Real body bags, a priest reciting last rites to fictional soldiers, and cold-storage stress tests reveal just how far Sweden is willing to go to prepare its defence.
Sweden’s armed forces have carried out a full-scale exercise in the logistics of burying fallen soldiers, part of a broader shift by the once-neutral Nordic country toward “total defence” planning since joining NATO in 2024.
The mortuary drill formed part of Aurora 26, Sweden’s largest national military exercise since the 1990s, which ran from late April to mid-May 2026 and involved roughly 18,000 troops from 13 nations, according to the Swedish Armed Forces.
A peer-reviewed account published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry describes a mortuary affairs component using more than 500 mannequins and body bags representing fallen service members – a scale of drill not attempted in Sweden since the early 1950s.
More than 300 military personnel took part, alongside the Church of Sweden, the Swedish Tax Agency and the country’s conscription agency.