Eighteen two-man teams of Hungarian gravediggers demonstrated their skills on Friday for a place in the regional championships to be held in Slovakia later this year.
Participants in the contest, held in the public cemetery in the eastern Hungarian city of Debrecen, were judged on their speed but also scored points for style – the look of the grave mounds.
Janos Jonas, who teamed up with his son, Csaba, didn’t need any training or practice before the contest as he’s only a few weeks away from retirement.
Organiser Iren Kari said she hoped the contest would help boost respect and recognition for gravediggers and attract more people to the job, which is under threat from the high proportion of cremations compared to burials.
Cemetery managers said they were having difficulty finding replacements for retiring employees as young people didn’t want to be gravediggers.
All contestants had shovels, rakes, axes and pickaxes to dig graves 0.8 metres wide, two metres long and 1.6 metres deep.
But no two teams seemed to use the same technique, with some teams preferring to dig together, while in others one man dug while the other made neat piles of earth.
For safety reasons, only one member of each team was allowed to work in the grave after reaching a depth of one metre.
After each team finished digging, there was a short break and then the earth was shovelled back into the grave, each topped by a burial mound roughly the size of a large casket.
The fastest time to dig a grave was just over 34 minutes.
The regional contest for gravediggers will be held in Trencin, Slovakia, in November.