Methodology: mapping people’s uses and perceptions of cemeteries

We draw primarily on an ethnographic project carried out in two cemeteries in Copenhagen: Bispebjerg and Vestre. We interviewed 12 respondents for the study – 8 everyday users of the cemeteries, as well as four youth who lived in the area, but who never used their local cemetery. We employed a combination of ethnographic methods, which allowed us to gain deep insights into the routines, thoughts and feelings of the cemetery’s users. We carried out in-depth interviews with them in their homes, exploring their relationship with the cemetery space, what role it plays in their everyday life, and what their thoughts are on the future development of the space.

Also, we mapped their use of the cemetery by going for walks with them, asking them to show us their daily routines, their favorite spots, as well as the parts of the cemetery they tended to avoid. We brought maps along and used them actively as a way to compare our respondents’ mental maps of the cemetery, with the actual layout and composition of the space. In our interviews with non-users we asked them to take us for walks in their neighborhood to get an understanding of what spaces they use, and why the cemetery was not a part of their mental map. Talking to the non-users was an important way of getting insights into why, for some people, the cemetery is an inaccessible and complicated place that does not invite exploration.

When planning our field work at the two cemeteries, we took several measures to prepare for the study of a physical space, that is both very important to its users and that demands a great deal of discretion and decorum. There are a lot of things you cannot do inside a cemetery. You have to be careful what you photograph, you must consider where you walk, and you have to think about which topics you raise and what questions you ask of your respondents while in that space.

Going in, we had some expectations that the ethical considerations about how to act in this space would be most important vis-a-vis respondents who were gravesite users, that is, people who had a loved one buried at the cemetery. The respondent group consisted of 50% gravesite users, and 50% recreational users (joggers, people who go for walks, picnics, visitors’ tours etc.), and we expected the two groups to have rather different relationships with the cemetery space. We expected the gravesite users to have a somewhat stronger emotional attachment to the space, shaped by their experience of bereavement, grief and possibly comfort and closeness to the ones they lost. And thus we expected them to be sensitive to the ways in which other people behave in this space, in a way that perhaps recreational users would not be.

Insights: Understanding the Unpredictability of How People Use the Cemetery

What we found, though, was that these user categories made very little sense. Very often, people were both gravesite and recreational users at the same time, and the respondents who used the space purely for leisure would have just as strong concerns about behavior and conduct as the ones visiting their family’s graves. The idea that visiting a grave corresponds poorly with using the space recreationally was not one that was recognized by our respondents. If anything, having a gravesite to visit would make it even more likely that they would afterwards go for a picnic nearby, or even lie down on a lawn to sunbathe. In fact, the more everyday activities a bereaved person could relegate to the cemetery, the better they often felt, because it gave them a sense of still including their lost loved ones in their everyday lives.

Furthermore, it turned out to be difficult to predict what was deemed inappropriate behavior within the cemetery walls. Often, the users who had someone buried at the cemetery would be eager to support new and unconventional ways of using the space. We went for a walk with a recently bereaved widow and her daughter, when somewhere on the route we spotted a grave with a few open bottles of bear and a pack of cigarettes. The widow noted how much she enjoyed the idea that the friends of the deceased person seemed to stop by often and leave their friend’s favorite beer on his grave. She felt that although beer cans and cigarettes did not fit the traditional idea of what is appropriate on a gravesite, the most important thing was that the person’s loved ones remembered him and made him a part of their everyday life.

In general, respondents who had recently lost someone seemed to greatly appreciate the diverse expressions of personality on other people’s gravesites. In their eyes, it made the cemetery seem more lively and gave them an ‘idea of who those people were, when they were alive’. It gave them a sense of the cemetery as a dynamic place, and a space shared by a community of people with whom they had something in common. In many ways, it made their own loss more bearable, because it made them feel they can be a part of defining the cemetery space, and that it is a place that can be incorporated into their daily lives in a meaningful way.

What Ethnography on the ground can teach us

What is particularly interesting about these findings is that they offer an insight into what is going on ‘on the ground’, in the concrete everyday use and non-use of an urban space. Many of our insights show us that the logics and patterns of how the space is used cannot be predicted and rarely follows the intentions inscribed in the planning of the space.

For instance, we interviewed a young girl who never uses the cemetery even though she lives right nearby, and although she felt that her neighborhood lacked green spaces for her and her friends to go for walks, play ball etc. When we asked her why they wouldn’t use the local cemetery only steps away from their houses, she said they felt they would intrude, and they were unsure and nervous about how to act and behave, once inside the cemetery gates. We took a walk on the cemetery later that day and she pointed out how the section closest to her house was the part of the cemetery, that seemed the most uninviting and scary to her. Since she would have to cross through that part to get to other areas that had green lawns and a lake, she had simply given up on the idea of going there. Interestingly, the space she saw as uninviting and scary was a fairly open space with very few graves, which the city council had envisioned would be just right for different types of recreational use. But because there were no graves, there were also very few people walking around and no caretakers in sight, which was one of the things that made the young woman and her friends feel that the space was scary and unwelcoming.

Thus, by directing an anthropological lens at the cemetery, and taking our cue from how users think and feel, we offer a perspective fundamentally different from that of the urban planner, the architect, or the landscaper. Our insights and recommendations point to a new understanding of the fact that the cemetery is more than its physical space, and lets us understand how this space is being appropriated and used in unintended and unpredictable ways.

The insights from the cemetery study in many ways echo results from another project we did about biking in the city. Here as well, ethnography on the ground challenged the more top-down approach of urban planners. In urban planning the focus is on making structures accessible – in this case bike lanes – rather than exploring the emotional barriers and motivations that affect people’s choice of biking vs. driving. What we found was that giving people access to the structures was not enough, rather, having positive experiences with biking created ownership to this type of transportation. It motivated our respondents to change their daily habits, because they experienced biking as an added value in their daily life.