot has happened in just a generation or two. Jonas Drag, head of department at the funeral service in Oslo municipality, can confirm this.
Clear changes in use
– We see that the use of our burial groves is changing. We do not have a clear answer as to why this is happening, but it is conceivable that it is due to a mixture of expensive land prices, where it may have something to say that setting aside space for a new park can be very expensive. We have less space available in Oslo even before, so there is a need to use the areas that exist for different types of activities and not just one, says Drag.
Times are also changing culturally, he mentions as a possible reason why we are slowly but surely opening up to multiple uses of burial groves – or burial sites, as Oslo municipality calls them.
For Oslo municipality, it keeps up with the times. The strategic plan The cemetery of the future – good, green urban spaces from 2018 forms the basis for the development of the funeral service in Oslo. The political goal is to clarify the function of the cemeteries as urban, green urban spaces, stimulate innovation and development within the management, operation and use of cemeteries, and to strengthen the climate and environmental work at the cemeteries.
Important role in environmental work
– The cemeteries are considered part of the green areas in the city. They play an important role in the environmental work in Oslo, in the conservation of biological diversity and not least with the trees, which are important for the air quality in the city. The expectations for the park areas are in development, and it is expected that the funeral service in Oslo municipality will work with further development of the cemeteries, Drag says.
And the work is long overdue. The Funeral Service has several specific assignments for workers today, which are to make burial groves more accessible and simple to use in different ways at the same time, including planting and universal design. At Østre Gravlund and in the Old Town, they have started pilot projects with lighting, which will be arranged for use of the cemeteries when it is dark.
– Use graveyards in the dark – is not something you have thought about so much just a few decades ago?
– No, and there are also divided opinions about the use of the cemeteries for something other than burial and to remember the dead, so it is very important for us to make arrangements so that other use does not conflict with this, says Drag.
Not quite like other parks
Both the head of the Department of the Funeral Service and researcher Grabalov are the only ones to say that the cemeteries should not become a green outdoor space just like all other parks and playgrounds.
– In the literature, we found an expressed concern that our public spaces are becoming very homogeneous. They are full of happy people who ride bicycles and who look exactly like them. But we need special places and spaces, not for joy, groups of friends and training, but also places where you can be alone and think, reflect, mourn. It does not have to make the cemeteries less public, it just gives them other qualities, says Grabalov.
Grave groves must be part of the planning
He wants to examine and perhaps change the view of our public places as we see them today, which only send around joy and happiness.
– We must problematize what public space and life are and what functions we need for a good life in the city. Grave groves are almost never part of the discussion about urban planning. We need to include the cemeteries in the conversation when we talk about planning green meeting points and common outdoor spaces. The urban burial groves and Copenhagen show us that we need a variety of public spaces that adapt to different audiences and that are different in the future, also aristocratic and philosophical.
This article was first published on NMBU.nr