ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the ways in which a spontaneous memorial may develop from an immediate act to a more planned material place of grief and remembrance. Analysis draws on the various viewpoints on the production of memorials on public ground found in two applications requesting to erect memorials on sites of individual deaths in the city of Malmö, Sweden, sent to and responded to by the Streets and Parks Department in Malmö. Spontaneous memorialisation has become a fairly well documented subject in academic fields such as ethnology, cultural geography, sociology, religious studies and death studies. The production of a spontaneous memorial may thus be seen as an emerging grief rite dealing with feelings of heightened insecurity, eroded cultural values and perceived threats to the continued existence of society. The impact of political, religious, cultural and social structures and constitutions in the production of a memorial place has also been given attention.
