Hubby & I had wanted to go this past weekend but the weather wasn't cooperative. Extreme high winds postponed many events and brought temperatures down into the negatives. Our age, or perhaps it was the warm house, caused us to reconsider standing around outside on such a cold blustery winter day. But we vow to attend next year. Weather permitting.....
History behind the event ~ In 1989, a Norwegian citizen named Trygve Bauge brought the corpse of his recently deceased grandfather, Bredo Morstøl, to the United States. The body was preserved on dry ice for the trip, and stored in liquid nitrogen at the Trans Time cryonics facility from 1990 to 1993.
In 1993, Bredo was returned to dry ice and transported to the town of Nederland, where Trygve and his mother Aud planned to create a cryonics facility of their own. When Trygve was deported from the United States for overstaying his visa, his mother, Aud, continued keeping her father's body cryogenically frozen in a shack behind her unfinished house.
Aud was eventually evicted from her home for living in a house with no electricity or plumbing, in violation of local ordinances. At that time, she told a local reporter about her father's body, and the reporter went to the local city hall in order to let them know about Aud's fears that her eviction would cause her father's body to thaw out.
The story caused a sensation. In response, the city added a broad new provision to Section 7-34 of its Municipal Code, "Keeping of bodies", outlawing the keeping of "the whole or any part of the person, body or carcass of a human being or animal or other biological species which is not alive upon any property". However, because of the publicity that had arisen, they made an exception for Bredo, a grandfather clause. Trygve secured the services of Delta Tech, a local environmental company, to keep the cryonic facility running. Bo Shaffer, CEO of Delta Tech, is known locally as "The Iceman" and caretaker responsible for transporting the dry ice necessary for cryopreservation to the IC Institute, something he has done since 1995. In that year, the local Tuff Shed supplier and a Denver radio station built a new shed to keep the body of Bredo in. In honor of the town's unique resident, Nederland holds an annual celebration, first started in 2002.
Tomorrow - The Hearse Parade!
What a creepy, but admittedly unique, festival! Looking forward to tomorrow's post.
ReplyDeleteLeave it to the Norse to bring life back to death ; 0 I would love to go to this festival and most wiccan/pagans would also celebrate it because of the understaning of our ancestral ties and it reminds me of Samhain. Maybe next year you can go!
ReplyDeleteI had to laugh at the "grandfather clause"! I imagine grand-popsicles are served as well. Great post, I love the Frozen Dead Guy Days!!
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