Swedish author Margareta Magnusson is a cultural icon of the over-80s generation. Her book, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, became a bestseller in several languages. Magnusson inspires a generation to shed their clutter and, in turn, simplify their lives and prepare for death, regardless of how distant death may still be.
She is described as the morbid version of Marie Kondo, a woman famous for her own decluttering technique and the star of a Netflix show, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. But Magnusson is more than just a darker Kondo. By thinking about what to leave behind after death and what to get rid of, she makes her reader think about death in a less confrontational and intimidating way.
In the act of death cleaning, we are encouraged to think about our possessions not from our own perspective, but in terms of a gift to the next generation, whether they can get any use from the items and if they will find them important later down the line. The rest, what we don’t want to give, is only a burden for the next generation. It falls on us to clean up our act.
For Magnusson, leaving and giving are deeply intertwined. This becomes even more evident in her sequel, The Swedish Art of Ageing Exuberantly. On the surface, the book is a good-natured and humorous set of stories from her life, but it is actually centred around the pragmatic anecdotal wisdom of an 88-year-old, and includes phrases like, “Take care of your hair - if you have any.”
When I read the book, I realised that the sequel is all about giving. “Listen to the younger generation”, Magnusson says, “give them your undivided attention”, “volunteer as much as you can in the community”. She encourages the idea of nurturing a living being, and if it cannot be a pet, then it should be a plant.
Moreover, one frustration Magnusson had to grapple with was when she was forced to use a chunk of her bestselling book earnings to pay for a health care emergency, when she had planned to leave the money to her children.
Part of leaving is giving, not only possessions, but also many other things, such as time and attention. When I categorise agetech startups, I combine “giving and leaving” into one category for this very reason. Read up on this in my post “Agetech everywhere.”
Magnusson focuses on possessions. Indeed, there a lot of other stuff that Magnusson left out of her books, which we have to consider when preparing to leave. In fact, wills, taxes, inheritance, insurance and much more can often become extremely overwhelming for a bereft family to manage.
Many elders want to prepare for their departure ahead of time, and with intention - this is why Magnusson’s books resonate so deeply. Startups are now catching on to this and are offering services to make these preparations easier.
The startup Empathy began as a digital service focused on “post-death” services to help families manage bereavement strife. Today, the company is one of the top five agetech startups in the U.S. according to the data platform Tracxn. Agetech fund Primetime Partners was an early investor. In total, $162m was invested in total by top-tier funds such as Index, General Catalyst and Aleph. Then, an alliance of insurance groups invested too, becoming what has been dubbed the “Emphathy Alliance.”
In 2024, three years after the company was launched, Emphathy launched “LifeVault,” a service which allows elders not only to write their will but also to document and organise their financial assets. I believe this tool will prove to be extremely popular with the elderly generation.
On a more personal note, one of my best friends from college is Jana Magnusson, Margareta’s youngest daughter. She is the one who, in Magnusson’s sequel, fell off a horse at four years old in an era where parents were apparently not so paranoid about child safety as they are today.
When I asked Jane what her mother would think about using a platform to carry out digital “death cleaning,” she laughed and said her mother would probably just use the “delete” button a lot.