The cultural project Death Dining makes the students think about their own death

A colonel and his wife. A teacher. A whole family Eriksson. Gravestones so old that it is hardly possible to read who is resting underneath. Two hares with their winter fur half left jump smoothly between the burial site and gravel paths. Can those who rest in the ground hear their paws?

The students go on a soundwalk at the Norra cemetery in Östersund. Dressed in black, with headphones on and each with a flower in their hands, they walk slowly around the graves and listen to the voice of the artist Tove Berglund. "If you don't value death, then what is life worth?" she asks them through her headphones, but no answers are heard over the gravestones.  

"Perhaps the most important thing about this project is that the students will be exposed to things that chafe," Vice-Chancellor Anders Fällström has said about Döds dining.

And it seems to chafe. A student is seen stroking a tear from his eye. Another sits with her eyes closed and her head bowed, quietly listening to Tove Berglund's calm voice.  

The artist Tove Berglund meets participating students at Bua.

Several projects where academia meets culture

It is Anders Fällström's idea to bring together academia with culture that lies behind the students' walk among the graves and subsequent dinners on the theme of death. Previously, engineering students in Sundsvall have collaborated with Teater Västernorrland in the concept Science & Scenes. Here and now, it is mainly nursing, psychology and social work students in Östersund who encounter culture, via death. The hope is that, by talking and reflecting on death during the evening, they will be better equipped in their future professional roles.

"How do I want to die myself?" is another question the students have to reflect on when they take the short walk from the cemetery into central Östersund a little later.

The performing arts can offer special rooms

Tove Berglund got the idea for Death Dining when she was working on an art project on the theme of life events; baptisms, weddings and funerals.

"I understood the need to approach death and funeral and that the performing arts lend themselves very well to the conversations. The funeral rite is often linked to a grieving process and it is often within the faith community that we talk about grief and existential questions. In a secular society, those rooms don't exist, and I think that the performing arts have the opportunity to offer those rooms," says Tove Berglund.

Tonight, the room is in physical form at restaurant Bua. A smoke-filled, dim room with a funeral coffin set up on a large table awaits the students after the walk. They are welcomed by Tove Berglund, who encourages them to continue with the vanitas that is around the coffin on the table. All participants have brought something that symbolizes death or the transience of life for them. A cone, a handful of earth, a candle stump and an ultrasound image are placed around the coffin.

Talks about losing his mother

During the "artistically curated" dinner that follows, the participating students are offered food, speeches, conversations and difficult questions. The first speaker, Photo Artist Linnéa Romeling, talks about the experience of losing her mother to cancer at the age of 12.

"I understand early on that my grief is not welcome in this society," she says, and talks about how adults fold their eyes when they see her nervous eyes and sad expressions shortly after her mother's death.

"Is it our lack of religion that makes it so difficult for us to talk about grief?" These are questions that are discussed at the tables while a delicious tartare is served as an appetizer.

Food represents life and death

Bua's chefs have also worked with the theme when developing the evening's menu. Tartar, raw meat, is perhaps the evening's tastiest representation of death, a nettle soup with a boiled egg dyed in beetroot juice represents life. Dumplings, filled with lamb meat in a sauce of tomato and beetroot, can, according to the chef, perhaps be seen as tumors.

Participants eat with a good appetite. On the tables is a large lump of clay where the flowers have been tucked down. The flowers that the students wore already at the cemetery at the beginning of the evening are, according to the instructions, the flowers that they might have at their funeral. Lilies and peonies mix with spruce twigs and birch twigs with mouse ears.

Rituals help the heart beat when someone else's has stopped

The second speaker is Mid Sweden University's Karin Jarnqvist, Associate Professor of Sociology. She has researched funeral rituals and ceremonies.

"When words are not enough, the rituals are at hand. It helps the heart beat when it has stopped for someone else," she says.

When she has finished speaking, she asks the students around the tables to talk about funeral rites and discuss death.

The last to speak, before it's time to end the evening with a funeral beer, is Talajeh Nasiri, a playwright who, via the theatre stage, lets children meet death.

While the funeral beer is in progress, those who want to can try out the two funeral coffins that are on display on the restaurant's floor. There are many who take the chance, who lie comfortably in the narrow chest. A girl crosses her arms comfortably over her chest.

"This is how I'm going to lie," she says lightheartedly while her friends take pictures.

Some are so comfortable in the coffin that they ask for the lid to be put on.