Want a Viking Funeral? It's Legal in One US State

Why does the state get to decide how we are buried or cremated?

There’s a great scene at the end of the 1958 Kirk Douglas movie The Vikings where the warlord’s body is set to sea in a boat, and his men rain down arrows of fire on it, setting the vessel (and body) ablaze.

This is my dream burial. Unfortunately, my wife isn’t a fan of the idea, and even if she was, I’d be out of luck because it’s illegal in all 50 states.

Fortunately there is one place in the US that allows the next best thing: funeral pyres on dry land (ala Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi).

Of Viking Funerals

No, I’m not morbid enough to obsessively worry how I’ll be buried.

The idea was sparked by an article I came across recently in Cowboy State Daily that delved into Viking funerals—and dished on the one place in the country you can get one.

And yes, a pyre on dry land does qualify.

“The popular conception of what are commonly called ‘Viking’ funerals – a flaming longship – aren’t historically accurate…said Joe E. Pray of Pray Funeral Home in Charlotte, Michigan. ‘They (Vikings) were more likely to drag the boat ashore and burn it on dry land with the chieftain’s body and his possessions inside, or just bury the entire boat without setting it on fire,’ Pray told Cowboy State Daily.

…

In the United States, open-air cremation is legal only in Crestone, Colorado, according to the US Funerals Online blog. However, only a handful of such pyre services are allowed each year, and they’re exclusively for Crestone residents. 

And people might want to think twice about open-air cremation, Pray said. 

‘I’ve seen it, and it’s actually a gruesome process,’ he said. ‘It’s probably not something I’d want to watch happen to a loved one.’”

I don’t doubt a Viking funeral is gruesome, but it also go me thinking. Why does the state get to decide how we are buried or cremated? (I mean, is burning a body on a pyre any stranger than burying it in the ground?)

I can’t say this for certain, but I suspect for much of American history the state didn’t have much of a say in it. People were allowed to lay to rest their loved ones as they saw fit—whether through a quiet Christian burial or a pyre—as long as they didn’t violate the rights of someone else. My hunch is most of these burial laws were passed in the Progressive Era, when politicians and populists decided they needed to regulate all kinds of behaviors and practices that traditionally had been beyond the purview of the state.

So many people today simply assume the state has the right to dictate to us this and that. But the great thinker Frédéric Bastiat reminded us this is not so.

“It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property,” Bastiat wrote in The Law. “The existence of persons and property preceded the existence of the legislator, and his function is only to guarantee their safety.”

Indeed. So if I have my way, my last act of civil disobedience just might be a Viking funeral.

I don’t know if Bastiat would approve, but I’m certain Thoreau would.