The Noorderveld cemetery in Nieuwegein

Nieuwegein is a new town (founded in the 1970s), and Noorderveld, where most of the 60,000 inhabitants bury their dead, is a new cemetery.

The first thing I noticed when I entered Noorderveld was its size: Its huge. There is a large parking lot at the entrance, asphalted and brick roads connect the different sections, and signposts point to the buildings, the sections of the cemetery and the exit.

The cemetery is divided in smaller sections where the actual graves are, and when you enter a section you don't notice anymore how big the cemetery actually is. Click on the satellite link below this post to get an impression of the layout.

Because this is a new cemetery in a new town there are some differences with other cemeteries I have visited. First of all, there are no old graves, obviously. There are very few family graves - husband and wife are sometimes buried together, but that's about it. I had the impression that the number of young people buried here was relatively high. In other cemeteries you keep seeing the same surnames (names of families that lived in the area for centuries), but you don't see that in Noorderveld.

Photos by the author, November 2008.