Szatmarcseke Cemetery

The cemetery at Szatmarcseke holds around six hundred grave markers of a kind found nowhere else in this concentration: carved oak posts, roughly boat-shaped, standing on end in rows across a sloping field, weathered to grey, with a notched form at the top that is usually read as a stylised human figure and a hull below. Their origin is argued over, with claims for Finno-Ugric survivals and counter-arguments for a local craft tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; no explanation is settled. Ferenc Kolcsey, who wrote the words of the Hungarian national anthem, is buried here under a stone monument in the middle of the wooden posts, which is why Hungarians know the village.

What you actually see

• Six hundred boat-shaped grave posts - carved oak standing in rows.
• The disputed origin - Finno-Ugric survival or local craft, still argued.
• Kolcsey's grave - the author of the national anthem in the centre.
• The sloping field of grey timber - the cemetery seen as a whole.

When to go

April to October; the field is muddy in winter and spring thaw. One hour. Morning and late light bring out the carving. It is a working cemetery.

Honest expectations

It is a graveyard and behaving as though it were a monument is resented locally. The posts are weathering and some are decayed. The village is remote, near the Ukrainian border, with no services. There is nothing else to see there.

Nearby

Turistvandi mill is west; Csaroda lies north.