When I die, I would like to be placed in a wooden boat with sundry flammable materials, floated down-river, with friends and family shooting flaming arrows at the boat until it ignites, cremating myself and allowing my residual ashes to flow into the sea. How legal is this, and what would I and my family have to do to get this approved / carried out without being hassled by legal authorities, etc.?
The easiest way would be to transport yourself back to 10th century Norway.
Seriously, without knowing where you are planning to do this, it’s hard to say.
Cremation is not as easy as it sounds, and incomplete cremation means that various body parts might float into shore, which is a health violation in most communities.
I doubt you could do this legally in the US, however you might be able to do it after you have been cremated and placed on a watercraft… actually, now I think about it I’m not sure they would allow a burning craft of any appreciable size to float aimlessly in any navigable waterway… hopefully there is a Plan B.
Snap! I knew I should have included location. I’m planning on retiring in southern Oregon, should I be so fortunate, so let’s choose that area.
You should be careful when rigging the mechanism to make you pop up and say “gotcha ya.” You don’t want to fling burning bits onto the mourners. Would ruin the joke.
My father-in-law wanted a Viking funeral. For obvious reasons, we couldn’t give him a full Viking funeral, but after having him cremated the normal way we made a small boat out of cardboard and newspaper and put some of his ashes in it. We took it down to the intracoastal waterway, put it in the water and set it on fire. This was probably not legal, but nobody objected and we didn’t get arrested.
That ain’t the way of Viking funerals anyway.
You should plan on being buried with your longship. Bring your own armour.
In fact, I believe there is one reference to a Viking being cremated in his ship, and it’s in a document that contains lots of other claims that are somewhat dubious. Bottom line: Vikings, at least important ones, were buried, not burned.
I’m with Flodnak and CasDave. OTTOMH, Baldur is put in a ship full of treasure, shoved down a ramp (by a really strong giantess. Thor tried and couldn’t move the ship. Thor then kills the giantess for showing him up), and set on fire. OTOH, there are numerous known Viking graves. You might set up an outline of stones in the shape of a ship. You might actually bury them in a ship. But, you would bury them.
If want to do it anyway, history notwithstanding, then tow the funeral boat out past the 12 mile limit. Shoot the flaming arrows from the tow boat and have a couple of sticks of DuPont Extra stashed down on the keel of the pyre. Nice flames, good ceremony, boom! No body parts washing ashore, and the mourners get a fireworks show to boot.
Also, I’ve never seen flaming arrows used in any educational or entertainment-based depictions of a Viking funeral. Instead, people already standing next to the longship simply set it on fire with torches. The arrows seem like a fairly labored and extraneous idea.
Rocket Gibraltar
It’s a film about an old man who wants a ‘Viking funeral’, the grandson determined to give him one, and a bunch of family drama. It’s a very good and surprisingly touching film.
The film Eulogy also featured a “Viking” funeral via flaming arrows. Complete with dynamite secretly stashed in the coffin boat.
Another modern depiction is found in the Blake Edwards film S.O.B.
The only way your plan will work in modern America is to have some well lubricated friends willing to ignore the law and environmental concerns. A cheap dinghy and a few gallons of gasoline are also helpful. Chances are you will just become lunch for a shark who has a taste for half-cooked meat.
i’ll bet you could get away with having your corpse set afire in a boat if you did it in international waters, far enough away from land to avoid the notice of the Coast Guard and other entities.
Or you could go the Beau Geste way and have your Viking Funeral ashore in the middle of a desert.
So about a year ago, my friend calls me up and says, “You have to come over RIGHT NOW!” She’s a little excitable on the most boring of days, so I say, “What’s up?”
“There’s a Viking Funeral happening outside my window. Flaming arrows! A viking ship!! On the lake!!!”
“Uh, sure there is. You got the good weed this week, didn’tcha? I gotta go wash my cat.”
Godsdammit if she wasn’t right: How to Send A Viking to Valhalla | The Order of the Good Death
And I missed the whole thing.
(The body was pre-cremated, however.)
First, tell us how many slave women are going to die with you, and whether or not we can have sex with them before they are slain.
Here’s the Viking cremation scene from the movie The Thirteenth Warrior. The sacrificial maiden doesn’t look very thrilled to be going on her “trip”.
You couldn’t do this at all in the UK. There was a court case running where a Hindu man wanted a traditional funeral pyre - the legal framework would not allow it as crematory fires have to be enclosed. A compromise was eventually reached with a partially enclosed facility at a specified rural location.
You could not make a viking funeral to comply in any way.
Si
A couple of years ago, I heard a guy describe how he’d helped give a friend’s car a Viking funeral…set it on fire, pushed it into a lake, etc. He said, “Alcohol played a large part at every stage of the decision-making process.”
I absolutely believe that.