A cemetery designed as a forest, where a path through the pines does as much as any building.
At a glance
Skogskyrkogården, the Woodland Cemetery, lies in the south of Stockholm. Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz won the competition for it in 1915 and shaped it over the next twenty-five years. They worked with the pine forest rather than against it, setting chapels, a great cross and a meditation hill into the landscape. UNESCO added it to the World Heritage list in 1994.
Key facts
- Location: Sockenvägen, southern Stockholm
- Architects: Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz
- Created: 1915–1940
- Status: UNESCO World Heritage (1994)
- Style: Nordic Classicism into functionalism
History
The city needed a new cemetery and held an international competition in 1915. The young Asplund and Lewerentz won with a design that kept the existing forest and let it carry the mood.
Over the following decades they added the Woodland Chapel, the granite cross, the contemplation grove on its low hill, and finally the Woodland Crematorium with its open portico. The result influenced cemetery design across the world and earned World Heritage status in 1994.
What you see
There is little to point at and everything to feel. A broad path climbs past a plain cross to a hill crowned by trees; chapels sit quietly under the pines; the ground rolls in mown grass and forest floor. Architecture and landscape are inseparable, exactly as the designers intended.
Practical information
- Open: daily, as a working cemetery; visit respectfully
- Cost: free to enter
- Best for: the approach, the cross and the crematorium portico
- Time needed: 1–1.5 hours
Getting there
The cemetery has its own metro station, Skogskyrkogården, on the green line, about fifteen minutes from central Stockholm. The entrance is a short walk from the platform.
Nearby
- Söderort — the southern suburbs of Stockholm around the cemetery
- Stockholm city centre — fifteen minutes north by metro
Sources
- Encyclopædia Britannica / Wikipedia — Skogskyrkogården
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Woodland Cemetery (Skogskyrkogården)
- Wikimedia Commons — image source and licence
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