Having a funeral ceremony at the end of the end has long been an important and obvious tradition for most people. But now it seems that the tradition in Sweden is no longer as strong.
It is the Function Bureau Fonus who has noticed in a press release that more and more people are choosing to refrain from having a funeral ceremony.
According to statistics from the funeral home, 14 percent of their customers chose to carry out a funeral without any ceremony in 2024, which is an increase of 72 percent since 2016.
During the pandemic year 2020, the number of funerals rose without a ceremony, and since then the trend seems to have continued. A trend that even the researcher Erika Wilander at Umeå University has confirmed in one Research article.
– The ceremony has an important ritual significance, especially for the relatives, and therefore it worries me that more and more people are choosing it altogether. The funeral ceremony is not only a formal event, but also an opportunity to honor and reflect the life of the deceased in a personal and meaningful manner, says Conny SohlbergFuneral contractor at Fonus.
The research also shows that it is good for relatives to have a ceremony, as it can play an important function in a grief process.
– Being able to take a farewell is too many important in order to deal with a loss, but still we see a development where death is increasingly taking less space in society. Perhaps this is part of a tendency where we in the Western world often try to avoid what reminds us of the end of life, says Conny Sohlberg.