Norwegians - Moose (Elk) in dream?

I can't see any symbolism in the "dream", other than it being imagination and something unconventional. There might be sybolism there, but if there is, it eludes me.

As for the afterlife thought, i see what they mean, but i don't agree with it.

The elk, like the sound of beautiful music, happy babies gurgling, and delicious smells from a Better Place near a lovely beach and fresh-baked cake on the kitchen table, "symbolizes" the personal spiritual natural wild beauty missing from the Mostly Happy Modern Social Welfare State. The bothersome man finds Official Urban State Happiness superficial, boring, materialistic and dreams of a better life. But his lover doesn't want to hear about it. She doesn't know what he's trying to tell her, as it doesn't relate to Interior Decorating and it annoys her since it's only his weird dream and nothing she can do anything about in the world she lives in. Think especially of the pudgy happy politically correct woman trying to explain how "most people are happy" in the well-employed psychologically-adjusted world of jobs and grey clothing, grey vans, grey walls. Why can't The Bothersome Man just relax and fit in? Everybody wants to help him enjoy his job, his love-life, his beautifully decorated home . . . but that silly guy just wants to dream? Dreams are messy, antisocial, just too personally interior to fit in with the carefully planned organized happiness of Modern Norwegian Social Life. Beep beep beep here comes the street cleaner and the Mental Correctness Van to clean up the annoyance. The hole gets patched, floor swept, bus takes the annoyance far far away to the Icelandic desert where nothing needs to fit in because there's just nothing there, period.

Agreed, it's clearly about the sterility of contemporary life, with all of its (alleged) conveniences. There's nothing spontaneous in this world, nothing imaginative -- the deepest that passion can get is in discussing interior design, i.e., the surface of things. Anything that goes below the surface -- Andreas' dream, the literal underground room with the crack in the wall -- is blotted out of conscious thought.

We might also consider how modern society deals with emotional, spiritual, and existential problems. There's no in-depth analysis, no digging out what's buried; instead, there's a pill for everything. Treat the symtoms, not the cause. Gloss over anything unpleasant, however truthful it may be. This goes beyond a simplistic Left or Right critique. It's about the consumerist society, the world that values things rather than feelings -- or, in Erich Fromm's terms, that values Having over Being.

"I have become comfortably numb ..."

Well, the elk is called "the king of the forest", but like the others I don't think this has any particular symbolism within the movie.

My 105 favorite films - http://www.imdb.com/list/5pdE8_ZEh0Y/?publish=save

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Not a Norwegian - but I interpreted the Elk to be Andreas himself. A big brownish thing clunking through the middle of the street.

It's not normal in any case, but especially in the world he's in.

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I'm not Norwegian so have no light to throw upon elk symbolism in nordic mythology. But the elk was an animal and like children animals were missing from the perfectly polite human society. I wonder if Anne-Brit remembered what an elk looked like?

I'm scared of the middle place between light and nowhere