Remembering the Ancestors – Night Elf Burial Traditions
You can tell a lot about a culture by the way it deals with death. Pivotal moments in the lives of individuals and their families (births, coming-of-age, and deaths) become focal points of emotion, cultural values, philosophical and religious beliefs, and wider trends and traditions – taking a look at the way the Night Elves act around these things is a nice window into their lives.
The first avenue we’ve got into Night Elf burial traditions is the game world; graveyards exist all over WoW and most have cultural & zone-based models decorating them that Blizzard feel represent the lore of a race or location. Night Elf burial grounds like the one below show us a few key things straight away –
Night Elves favour burial (see the mounds, shovel, wheelbarrow, etc) over cremation, excarnation or exposure.
They mark graves with headstones and other iconographical objects (see the crescent moon statue thing)
They visit burial grounds and make provision for visitors (benches & lamps)
They leave (temporarily or permanently) offerings or objects significant to the deceased at the burial sites (books, amphora)
Starting with similar screenshots and a few other textual sources, I will try to explore these features a bit and get into what they mean and why they’re significant.
I’ll touch on the cultural side of burial in later sections so for now we will deal with the purely practical side of burial as a way to ‘deal’ with dead elves.
Night Elf culture is deeply in-tune with nature. They are conscious of their impact on the natural world, preferring to live alongside nature rather than in opposition to it, and have a deep respect for ecological balance. This belief may play a role in their attitudes to burial as a practical tool.
The following quotation from Wolfheart lifted from the one burial service we see described (of Shalasyr, Jarod Shadowsong’s mate, who passes away early in the book) shows both a practical approach to burial and a philosophical attitude to it-
“…All that remained was for her and Jarod to lead the bier and a procession of mourners out of the temple, through the gardens, and into an area beyond the city. There a small party of druids, led by Malfurion, greeted them.
Tyrande spoke to all. “As Shalasyr’s spirit has departed her mortal vessel, let that vessel now return its strength to the world… .”
The druids took up the body. With reverence, they set it into a soft patch of grass and small bushes. Two female druids lovingly adjusted Shalasyr so that she again looked as if she were only dreaming.
“Teldrassil welcomes this child,” Malfurion intoned. “The world welcomes this child back.”
The archdruid raised his staff. A soft wind swept through the area. The treetops gently swayed.
Around Shalasyr’s body, shoots grew, then bloomed into white and golden flowers…”
The Night Elves see themselves as intimately connected to the natural world – so much so that the physical strength they have gleaned from it during life, living off the land, should be returned to the land and re-join the natural cycle of the balance. While not all burial services will be performed by druids in this way (none of the game-world burial sites appear to be grown by flowers, rather dug manually) the principle of ‘returning to the earth’ remains a constant.
In the quotation above Tyrande mentions Shalasyr’s spirit “departing her mortal vessel” (and Jarod is allowed to witness this event, which the other characters remark as being a privilege – she seems to turn into a wisp) and this body/soul dualism would further reinforce the idea that bodily decomposition is not avoided or feared; as the body and soul are separate by the time of death, the former can be allowed to pass away entirely.
The ‘recycling’ of the body will be an important feature in any Night Elf burial traditions, and steps might be taken to ensure it is not hampered. Stone tombs or caskets like the humans seem to use would be out of the question. Similarly, local flora are likely to be a feature in each burial ground as the lands’ reclaiming of the dead is expected, not pushed away.
Night Elf burial sites have a distinctive look; they commonly feature objects with symbolic and practical significance that hint to the cultural values of the Kaldorei. Recurring features include their headstones, carved owl totems, and fonts of moonwell water.
The symbolism (if there is any at all) of the headstones is unclear, but they are significant when compared to the way other races mark their graves; humans, for example, use the symbol of the Church of the Holy Light or elaborate carved stone markers with inscriptions. The Night Elves’ headstones have a far more naturalistic look – either they are uncarved, simply foraged, or they are shaped to look deliberately so. It may be that the stones each bear unique features that identify the deceased’s grave that they mark (which again says a lot about Night Elves, able to identify subtle rock features) but they do not look at all like the elaborate dynastic tombs we see in real life or in the graveyards of the Eastern Kingdoms – perhaps hinting at a wider cultural attitude towards family, class, and inheritance.
The fonts of Moonwell water may have a practical role in worship or reverence, like the Moonwells themselves, but will also have a symbolic role as representative of Elune’s power & presence in the burial ground. Similarly the moon icon in the first sceenshot above has religious connotations.
The owl totem is the most interesting; here is where the headcanon comes in. The owl totem model appears as a generic ‘night elf doodad’ in a bunch of locations across Kalimdor, not just in graveyards, but I like to imagine it has a special function in the burial grounds. We mix up our bird symbolism a lot – the owl can mean anything from death to vigilance to wisdom (the last two feature in Night Elf culture already; wisdom in the racial icon, vigilance in the Watcher’s whole aesthetic and the Sentinel owls) – and having a totemic representation of all these things in the burial site could be important. The owl is seen as a wise guardian who watches over the dead; and drawing on the idea of the Sentinel owl spirits, could be a mediator between the spirits of the dead and the Goddess & the realm of the afterlife.
The quotation from Tyrande earlier starts like this:
“Now,” Tyrande went on, “we ask that the Mother Moon guide our sister Shalasyr on her sacred journey and that her ancestors and loved ones who have gone before her will make her welcome…”
This contains notions of a spiritual afterlife, and coupled with the Night Warrior elevating the spirits of the glorious dead to the heavens, could be grounds for a belief in a ‘mediator’ between the heavens and earthly existence. The owl totem might be representative of this function, as the mythical spirit that guides the dead to Elune’s embrace.
I’m grouping the last two bullet point together because they’re very similar – referring to the involvement of living Night Elves with the dead, once burial has taken place.
All the large Night Elf burial sites feature lanterns and benches which are likely there for the use of living visitors. Night Elves may regularly travel to burial sites to perform maintenance work, commune with the spirits, and remember their fallen ancestors. Remembrance and mourning are features in most cultures and it seems the Night Elves are no exception.
Night Elves also seem to be involved in a form of ancestor worship. One of the Darnassus cooking dailies “Remembering the Ancestors” shows us one way in which the Night Elves worship; they make and bless rice-cakes in the Temple of the Moon to offer at the ancestral shrine in the Darnassus grave site. The text is as follows;
“The living are not the only ones who require sustenance. One of my duties is to prepare the rice cakes that are left for the ancestors. Normally, my senior apprentice has the honor of taking the cakes to the Temple of the Moon for blessing and then presenting them to the ancestors. Since she is out of the city today, would you mind performing the duty in her place?”
-This is the shrine the trainer mentioned.-
<You lay out the rice cakes around the shrine, which begins to glow softly. A faint sense of approval washes over you.>
Note A) how the ‘living are not the only ones who require sustenance,’ B) the Temple is involved in blessing the offerings, C) this duty is considered an honour, D) there is a tangible response when the offering is left at the shrine.
This ritual expression of ancestor worship may be replicated at sites across Kalimdor, in more or less formal ways. Living elves might regularly visit burial sites to leave offerings of generic objects like rice cakes or candles, or amphorae of water or wine, or more personal objects to them or the dead. Burial sites in-game regularly have objects like pictures, wind chimes, books and weapons around or on top of the graves which might be offerings to the ancestors in general or particular ancestors who have passed on.
Ancestor worship provides the Night Elves with a tangible connection to their past and the elves that have gone before them, as well as cementing the cultural links that bind them together. It also feeds into their wider polytheistic religion that worships not only Elune but also a range of other gods and goddesses, as well as powerful spirits of nature and other forms of divinity.
In summary; Night Elf burial practices illuminate their attitudes towards life & death in relating to nature, their faith in the Goddess Elune and other religious beliefs, their close connection to their ancestors, and broader cultural values that like equality and classlessness when compared with other races’ burial traditions.
Of course, a bunch of this is headcanon and interpretation, inspired by lore and the way things are presented in-game; don’t cite me as a canon source! But feel free to use or adapt or critique any of the stuff here if you find it interesting.
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