What do you want to do with your body after death? For many people, this is a choice between cremation or casket burial. But in this episode, we learn about other options. Margit Warburg, a sociologist from the University of Copenhagen, tells us about the growing practice of forest burials in Denmark. Maria Recchia, an activist in eastern Canada, describes her efforts to introduce green burial practices in funeral homes and cemeteries. And Christian Lomsdalen, the president of the Norwegian Humanist Association, explains how he wants to be composted in his garden.
Further Reading
For more on green burials and other alternative burial practices:
- Consolation and the ‘poetics’ of the soil in ‘natural burial’ sites,” in Consolationscapes in the Face of Loss: Grief and Consolation in Space and Time, edited by
- An anthropological study of a Japanese tree burial: Environment, kinship, and death,” in Death and Dying in Contemporary Japan, edited by
- Sebastian Levar Spivey, “Death Enchanted: Comparing Conventional and Conservation Burial in the United States with a Technological Mediation Lens,” Mortality (2024).
- Margit Warburg, “Forest burials in Denmark: Nature, non-religion and spirituality,” Approaching Religion 13, no. 1 (2023): 73–89.
For more on the NCF’s green burials project: