Last year, I skipped Halloween and All Saints Day because I was sick, but I didn’t miss them this year. Yeayy!!
Halloween Day falls on 31st October while All Saints Day falls on 4 November and usually Swedes celebrate them together in the nearest weekend from those 2 dates. In 2017, it was on Saturday 4th November.
Everyone (at least in my class on Friday evening before the Day) seemed so hype about it. Some of them just bought the costumes while the others made the costumes by themselves. Initially, my Indonesian friend wanted to wear pocong costume to represent Indonesia but unfortunately, they didn’t make it 🙁
Halloween was celebrated in Kungsträdgården at 5 pm. I went there with my friends, Supritha and Salwan. Since winter has arrived, the sky was dark, just like 9 pm in Jakarta. We enjoyed looking at the performances on stage and the cosplayers.
Here are some cos-players that I successfully took ^^ Quite scary isn’t it?
Then, we went to Skogskyrkogården, one of the Unesco World Heritage and the only one and only of the Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm Sweden. In here, people bring candles to lighten the cemetery, under the philosophy of connecting the people in this world with passed-away saints.
The cemetery is quite big, we walked around from the hilly terrain, took pictures of candles along the way until we arrived in the old cemetery. Interesting I found is the cemetery is still used to bury the body, I thought this cemetery is already full of old ancestors. Other than that, I found that some tombs are used for 2 persons though people bury them in a different time. We guessed that those 2 persons are probably husband and wife. What made us do self-reflection of our own life is we found some tombs were lightened by candles while most of the tombs were not. We realized that person inside tombs lighten by candles is still being remembered by his/her family. We realized that we have done well to others so that people will still remember us even when we die.
Here are the photos
All in all, that day is a good experience to know Swedes culture. I also enjoyed my time with my India and Canada friends ^_^
Oleh:
Titi Sari Nurul Rachmawati - Stockholm
Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Infrastructure
Master Programme - KTH Royal Institute of Technology