Meaningful Deathscapes; Worldview minority cemeteries in Finland

The “Meaningful Deathscapes: Worldview minority cemeteries in Finland” (MeDea) project collaboratively studies the meanings that members and leaders of religious and non-religious worldview communities give to their own burial grounds. MeDea utilises the concept “worldview minorities”, which is significant because it does not differentiate between religious and non-religious minorities. The project thus examines non-religious, Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic burial grounds. The research is timely, since burial practices are undergoing significant changes due to an increase of non-religious Finns and because migration increases religious minorities. Despite extensive research on deathscapes in minority cemeteries in several European contexts, deeper analyses of the meanings co-created for minority cemeteries interpreted by and with the worldview minorities themselves are sparse. The theoretical framework of the study is the concept of “deathscape”, as developed within human geography and informed by worldview identity, to explore the meanings accorded to the places and spaces connected to death (like cemeteries). Not being limited to physical locations, it also considers social and ritual spaces, including metaphorical and virtual ones. Because Finnish burial practices are dominated by the majority Lutheran Church, which challenges the governance of minority burial grounds, the novelty of the results is to compare which communities share similar meanings and which meanings are unique to one worldview community only. Additionally, MeDea creates minority-sensitive collaborative research methods and includes conceptual contributions for an equality of worldviews, revealing the connection of deathscape with (existential) identities, societal belonging, and a deeper understanding of majority–minority relations. Furthermore, the research sheds light on how the actualization of deathscapes is concretely related to their integration in Finnish society, and thus the broader cohesion of society overall.

“Meaningful Deathscapes: Worldview minority cemeteries in Finland” (MeDea) studies the multiple meanings that religious and nonreligious
worldview communities themselves give to their burial grounds. MeDea studies non-religious, Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox, and
Roman Catholic burial grounds. It utilises a collaborative approach in which academic and practical researchers from the studied
communities co-produce knowledge, from the planning to the results phases. The novelty is to compare findings and identify similarities
and differences between communities. The project collects oral (interviews) and visual (pictures and mind maps) data. Furthermore, the
concept of “deathscape” is developed, creating minority-sensitive research methods. The study helps understandings of the diversity of
Finnish society when the majority Lutheran Church has a monopoly on burial practices. In addition to academic publications, MeDea
will produce a book for the wider public on minority burials in Finland.