The gay-decorated coffins are certainly not my cup of tea; I’m all for the pine box or maybe cremation, depending on what takes me out one of these days. I’d like to keep it simple and cheap.
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Sadly I have to agree with you about simple and cheap. This is only because a burning longship, or Scythian or Beowulf style kugan with horses, weapons and armor would be painfully expensive and probably violate some damn EPA regulation.
Things just aren’t what they used to be.
Speaking of burning longships...
Years ago, my sister-in-law had a pet white rat that eventually kicked off, and she wanted to give it a flaming cremation send-off on a vessel in my backyard creek. She put the rat on a small wooden raft, surrounded by crumpled paper.
I took one look and said, "I think you're only going to succeed in singeing its fur -- why don't you test it with a section of hotdog first, to see if you've got enough fire, because I don't think you do."
Sure enough. So she added more paper. I said, "Soak the rat in lighter fluid or gas or something." But no, that would be disrespectful.
So the rat went down the creek, singed fur and all.
Today the EPA would have a cow over that, I'm sure...