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Paper short abstract

Drawing on narratives of ash scattering at sea, this paper explores how mourners create maritime memory landscapes, and how storytelling mediates the relationship between the living, the dead, and the sea.

Paper long abstract

Scattering ashes at sea is a rapidly growing practice in Sweden, often chosen for the sea's symbolic connection to the deceased. Based on interviews with relatives who have carried out sea scatterings, this paper explores how the sites of scattering are remembered, narrated, and invested with significance, as they construct at once biographical and maritime deathscapes.

In the relative's stories, the sea emerges as an ambiguous resting place. It is at once specific and diffuse: anchored in particular bays, cliffs, or sailing routes tied to the life history of the deceased, yet also imagined as “everywhere water flows.” Through stories told afterwards, scattering sites crystallize into highly meaningful places in the maritime landscape, simultaneously personal and expansive. Mourners describe them as right, beautiful, or even fated, and find comfort in imagining the dead in their right element, in their right place.

The narratives reveal how individualized burial rituals are shaped through improvisation in relation to nature, inspiration from established funerary traditions, and the biographical ties of the deceased to water. They also show how memory work transforms large, anonymous seascapes into intimate deathscapes and places for commemorative practices.

By focusing on how scattering sites are made meaningful in narrative, the paper contributes to wider discussions about how natural environments become spaces of memory, and how storytelling mediates the relationship between the living, the dead, and the sea.