73. How Norwegian Humanists Changed a Nation | Tale Pleym on Ceremonies, Confirmation & European Secular Services

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"That's what humanism is about, isn't it? That we have the freedom to do whatever we feel is right for us."

Tale Pleym is Chair of the European Humanist Professionals and Senior Ceremonial Advisor of the Norwegian Humanist Association, where she has been conducting humanist ceremonies for more than 15 years. She joins us to explore how humanist ceremonies and secular services are shared and strengthened across Europe, and what organised humanism can achieve when it grows deep roots in society.

Topics we cover

✔︎ How the European Humanist Professionals network connects practitioners across borders through webinars, workshops, and conferences 

✔︎ How Norway's humanist confirmation became a genuine secular rite of passage that now outgrows the church in major cities 

✔︎ What other humanist organisations can learn from Norway — and what large organisations can learn from small ones

Connect with Tale and find out more

• Norwegian Humanist Association: https://www.human.no/om-oss/norwegian-humanist-association
• Email: tale.pleym@human.no
• European Humanist Professionals: https://www.humanistprofessionals.eu
• Festival of Humanism, Bournemouth — Humanists UK: https://humanists.uk/events/festival2026/

Transcript

Introducing Tale Pleym

James Hogson 0:01

Hello everyone, and welcome to Humanism Now, a podcast about secular ethics, curiosity, and compassionate change. I'm your host, James Hodgson. Ceremonies mark some of the most profound moments in our lives. And today we're exploring how humanist ceremonies are shaped, supported, and shared throughout Europe. My guest today is Tale Pleym Chair of the European Humanist Professionals and Senior Ceremonial Advisor of the Norwegian Humanist Association. I'm delighted to welcome Tale to discuss how humanist professional services are shared throughout Europe, the continued rise of humanist ceremonies, and also to preview a special session that Tale will be hosting at the Humanist UK's Festival of Humanism this June. Tale Pleym, thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now.

Tale Pleym 0:47

Thank you for inviting me. I'm really looking forward to this.

About European Humanist Professionals

James Hogson 0:51

My pleasure. Very good to see you again. So, as mentioned, you are the current chair of the European Humanist Professionals. Could you perhaps start by sharing for our listeners what is the EHP, who it's for, and how you're connecting humanists throughout Europe?

Tale Pleym 1:07

Well, I wanted to sort of start a little bit of the history of EHP, European humanist professionals. This small little organization is nearly 40 years old. People before me have been working together humanists in Europe for a very long time. Now the EHP, who we are, a board of uh people from different countries in Europe. We have Iceland, Belgium, Italy, myself from Norway, and uh you, James from England. You are on the board of EHP as well. So that's how we know each other. And um EHP, what we are for is really just to focus on humanist services in Europe. So we want to reach all the people in Europe who do humanism in practice, basically, who do humanist services. And the way we reach them is through webinars. We just had a great webinar in February about chaplincy in Belgium with uh Professor Um Carmen Schumann, and we had over 50 people coming into that webinar from all over Europe. And then we do uh workshops, like we're going to do workshops in Bonn Ruth in June, and we have had conferences, but it's all about getting people together and doing humanism in practice.

James Hogson 2:32

And I think it's very interesting as a pan-continental organization that you talk about humanism in practice. I assume it's practiced very differently in different countries, and each country brings its strengths. So, what are some of the main learnings that you've had being part of the board, seeing how humanism has been strengthened in different countries? You know, are there some examples of countries, for example, that are really making great strides?

Tale Pleym 3:00

The reason why I said yes to chair, or I started by being a board member first, and then I was asked to take over the chair role. And the reason for that is that it gives me so much joy in life to see how people in different organizations in Europe do, for instance, ceremonies in a different way than we do in Norway. So I'm always learning something, and I get inspired by how people do it. And so it's just like an endless way of just being inspired and learning and being motivated over and over again whenever I meet a European humanist. That's the point, really, of EHP, that we can learn from each other and see, for instance, humanist funeral. How do you do it in England compared to how do we it in Norway, for instance? Because that's a good thing about humanism. We don't have a book that says this is how you need to do it. It's not like that at all. We have freedom and we can do whatever we want. And so it's important to learn from each other.

James Hogson 4:00

Absolutely. And that's definitely one of the things we hear, particularly in humanist ceremonies, that there is the freedom to really conduct those in whatever way people choose. But of course, you cover humanist professionals covers a wider remit than just ceremonies as well, in terms of, I guess, education, chaplain.

Tale Pleym 4:19

There's the three sort of strands that we do is ceremonies, education, and chaplaincy. And you think, oh, maybe that's sort of easy in a way, but it's not, because when you get into it, like I just said, ceremonies are different from country to country. Chaplaincy is or existential care, but that's the same thing, is very different from country to country. Some countries don't even have it, and others have a lot of it, like in um Netherlands and Belgium, they're very good when it comes to chaplaincy. And then education. And education could be anything from children up to adults, right? When it comes to humanism. And what we do um in the Nordic countries is confirmation for humanist confirmation for teenagers. And so that's how we see humanist education.

Humanist Confirmation In Norway

James Hogson 5:12

Yeah, that's very interesting. I don't think we've discussed uh humanist confirmations on the podcast previously. Could you explain what a humanist confirmation would look like in practice?

Tale Pleym 5:25

Sure. This is actually our biggest activity in the Norwegian humanist organization. And it's connected to our confirmation tradition in Norway. With the church, you know, before, in the yeah, 200 years from now, if you didn't have a confirmation in the Norwegian church, you couldn't get a job, you couldn't get a a house, you weren't an adult, basically. So religious confirmation was what everyone had to do. And then in the 1950s, there were a group of people in Norway who said, you know what, I don't want my child to have to stand in front of a priest and lie like I had to do. So I'm gonna change that. I'm gonna make sure that there is an alternative for my child when my child is 13, 14. And that was the start of the humanist movement in Norway. People reacted to the religious confirmation and that people had to do it. They didn't have any freedom. So from that came the uh Norwegian humanist confirmation. And the start was that it had to be a real alternative. But now, 70 years later, in many of the largest cities in Norway, we are bigger than the church. You choose us over the church. So that's very interesting. My organization of being part of changing Norway, making it more democratic, making it easier for people to choose, having real alternatives. It means that you have the freedom from religion in reality. And majority of people in the world don't have that at all. So I'm I'm so proud of being part of this work that we do. It's really meaningful for a lot of people.

James Hogson 7:23

That's fantastic. And yeah, it really is providing freedom of choice.

Tale Pleym 7:27

Yeah.

James Hogson 7:28

And true freedom of belief for people to choose the confirmation or not to have a confirmation as they wish.

Tale Pleym 7:33

Yeah. Actually, my son, my kids know me, of course, and what I do. So my son, my eldest son, when he was 13, came to me and said, Mom, he was like testing me, Mom, what would you say if I chose Christian confirmation? And then standing there, like, what do you think? And I was like, you know what? You have three alternatives. It's um Christian confirmation, humanist confirmation, or no confirmation. But whatever you choose, you have to come back to me and explain why. And whatever you choose, we're gonna have a big party for you. So don't worry about that. And he was like, ah, you didn't expect that, right? That answer. Yeah. But um, in the end, he came back and he said, uh, me and my friends, we've looked at all the different information online and uh we were gonna choose humanist confirmation because it looks more fun.

James Hogson 8:26

So I thought, okay, it yeah, I guess there's lots of reasons to choose a humanist confirmation, but it fun is a good one as well, having a big party.

Tale Pleym 8:37

No, but I meant he chose it because of the and that's the thing with our confirmation courses, they're very interactive. The whole point is that it's not going to be like school. So all the courses are there are games and plays and role play and all these different things that they do. And going on a camp for a weekend, that's what he chose, being away from his normal uh peers, going to camp with strangers and course leaders, and have activities about humanism and about critical thinking and identity and moral and ethics and lots of different interesting things.

James Hogson 9:19

And with humanist ceremonies being so popular and prevalent within Norway, would you say that's contributed to an overall greater appreciation and understanding of humanism in the country?

Tale Pleym 9:32

In my organization, we say that now we have something like 200 uh or more than 200 and 200,000 members. But we say in in our organizations that Norwegians, most Norwegians don't even know that they are humanists, but they are, in a sense. Because with the state church, you know, before, if a child was born in Norway, it was automatically registered in the state church. And so a lot of people in Norway are still registered in the state church, and then they don't even know it. But whenever we have like a public opinion kind of thing, the majority of people answer that they don't believe in a God. And it doesn't mean necessarily that they are humanists, but it just means that there is a the majority of people in Norway don't believe in a God, even if they define themselves as atheists or agnostic or humanists, it just means that we as a movement have reached high numbers compared to in other countries. And our numbers go up, membership numbers, because being a member of our organization is free. After we change that, we used to have to pay a fee before, but after we change that, we've seen an increase in our numbers. But I completely understand people who don't want to be a member of our organization. Maybe you come from being born into some kind of religious group and you don't feel like you just want to change, you don't want to be part of another group, right? You want to have freedom. And I completely understand that. But I also want people to reflect on the fact that because we are as large as we are, we have created and been part of massive changes in our society. And we couldn't do that if we were a small group. In 2004, we got the legal right to wed, for instance. And we've also fought the Christian education in a Norwegian school, taking it all the way to Strasbourg, you know. So it's my organization have done so much important for human rights and freedom from religion in Norway. And I I wish more people would reflect on that, really.

The Joy of Making Weddings and Funerals Personal

James Hogson 11:57

Yeah, there's a huge amount that can be learned there. And you yourself have been active and involved. You've been conducting humanist ceremonies for more than 15 years. Are you still conducting ceremonies today? I know obviously you you wear many hats.

Tale Pleym 12:10

Yes, I do. And I mean, that's just like the most happiest part of my job, really, that I can do both uh weddings and funerals. And also I get asked to come and have the main speech in the confirmation ceremonies all over the country and the naming ceremonies. So, yeah, the ceremonies are still a big part of my job, and that's where I really see the meaning of what we do because you get so close to people, and being part of that maybe that most important day for people when they get married, and I'm standing there and wedding them in a humanist perspective, and all the guests see and hear what this couple choose to do together is amazing.

James Hogson 12:55

And are you still ever surprised or encounter a new original way to have a take on a ceremony?

Tale Pleym 13:04

Yeah. And that's where this European work comes in, right? To really get inspired and learn from each other. Because in Norway, and maybe in in most countries, people are quite traditional when it comes to the choices that they make when they choose to get married or at a funeral. They're quite conservative in a way. They just want to do what everyone else has done and do. If I can get connected to the wedding couple or the bereaved family and talk and make it a maybe a bit more creative ceremony, maybe think about something that they can do that's personal to them. They get very surprised almost. They're like, wow, can we do that? Can we can the coffin be pink? Yes, they can. If your mother loved pink, of course it can be pink. So it's just uh things like that that are very interesting to spend time talking to these families and couples about.

James Hogson 14:03

I think it's natural to fall back on the traditions and rituals that have gone before. So it's nice to have that. It is just about asking questions, isn't it? And it really is as flexible and as open as people want it to be.

Training And Quality For Celebrants

Tale Pleym 14:15

That's what humanism is about, isn't it? That we have the freedom to do whatever we feel is right for us. So when it comes to a funeral, you can do actually whatever you feel is right for that family. You can make it as personal as you want, uh, but still keep it meaningful and with the same sort of atmosphere, the right atmosphere that they want. So you can't be too happy because they're very sad. But you know, in all funerals, if you can make people laugh, that's such a good feeling, isn't it? Because then you get the shoulders down and they relax and they laugh, talking about a funny situation that they experienced with the their mom or their dad or their dad who's died.

James Hogson 15:04

And in your role with the Norwegian Humanist Association, obviously, I think you oversee ceremonies and the professional celebrant community. What is the accreditation training process like to become a celebrant in Norway?

Tale Pleym 15:22

We say that our ceremonies are conducted and done by volunteers. But normally people think volunteers as non not being paid through the years in a organization. We've decided to pay majority of our volunteers somehow for the work that they do. So they get a sort of a little symbolic sum for the work they do because they are our representatives doing humanism in practice. But yeah, so we you have to be a member to become a celebrant, and then we have a recruitment process with interviews and all these different things that happen in a recruitment process. And then we decide who we train based on what the organization needs. Let's say we need someone in Bergen or in northern Norway, then we'll get give you a place on the course. But if like in Oslo, we don't need any more celebrants, so we don't take people from Oslo, stuff like that. So that's the sort of discussion that we have. And then we have the course. And our course is for wedding and funeral, is quite similar because there are a lot of similar uh things that they need to learn to be a celebrant or a ceremony leader, as we call it, in how to create a ceremony. So it's a digital, and then it's a physical course at the end, and then we have an exam to make sure that they know what they're doing, and then they are let free, and then they can do ceremony ceremonies all around Norway.

James Hogson 16:52

So despite calling people or referring to them as volunteers, it's a fully sort of accredited process in order to conduct.

What Other Groups Can Learn

Tale Pleym 16:59

Yeah. And that's I think what you know it's important for us to maintain the quality of what we do, because every ceremony, in every ceremony, there are new people, new eyes who've never seen us before. So that's why this training and accreditation, we have a yearly accreditation with all our assembly leaders, because quality is very important.

James Hogson 17:22

You've mentioned that Norwegian Humanist Association is one of the most established and I think largest in terms of number, or certainly percentage of the population in terms of your membership. What do you think that other humanist groups around the world can learn from the Norwegian Humanist Association, from your model, and in growing and establishing humanist groups?

Tale Pleym 17:47

We get state funding. That's uh that's uh that's quite a big thing. It helps a lot. Yeah. So that's that's um amazing. And that's why we have, I think now, 120 staff in my organization. So we are a big organization just for that reason, and we have thousands of volunteers because we can pay them, because we have the we know we're able to do that. But we have um helped in especially the no other Nordic humanist organizations, and they have helped us in terms of how to set up our organization and how to recruit volunteers and that kind of thing. So it's that's like an ongoing work, isn't it? To see how other organizations do it. And actually, what I've learned in this European work is that small organizations can very often have a more efficient way of doing something than us large organizations. So, for instance, Lithuania, the humanist organization in Lithuania, are great and they are so few people, but they can do a lot because they are small. And we've learned a lot from them. And so I'm very for the thinking of we all have something that we are good at, and we all have something that we can learn from another person or another organization. So that that's the same from our organization as well.

Current Campaigns And Democratic Voice

James Hogson 19:22

Exactly. Very true. And I know you're facilitating that knowledge sharing across the different groups. And actually, before we come back to the EHP, what are some of the main priorities, top campaigns within the Norwegian Humanist Association currently?

EHP Priorities and Ambitions

Tale Pleym 19:36

Of course, we always sort of work at our ceremonies, but at the moment we also have a couple of political projects. One I'm part of is going to be a Norwegian election, general election next year. And so now our one of our political projects is creating a sort of lobby group with volunteers around Norway who will start lobbying the political parties where they live. And the reason for that is because we don't have good neutral location, for instance, humanist funerals, all over Norway. So very often people are forced to use a church for their funeral because there's no neutral location that they can use or initial room. So that's the sort of political lobbying project that we're starting now to prepare for the general election next year. Another thing is my organization have sort of realized the last few years our role and maybe responsibility in being on the right side of what's happening in the world right now. And by that I mean making sure that we talk about democracy and talk about freedom of speech and really sort of use our role in Norwegian society to be a voice in that work. And I feel that's very important because humanism and freedom of speech and human rights and all these kind of things, they are connected together, right? So it's very important for us to be part of that positive voice in a Norwegian society.

James Hogson 21:25

That's great. And I think that does bring us back nicely to the EHP, the European Humanist Professionals Group, because these are challenges that are faced, well, not just across Europe, but globally at the moment. And so what are some of your priorities as chair of the group? Working collaboratively together with the humanist organizations and professionals across Europe. What would you like to see in the next, let's say, 18 months?

UK Festival of Humanism Workshop Preview

Tale Pleym 21:50

First of all, we're quite a new board now. We've had a sort of shift from the last generation, and now we're like a new generation with a new board. So I want the new board to really get. Together and and really trust each other so we can do stuff together, and we're not really there yet. So I have to be a little bit patient. But what's that in place? What EHP are good at historically is getting people together. And that's the aim still for me as the new chair is getting people together because very often humanists around Europe feel quite alone in what they do. And it's our role to get them together and show, you know, what you do is quite similar to what another person does. And our aim is the same: humanism in practice. So, for instance, I'm really looking forward to June when the HP are invited to um Humanism UK in Bronworth for this Humanism in Action Day, having a workshop with people there. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

James Hogson 22:58

That will be great. And I know a lot of the other board members will be in attendance as well. So it's a great chance to meet the representatives, but also meet potential other humanist professionals because many people will be traveling in for that event. What can people expect from your session at the Festival of Humanism in Bournemouth?

Tale Pleym 23:15

Yeah, we're actually gonna talk to uh people from Humanism UK um later this week to um set the sort of uh detailed content of the workshop. But um yeah, I can't say anything yet. But um, you know, it's gonna be a workshop, it's gonna be interactive, and it's gonna be within the uh topics that EHP do. So ceremonies, confirmation, youth work, education, or chaplaincy somehow.

James Hogson 23:45

Wonderful. And if anyone listening would like to get involved, find out more, volunteer with the EHP, what is the best way to get in contact?

Tale Pleym 23:57

Well, actually, the best way is to contact me directly as the chair.

Changing Minds And Final Calls

James Hogson 24:04

We can hopefully include some links to contact details, socials, to get in touch with Tyler directly. Well, Tyler, thank you so much for taking the time to join us on humanism now. Before we go, we have our standard closing question. What's something which you've changed your mind on recently and what inspired that change?

Tale Pleym 24:22

You know what, James? I change my mind probably every day. Because I have an example from yesterday in work. We were discussing something, and I was sure that what I meant was right. And then my colleague says something more interesting or better, and then I changed my mind. Because I'm completely open for other ideas than mine if it's better than mine. And it usually is. So I face my mind all the time.

James Hogson 24:54

Wonderful. Well, Tala Pleym, thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now.

Humanise Live 24:59

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