Put your best foot forward and get your groove on: Norway has a traffic sign that is absolutely silly. Residents of Ørje, Norway are enjoying this little prank sign to the fullest before authorities take it down, because apparently it violates the Road Traffic Act. At least the Mayor of Ørje approves of having harmless fun across the street for the time being.

The origin of this traffic sign’s image is the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch, which is one of the greatest sketches from BBC’s Monty Python‘s Flying Circus. It aired in 1970 during season 2, episode 14. In this sketch, Michael Palin must demonstrate his original silly walk to John Cleese, a civil servant, in order to get a grant from London’s Ministry of Silly Walks.

The entire sketch begins and ends with the simple joke that walking “normally” is just as absurd as silly walking and that the government is equally as absurd about rules and regulations. Who’s to say that your walking gait is silly enough or not? John Cleese, that’s who.

There are also quite a few easter eggs of the Silly Walk sketch hidden across various formats, such as Cleese’s specific silly walk shown on a computer screen in N64’s Goldeneye 007 and a background character silly walking around London in Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century.

We certainly don’t want to live in a world without silly walks, so silly walk your day away, Norway! And be sure to check out the full Silly Walk sketch online from Monty Python’s YouTube channel:

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HT: NRK
Image Credit: BBC