Abstract
This text is part of a research project called “Finnish funeral customs from the 19th century to the present”. In this project I take a look at Finnish funerals – how they have changed through the years and what reasons there are for these changes. Modernization is a loose frame for the picture I’m painting – urbanization, secularization and medicalization are familiar as the “usual suspects” when people talk about changing death ways in Europe and also in other parts of the world. Lately national differences have become a matter of interest in death studies. I hope that for its humble part this study may help to understand why we bury and mourn our loved ones so differently in places which are sometimes geographically or culturally not so far away from each other.

Keywords
funeral, Finland, modernization