just add me to the compost heap, okay?

Being a claustrophobic type, I have never liked the idea of a traditional graveyard burial. Besides not liking the thought of being enclosed in a box, dead or alive, I don't like the prospect of gradual decay. And caskets can cost an awful lot of money. I wouldn't feel right sticking a relative with a four-figure bill for a pricey box when a cheap one would do. Crematoriums even allow cardboard boxes for cheapskate tree-huggers.

However, after reading a history of the early Vikings, I was intrigued by their ship burials. Although I should point out that on a personal level they aren't any more attractive to me than a graveyard. I'm afraid those burials at sea didn't happen nearly as often as most of us think.

The most famous example of an exhumed ship burial, The Oseberg ship, suggests that back when they were still heathens, they were much more creative with how they packed up their ancestors. 

Ship burials had some similarities to Egyptian tombs, but there are some major differences as well. For example, the Oseberg ship contained more than the usual collection of stuff you might need in the next life - household goods, pots, pans, even a wooden cart. (If you didn't get buried with household items, it could cause you to be homeless in the next life - it didn't mean you actually liked cooking.) It also contained the remains of two women instead of just one. And the skeletons were of vastly different ages. Some historians guess that the cheaply dressed, younger woman might have been interred against her will so the important, older woman would have a maid in the afterlife. 

The Yuk Factor really kicked in when I read about the final additions to the burial ship - 14 horses, three dogs and an oxen. These animals weren't simply slaughtered and added to the grave goods; they were literally diced up before being added to the mix.

Since the weather would have had to be above freezing in order to dig the grave, one can only think that the whole area got pretty damn putrid before they covered it all up. I hope clothespins had been invented by then.