Most popular place in Sweden for the afterlife

"The choice of place of rest.. ..reveals where people really feel they belong." 

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  Does your choice of where you want to be put to rest show where you feel you really belong? Above a photo from Sorsele municipality, the most popular place to be buried in Sweden.

• We live our lives in certain places; cities, towns, villages… But where do we want to be buried? Is that a macabre question you’d rather not think about, or do you know exactly where you’d like to be put to rest?

• A study made by Roger Marjavaara at Umeå University shows the most popular places for burials. Roger took a look at 80% of the people who passed away in 2010 to see where they were laid to rest. His study shows that over 22% of those who died in 2010 were buried in a parish different than the one in which they lived. Sorsele municipality (with 2,700 inhabitants, and located in Västerbotten county) became a place of interest; as here 30% more funerals than deaths take place. Other places that are popular to be buried in are Solna municipality, where there are 22% more burials than deaths, and Värmdö and Lekeberg (both with 21% more burials than deaths). Roger believes that the main reason is that most people want to return to the place where they are originally from after their death.

• “The choice of place of rest may be made emotionally and reveals where people really feel they belong,” he says to SR Västerbotten. A similar list shows those places where there are more deaths than burials. Topping that list is Säffle municipality, where 100 deaths occurred and only 71 burials. In Storfors and Åstorp municipalities 100 deaths occurred but only 81 burials. In Vingåker there were 86 burials per 100 deaths, and in Säter 87.