In Finland, the history of the texts on gravestones has mainly been studied in general works dealing with cemeteries and funeral culture. In foreign research, the inscriptions and epitaphs of monuments have been studied more often. However, these texts have rarely been examined from the viewpoint of onomastics either in Finland or elsewhere. Nor has the significance of literacy always been problematised in this context either.
Moreover, data relating to rural monumental culture have been very little studied in Finland, particularly in relation to the dead persons’ identities, and thus, my research offers a totally new approach to this subject.
In this article I used a collective biographical method and databases to examine how sepulchral monuments represented the dead persons’ identities and life stories. I considered in particular the role of improved literacy skills of the common people in this change. They were an important factor behind the creation of visible monuments and preserving the collective memory of the deceased person.
Kotilainen, Sofia, 'Rural people’s literacy skills in the remembrance of the departed: the writing of personal names on sepulchral monuments at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries'. Mortality, 18 (2) 2013, 173–194.
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