Coffins in Finland: the history of production, design and attitudes

Abstract

Coffins as death-related objects have changed in Finland during the past 150 years and the Finnish funeral industry has been created to answer the changing needs of customers. No longer do people build coffins in the household, or only buy a coffin and some other items from the funeral company: now professionals manage entire funerals. Coffin designs have become simpler and less socially discriminating and the colour formerly reserved for children and young people, white, has become the most popular colour for a coffin. Attitudes towards coffins have also changed, from mild dislike of having a coffin in the home to general demand of hiding coffins even in funeral companies’ premises. Magical fears have been replaced by psychological explanations for avoiding coffins, where public funerals have been replaced by private mourning. In an until recently relatively poor and agrarian country these developments have been somewhat faster in Finland than in many other Western European countries, suggesting a publicly expressed need to modernise the nation in matters of death can be found.

Keywords:

• Coffins
• funerals
• history of death
• modernisation of death
• Finnish culture of death

Notes

1. I am aware of the differences between a coffin and a casket. The Finnish coffins are usually rectangular or moderately boat-shaped; their style and design are usually more modest than what is usually called a casket. That is why ‘coffin’ is the most suitable term in this case.

2. From the Latin word procession. This word remained in the use of the Finnish townspeople from the Catholic era, which ended in the sixteenth century, until the twentieth century when the traditional funeral processions ended.

3. In Finnish the person owning the funeral company or working in one does not actually have an official name. I have chosen to call then funeral directors instead of morticians or undertakers, to emphasise their role in funerals. In Finland, for example, embalming is not practised. The funeral companies embraced the name hautaustoimisto, ‘funeral office’, little by little from the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century.

4. In Northern and Eastern Finland older traditions have persisted to this day: the coffin is brought from the hospital to a short ceremony at home, during which someone – usually not a clerical person – says a few words and people sing hymns. Those who wish to see the deceased for the last time may do it. Afterwards the funeral office personnel takes the coffin to the morgue to wait for the funeral day (Keto, 2000; Pajari, 2014a).