This evening I've been hanging around in a graveyard.
Halloween is relatively new to Sweden, kids dress up and ask for sweets because they're copying the Americans. The traditional festival is All Hallows held over the first weekend in November. With the exception of the booze shop being closed (so you have to stock up for those Halloween parties in advance, kids) you wouldn't notice much difference unless you took a trip to the graveyards.
Swedes (like a few other nationalities around the world) honour their dead on All Hallows. They visit the graves of their families and lay candles and a fir wreath by their tombstone. In contrast to English cemeteries, which have a motley assortment of tended and untended graves, weeds, overgrown patches, empty patches and god only knows what else, Swedish cemeteries are neatly and carefully tended, the one I was in had Zen-garden style raked gravel over each plot.
People sometimes travel far to honour their dead, my boyfriend's parents drove to the other side of the country to visit his mother's home town and the graves of his grandparents. There are a lot of people planting, tidying and lighting candles. Even though it was raining like mad yesterday many of the lanterns are still going and the graveyards are beautiful to see with all the little lights.
Today's best find was probably the grave of the master girdlemaker...
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