Sunday 1 November 2009

Woodland cemetary Halloween

Halloween the trick or treat way is a rather new tradition in here Sweden, although we've always celebrated Halloween.
What we traditionally do is visit our ancestors graves and light grave-candles. Now, I live in Stockholm and my family is from the north of Sweden, so I don't have any graves to visit, but if I get the chance I still go to the great Woodland Cemetary designed by Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz in the 1930's. It's always a beautiful place (it's on the list of World Heritages) but at Halloween it's magic.
Most of the graves are located in a forest-like park, among tall pine-trees. At Halloween the forest sparkles from all the candles placed by the graves and in the meditation groves (which are places where you can have your ashes spread if you don't want a grave of your own, it's quite common).


The Almhöjden (Elm-hill) meditation grove lit by thousands of  candles.


The forest looked like a starry sky with all the candles.


More candles, in another meditation-grove.


Heather and candles. Heather = autumn here, I might have had some on the balcony if I hadn't had to empty is this winter.


Look at this floor in one of the chapels... aaah, beauty!

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