What Is a Natural Burial Shroud?

This is part four of our 12-week series on natural burial: what it is, why it matters, and the shrouds we weave at LaHave Weaving Studio. New here? Start with our Introduction to Green Burial or check out our previous post from week three.

Before the casket, there was the shroud

Embroidered reliquary (a sacred container for holy relics) depicting the Saint Suaire de Besançon in a shroud, 16th-17th century. Musée Alsacien de Haguenau, France. Public domain.

Humans have been wrapping their deceased in cloth for thousands of years. The oldest fragments of linen fibre were dated from 34,000 years ago in the Republic of Georgia and some of the most famous evidence of woven linen shrouds are dated from Ancient Egypt between 3482-3102 B.C.E.

Before the industrialization of funerals families cared for their own dead. The body was washed, wrapped in cloth, and returned to the earth. Shrouds were used in ancient times in the Jewish and Muslim cultures and, often, still are today. In early Christian burials shrouds were called winding sheets. After the devastation of the plague in Britain the wool industry was suffering and so the 1666 Act “for Burying in Woollen only” decreed that the population had to be buried in a woollen shroud or be fined (which amounted to more than two months’ wages of a skilled tradesman).

Traditionally, a shroud was the primary burial covering, not a container, not a sealed vault but a simple cloth and a final act of care, carried out by people who knew the person best.


Here in Nova Scotia, the use of shrouds continued and well into the twentieth century, particularly in Gaelic Cape Breton communities. Families washed and dressed their dead at home in a shroud that might be made at home or purchased from a neighbouring village. Bodies were lain out and the community came to sit with the deceased. Death was not something that happened somewhere else, managed by strangers, like it typically is today.

In 2002, when Mi’kmaw master canoe builder Todd Labrador’s father Charlie died, community members gathered to make a birch bark shroud, sewn together with spruce roots, to honour him. Charlie was laid to rest in a natural burial, surrounded by animal hides, his hands and face covered in red ochre, a pigment carrying deep spiritual significance in Mi’kmaw tradition, associated with the passage from this life to the next. Todd built the coffin himself from plywood, because his father didn’t want fancy things. “He’d rather use an old piece of plywood than a brand new piece of plywood. That’s the way he lived,” he told CBC, “so we honoured him.”

Every shroud made at LaHave Weaving Studio carries with it that wish, to honour your loved one through the work of your hands and your heart.

How the casket and embalming became the standard for burials

For most of history, the shroud was the burial garment of most people. Even a simple wooden coffin was a luxury reserved for the wealthy. By the 1700s coffins had become more common across North America and Western Europe but a coffin was still plain, locally-made, and part of a ceremony that was shaped by family and neighbours.

The shift away from family-led death care was accelerated through the late nineteenth century on both sides of the Canadian/U.S.A. border. It is interesting to note that modern embalming is believed to have begun in 1861 in the American Civil War, mainly to preserve a deceased soldier’s body for transport home and to prevent the spread of infection.

Commercialization of funerals and after-death care grew. Around the 1870s-1880s in Guelph, Ontario casket manufacturers were using machinery to mass-produce what local carpenters had previously made by hand. Around that same time undertakers rebranded themselves as funeral directors and the word “casket”, originally meaning a small jewellery box, was chosen deliberately to soften the process of death.

The use of a simple untreated wooden coffin holding the body clothed in a shroud, a natural fibre chemise, or the deceased’s own natural fibre clothing is also an option for a natural burial.
 


Most funeral homes today offer coffins that are constructed with plastics, imported wood, and synthetic materials as well as using concrete liners and sealed vaults to contain embalmed bodies. These materials are not respectful of our environment or our loved ones and only act as barriers designed to slow decomposition, sometimes indefinitely. Contamination from the chemicals, metals, and plastics is untenable—we are polluting the water and land that we depend on for survival. 



“There are no hardwoods to harvest, no metals to mine. The shroud, a whisper of fabric against skin, replaces the ornate casket with its hidden cost to the environment.” -Tillwell.ca

So what is a burial shroud, exactly?

Our Osprey Natural Burial Shroud

A burial shroud is a length of cloth, typically linen or wool, used to wrap the body for burial. A fully biodegradable shroud is designed to return the body to the elements, be it by earth, fire, or water. Family members or friends may choose to wrap the body in the shroud themselves or may engage an end-of-life doula or funeral home to assist with preparations.


We are wrapped in cloth as soon as we are born and it seems fitting to be wrapped in cloth when our
earthly lives are over, an appealing symmetry as well as a primal link. Cloth is humble and vulnerable and is often called our second skin.

The woven shrouds crafted at LaHave Weaving Studio consist of two layers of woven cloth, natural fibre ties to keep the wrap secure, six webbed handles, and a reinforced fabric base with a constructed sleeve in which to slide an untreated wooden plank for stability. The shrouds are sturdy enough so that the body can be carried with dignity by six people, three on each side. The plank goes into the ground with the shroud, to return to the earth.

For some families, the care and craftsmanship of a handmade burial shroud can feel meaningful during an already tender time. There is something quietly different about cloth that was woven slowly, by hand, with intention.

Each of our shrouds is woven in natural linen, cotolin, or wool, by hands that have been weaving for fifty years. The weave is close and strong. The cloth has weight to it and is pleasing to the touch.  It is our hope that the cloth we weave and the shrouds that we sew from our cloth will honour you or your loved one, adding respect, beauty, and meaning to an end-of-life gathering.

Is natural burial right for you, your family, or a loved one?

There is no single answer but here are a few honest questions to think about.

Do the values behind natural burial - simplicity, ecological return, care close to home - reflect what this person would like?

Is there something about conventional funeral treatment that has felt too impersonal, too clinical, or, in some other way, not reflecting the emotions and spirit of those grieving?

Are you someone who wants to be more personally involved with the after-death care or sitting with the deceased, grieving with others, participating in a traditional wake or shiva in a more intimate environment? 



For some families, a burial shroud feels gentler and more intimate than a casket - closer to the natural rhythms of life and death. Others are drawn to the softness of wrapping a loved one in something made by hand, by someone who understood what that cloth would carry. It isn't for everyone. But for the families it's right for, it often feels like the most honest goodbye they could have given.

Natural burial doesn’t ask you to be a particular kind of person. It asks how you want the last rites to befit the person who has died.

Do burial shrouds work with funeral homes? Yes - most funeral homes with green burial experience are comfortable working with shrouds. Our planning guide and FAQ both cover this in more detail. And yes, burial shrouds are used across Canada - natural burial is legal in every province and territory.

If you wish to learn more our green burial FAQs answers questions most families have about legality, cost, and planning. And if you’re considering a LaHave Weaving Studio natural burial shroud, we’d welcome a conversation.

“Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again.”

- William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis, 1817

Next week: What Makes a Handmade, Woven Shroud Special? 

Sources

1. Historical shroud embroidery: Saint Suaire de Besançon, Musée Alsacien de Haguenau - Wikimedia Commons
2. Gaelic Cape Breton burial traditions: “With Respect to the Dead: Reconstructing Historic View of Death in Gaelic Nova Scotia,” Genealogy Journal, 2020
   
3. Mi’kmaw burial traditions and Todd Labrador: CBC News
   
4. Red ochre in Mi’kmaw tradition: CBC News / Alan Syliboy
   
5. History of coffins and caskets: National Museum of Civil War Medicine
   
6. Casket manufacturing in Canada: Labouring All Our Lives - “From Coffin to Casket: Early Burial Box Makers and Casket Manufacturers”
7. Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World" by Victoria Finlay (2021)
8. Shroud burial benefits and quote: Tillwell.ca - "The Beauty and Benefits of Shrouded Burials"