the gentle art of swedish death cleaning margareta magnusson

Set in the not too distant future, the parents of a young woman killed suddenly in an accident try to commission Jesse – a “digital death manager” – not to curate her life but to erase it: to gain access to her files then destroy them. My recent short story How To Curate a Life, published by Storgy Books in the anthology Exit Earth, deals with precisely this issue. The programme also heard from bereaved relatives who experienced difficulties in accessing data, including Facebook profiles, of loved ones after their death. My Digital Legacy was part of the We Need to Talk about Death series and featured terminally ill patients with an extensive digital footprint who rely on the internet – especially on social media – to connect to the world around them. ShutterstockĪ documentary about this precise issue aired recently on BBC Radio 4. ‘Don’t mind me, just writing down all my passwords for when I die’. It is the antithesis, perhaps, of the ancient Egyptian tradition of being buried with things that might accompany us into the afterlife. We can start planning for our death by slimming down what we leave behind – shedding unnecessary objects in favour of what we actually need. Digital deathīut it also means we have more time to get rid of things. The book reflects the simple fact that we are all living longer lives. The idea is that it saves relatives the onerous task of making decisions about what to keep and what to throw or give away. Dostadning advocates the proactive and mindful clearing out of possessions before death.

Magnusson’s book chimes with the current anxiety about clutter in the 21st century. In Europe, the book has already occupied a good deal of reviewing space and according to Time magazine, dostadning will be the hot new trend stateside in 2018. How much these fad words are actually a part of Scandinavian culture is debatable, but dostadning is the new phenomenon outlined in Margareta Magnusson’s The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. Now, the new buzzword on the block is “dostadning” – a hybrid of the Swedish words “death” and “cleaning”. Hygge, for example – which is Danish for cosiness, contentment or well-being – dominated the publishing industry in 2016. There has been a trend in recent years, both in literature and in life, for Scandinavian concepts that are encapsulated in a single word.

The gentle art of swedish death cleaning margareta magnusson