Wow, that was some freaky creepy stuff going on there...
It felt like a KKK meeting...

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Actually, outside of the robes it was exactly like a viking's funeral (although they'd use a small boat instead of a raft). I don't see the connection, but outside of the robes it wasn't anything satanic or cultish or anything like that. Well, maybe it was, but the idea was stolen from the vikings.

I thought they looked like those people who used to stand outside of airports and public places so they could preach to you about God and different things. It made me laugh, not quite KKK but yeah they were creepy.

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While very cult-like in its ceremony, the funeral was very Viking-esque.
It seemed to me like something old time sailors would do if they lost one of their own. Black Rock connection???

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"The Naked Gun!"

Frank Drebin remembers a lost love.

Frank: It's the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girls dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day.

Jane: Goodyear?

Frank: No, the worst.

I was thinking the whole thing might just be a one time thing to imply to Jack (and whoever he might later tell of what he witnessed) that they care deeply about each other as evidenced by how ceremonious their funerals are, perhaps they usually string up the bodies in the middle of "town" and throw rocks at the vultures that come to eat them.

Or it could be genuine and although we do not yet understand their ways they are actually the wisest people on Earth and are up to some serious but worthwhile lesson teaching to "our guys" through completely staged events.

Or everyone on the island but Locke is made from the smoke... he is the only survivor and the whole thing, and even events such as this funeral that play out while he is not present are done for his benefit.

Wouldnt the raft just roll right back up on shore with the waves? I thought it odd that they brought Jack to witness this ceremony, but that he was kept at a distance. What's the point of bringing him to this? Maybe to show him that they aren't cold blooded monsters, that they care feel, and grieve for their own?

I had the same thought....
The Viking funeral is a very symbolic burial. Either the boat/ship takes the soul to the afterlife or the fire from the boat/ship carry the soul to the heavens and calls on the "powers" of prosperity and fertility for the living. Kind of a fighting death by making life kind of thing....it's really interesting stuff (or maybe it's just because I'm Norwegian)

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I like the loudspeaker blasting some goofy music. Also, if they set the raft adrift won't it just drift around the island for a couple o' weeks and end up back on the beach (ala demond; and michael & sawyer)

Also, if they buried the bodies wouldn't the polar bears or the boars come and (gross!) dig them up? Wasn't that why Eko and Locke burned the plane with Yemi in it?

Why set it adrift? Why not just have a funeral pyre on land?

Hi!!! one of my first posts here...

I am not familiar with the whole Viking funeral thing , so when i watched the scene, it remind me of a documentary i saw about cremeation ceremonies in the Gangis river... because of the wooden "raft" that colleen wan on, the flowers and the fact that she was covered with a white cloth and the pyre... though I watched a very long time ago...

The name of the project dharma is a sanskrit term with different meanings in buddhism and Hinduism, in the dharma initiative videos, they say goodbye with namaste...

My two cents...