“You could make the wreath as expensive as you want. It just depends on what you want in terms of flowers and leaves,” says Pieke Doorn-Witteveen of the Graftrommelmuseum in Veenhuizen. “Funeral companies also rented out grave drums. People who didn’t have the money to buy a drum and a wreath could choose a grave drum for six months or a year.”
In Drenthe, about 150 grave drums have been preserved. That is different in the Catholic south of the Netherlands, explains Doorn-Witteveen. “There they said: done now, everything must be removed, it is a mess here. You will hardly find drums there. In the north of the Netherlands, where most people were still reformed, the drums were left behind.
In the Graftrommelmuseum in Veenhuizen, drums from all over the country are restored to keep history alive. “It is of course very nice that our generation and subsequent generations can see that this is something from the past and maybe this will come in again, how nice to store something in a drum like that. Make sure it is wind- and remains watertight, because then it can remain good for a long time.”
Schutrup spent a year restoring the drum. The drum hangs in a cabinet of zinc and oak in the cemetery. So ‘the last grave drum of Rolde’ will not soon perish.