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Articles - CfP Topic

Vol. 12 No. 1 (2026): Death, Loss and Mourning in Film and Media

Dancing with Death in a Post-Christian Society: Satire, Social Order and the Secular Imaginary in the TAKK FOR ALT TV Series (NO 2023–present)

DOI
https://doi.org/10.25364/05.12:2026.1.6
Submitted
May 30, 2025
Published
2026-05-15

Abstract

From the outside, the role of religion in Norwegian society can seem paradoxical. Church attendance is low by global terms, and in surveys a majority of Norwegians claim to have no religion. Culturally, however, the Lutheran church plays a significant role in marking rites of passage, including funerals, and appeals to Christian heritage play a role in contestations of national identity, suggesting society remains marked by its Christian legacy. To interrogate this post-Christian identity, in this article we examine the Norwegian TV series TAKK FOR ALT (VGTV, NO 2023–present), in which comic actors use Lutheran funeral practices to stage their own funerals. Using Charles Taylor’s concepts of the “secular social imaginary”, “disciplines of disenchantment” and “North Atlantic world”, we ask what cultural work this mockumentary performs and what it reveals about the varieties and self-confidence of the North Atlantic secular imaginary and the preoccupations of Norwegian celebrity culture.