Structured like the pilot episode of a future soap opera, Snake Oil: An agit soap focuses on one of the pillars of the Norwegian economy and democracy: the oil and gas industry. The year was 1973: the oil crisis caused by the Yom Kippur War, forced even the King of Norway to use public transport in solidarity with the impossible gasoline prices for ordinary people, while Norwegian oil production accelerated. An Iraqi geologist, Farouk Al-Kasim, helps locate oil on the Norwegian continental shelf in the North Sea. The Americans rush to travel to the country on a first-class flight, bringing their expertise in oil exploitation and their particular interests. Little do they know that Huginn and Muninn are traveling with them; the oil crisis has awakened the Norse gods, their adversaries, and the eschatological paranoia that others ignore. It has also risen Aasta Hansteen from the dead, leading her to once again possess Ingeborg Køber, the psychic medium, who is trying to order a meal at the Valkyrien restaurant. Anders Lange, forefather of the FrP and not a particular enthusiast about his dugnad duty in public transport, is late for his meeting with Jörmungandr. Led by Ratatosk through the winding labyrinths of the Oslo metro, he meets the World Serpent. They come to an agreement, but to whose advantage?

Rose Hammer is an art collective based in Oslo. Since 2019, they have produced the series National Episodes, in which they use various formats (theater, radio plays, TV soap operas) to explore, from a politically engaged perspective, little-known but crucial episodes in Norwegian history. Rose Hammer places itself in the tradition of radical pedagogy, the theater of the oppressed, and the pedagogical turn. Snake Oil: An agit soap(2025) is Rose Hammer's third National Episode. Previous episodes are Grini and The Futures of Norway and The Radical Flu.