Want a Viking funeral? Only state that allows it is Colorado | Hacker News Reader

Want a Viking funeral? Only state that allows it is Colorado

cowboystatedaily.com

64 pointsbillfor66 comments

My father passed away in 2020. As he was a mariner, we wanted to give him a proper send off. We had him cremated and built a little wooden boat. We put his cremains in the boat and set it adrift and afire just offshore of Florida’s Treasure Coast.

We put concrete blocks into the boat to ensure that it would sink.

I asked USCG for permission beforehand and they had only reasonable restrictions such as my assurance that we would not leave anything floating afterward.

I should write up a blog post. We had a few lessons learned that I should share. Don’t use a flare gun.

I'd be interested in the lessons learned, I might need them some day. For example, how do you ensure that the concrete blocks sink all of the fire debris?

There was no way to ensure that. In the end, a couple bits of burnt wood broke off and were floating. We went around in a small boat and gathered them up.

Thanks, that makes sense.

I definitely want to read the blog post and I certainly need to know what you mean about the flare gun.

"Norse historians claim that in at least one instance, a deceased chieftain’s concubines were slain so that they, too, could accompany him." I think This is a treference to Ibn Fadlan's account and it's important to note 1. They were slaves, not concubines. I know the latter can be a subset of a former but it's important to be clear about it and 2. It was after she was ritualistically drugged and raped by his friends. Here is a link to his account: https://www.mrtredinnick.com/uploads/7/2/1/5/7215292/ibn_fad...

I read the account and thats not what it says, I think you are projecting onto it.

The girl volunteered for example.

There’s no way of knowing anything clearly from that account.

as pointed out in the source

> although it is clear in some places that inaccuracies and Ibn Fadlan's own prejudices have slanted the account to some extent.

Seems a bit silly to believe she volunteered for that while also stating that there's "no way to know anything clearly" (except possibly the most absurd part?)

>Seems a bit silly to believe she volunteered for that

People volunteered for some weird shit back in the day. Their morals and beliefs are nothing like ours.

you don't think it's at all likely that her life as a slave was so misreable this could've been a way out?

regardless my point is it's silly to try to reconcile "we can't know anything" with this one details they pulled out. Like why is the single detail that somehow is credible?

I wasn’t saying any of it was credible or not credible. I was saying it is unknowable and basically thread hijacking with a random point unrelated to the meat of TFA.

I could have written “the account claims she volunteered” and perhaps my comment would have made more sense.

Edit: This is applying: Our cultural values and context to: A translation of: A person’s (how credible?) account who was: From a long time ago and: Of a different culture than ours and was: Observing yet a third culture which was alien to him

What exactly are you disagreeing with? An enslaved woman can't consent to sex by her captors by definition so it's rape and Ibn Fadlan further mentions her being drugged and then the men drumming on the shields to drown out the sound of her screaming so it doesn't scare the other enslaved women which shows they at least thought she would be screaming and no one would volunteer if they knew the truth of what happened.

I don't think the original article was in any way trying to imply that the "concubines" were willing participants, inasmuch as they call out their being "slain," which seems rather involuntary. I'm not sure why you felt it was important to call out that this was not only a ritual sacrifice, but also a rather perverse ritual sacrifice - it doesn't seem relevant to the original article.

Yes, according to slaveholders, their slave totally volunteered to do what the slaveholder wanted them to do. That's definitely a reliable account.

No state allows my preferred method of burial, which is to have my body and treasure entombed in a multi-level dungeon full of traps and monsters.

Which state disallows that specifically?

Most states disallow traps - they're indiscriminate devices that could harm people with legitimate reasons to go on your property, e.g. emergency workers.

what are they gonna do, arrest me?

They could arrest whoever owns that land.

they'd have to navigate the dungeon first. if they do that, then I guess me being arrested is their prize

They can summon your spirit and bind it to a prison cell (assuming you'll build a pyramid with traps).

Their fault for sending the clerics in before the rogue.

They're too late by definition: the dead have no need for emergency services.

There are no legitimate reasons to go on my property.

Nonsense. Property ownership is not absolute.

If the police can convince a judge that there is probably cause to believe that a crime is being committed on your property and to give them a warrant, that would be a legitimate reason to go to your property.

I don't believe any state specifically disallows traps and monsters. They just say how you're allowed to dispose of a body, not all the ways you can't. In other words, it's not an Air Bud situation. Anyway, just a joke, I don't have enough kobolds to populate a dungeon with (yet).

I don't think this is just a joke, it's a gross overstep by liberal governments. We should rally together as conservatives and libertarians to ensure that we get the burial that we deserve - big government has to go.

I want my ashes thrown in a 1-gal pickle jar with liquid mercury, shaken up and then thrown at an obsolete chemotherapy machine which will then fall off the back of a truck in front of the statehouse at 3am, or something like that. I'll make sure to set aside bail money and whatnot for my heirs.

ahem

“In the former film, the deceased Sith lord, still in his full black armor, is set ablaze atop a funeral pyre on land.“

Anakin appears as a force ghost at the end of the film alongside fellow Jedi Obi-Wan and Yoda. In the case of the others, we saw in the films that their bodies vanished as they died. There is every reason to think that Anakin’s body similarly vanished off-screen and the funeral pyre was just to burn the Darth Vader armor.

Also note though that Obi-wan and Yoda are already standing there and force ghost Anakin fades in next to them after the funeral pyre has already started. So was Anakin still slightly alive and body intact when Luke started the funeral pyre and it was only at that point that he actually died?

Maybe the force ghost visibility power didn’t come so naturally to Anakin, maybe he also just took some time to decide on the apparent age of his ghost

It makes even less sense now because they added some convoluted lore around it later. Jedi don’t automatically turn into spirits, it was something Qui-gon Jinn learned and taught to Yoda and Obi-wan.

Wonder where this idea of a Viking burial being this one single method came from. Burial mounds were quite common among the Norse, though perhaps the "viking" part of it is important here, because presumably we're only talking about bodies from people who perished while far from home.

In any case, there's no mention of this method on the wikipedia page for Norse funerals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_funeral

I would imagine a burning boat doesn't get anywhere near as hot or stays burning long enough to compare to a crematorium so you end up with a badly burnt corpse floating in the water...

kind of makes sense that people don't want random corpses floating around.

Northern India just left the chat.

makes sense. crestone has an interesting sense of spirituality about it. it’s about 30 minutes north of where my family is from and i went there with a group of friends to see what it was all about

https://www.uncovercolorado.com/things-to-do-in-crestone-co/

Only 5 states let you compost your body.

> California is the fifth state to legalize the practice, following Colorado, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Under the law, human composting will be allowed starting in 2027. The process involves placing human remains in a steel box with biodegradable materials, which help the body naturally decompose.

A steel box? What if I want a tree to grow out of my organs?

Great. At this rate I'll have to get my friends/family/lawyer to steal my corpse from the hospital and bury it the old fashioned way in the middle of nowhere.

It sounds like funeral homes lobbied for the steel box part.

Sue the other states for obstructing religious freedom. After all, Michigan permits animal sacrifices.

Do they restrict which animals, beyond (probably) not human?

All states permit animal sacrifice as long as you how careful not to cause unnecessary pain to the animal.

Except for endangered animals I suppose.

Farm animals are also exempted from most animal cruelty laws via the magic words "standard agricultural practice".

Why is the government involved in this, again?

Presumably because it's in the public interest to ensure bodies are properly disposed?

No, it's not. We should just let the Free Market decide how to dispose of bodies. If people in apartments choose to let their relatives decay in their homes, or bury them in very shallow graves, that's their business.

Well, I think there is some level of regulation that should be in place. For instance, if I live on a small property next to another small property, it would have a pretty negative impact on me if my neighbor decided they wanted to leave their dead relatives in the open on a corner of the property abutting mine.

Obviously that’s an extreme scenario. I generally agree with you that burial is over-regulated (c.f. human composting) but there should be some ground rules in place.

>it would have a pretty negative impact on me if my neighbor decided they wanted to leave their dead relatives in the open on a corner of the property abutting mine.

More or less negative than it would be if your neighbour was leaving animal remains instead of dead relatives?

You generally can’t do that either.

Because the government is just a proxy for the will of the people, and the people don't like icky things and thoughts. And mishandled corpses are very icky to see and think about.

It's the same reason the government has a history of getting involved in people's bedrooms.

You referring to the disposal of human bodies as icky makes it clear that you aren’t familiar with the very real public health consequences that can arise from unhygienic disposal

There are very real public health consequences for bedroom activities too.

Do we really need to explain the difference between burning a boatload of corpses and making love?

If your argument is "people should/shouldn't be able to do this thing that's deeply meaningful to them because of/despite the public health risks", yes, you really do need to explain why these cases are different from each other.

The scale of the public health risk is nowhere near the same, for one.

We might also consider that the "deeply meaningful things" phrase is hiding behind superficial similarities. One is a reproductive function and an important part of a well-functioning couple; the other is an ancient burial practice that nobody can truthfully claim is part of their living culture.

You're sea-lawyering. We know you understand the difference.

> One is a reproductive function and an important part of a well-functioning couple

The activities that people want to regulate tend to not fall under either of those (or at least their status as such is disputed).

> You're sea-lawyering. We know you understand the difference.

Nope. I genuinely think it's a legitimate comparison.

I'm well aware of them, I'm providing an additional, cultural (as opposed to scientific) reason for why people feel the need for legislature about body disposal.

You're asking why there's a law against setting a boat on fire and casting it adrift on a waterway? I feel like that one speaks for itself frankly. In general most ways of burning a body on a floating boat aren't safe to other people, and there hasn't been enough demand to carve out rules for a safe way to do it.

If freedom of religion means people have the right to meet in close physical proximity for worship services during a pandemic then it should mean people have the right to send burning corpses down a river as a sacrament to Odin. The former is objectively a bigger threat to public safety than the latter, and I would argue the latter is better for the environment than modern Christian burial.

Winter is coming. When all of the dead become part of the army of the white walkers, people will start accepting funeral pyres again. You wait and see!

Also, this reads like an ad

Literally 1984, bros.

The Star Wars spoiler was so unnecessary.

I think "the bad guy dies at the end" is mild enough to be outside the statute of limitations for a 40 year old movie.

Turns out he's Luke's father as well. Cope and seethe.

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