A Church Remembers Avicii, With Hits Instead of Hymns

A crowd waiting outside the Hedvig Eleonora Church in Stockholm on Friday for a religious service remembering the musician Avicii.CreditCreditErika Gerdemark for The New York Times

By Lisa Abend
Nov. 19, 2018



STOCKHOLM — Olle Liljefors stood in a makeshift D.J. booth on Friday evening, spinning tracks by the Swedish musician Avicii, who died suddenly in April. It was not yet 8 p.m., but the cavernous venue was already at capacity, and Liljefors looked slightly nervous.

Stepping away from the decks, he swapped his black leather motorcycle jacket for white robes and a gold-color stole. Then, with minutes until Mass began, the Lutheran pastor mixed one last song and bopped his head in time to the electronic beats that filled the grand dome of the Hedvig Eleonora Church, a striking ocher octagon in Stockholm wedged between chic restaurants and a busy shopping street.

Ulf Norberg, left, and the choir during the Mass on Friday.CreditErika Gerdemark for The New York Times

The service that followed was intended in part as a memorial to Avicii, whose real name was Tim Bergling, who died in Muscat, Oman, in an apparent suicide. But by replacing the normal hymns with Avicii’s music, the religious ceremony was also part of a continuing effort by Liljefors and other clergy to draw younger members to the dwindling ranks of the Lutheran Church of Sweden.

Photographs of the musician, who grew up in Stockholm in the parish that the Hedvig Eleonora Church serves, were on the altar. Bergling’s father gave a short speech that brought many in the pews to tears. Liljefors delivered the sermon, which drew on lyrics from Avicii’s songs. “When we sit at home ‘waiting for love,’ or when we are happy and want to dance, or when we feel lost, like ‘wake me up when it’s all over,’ music can bring love, hope, comfort and joy,” he said.

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