Norwegian likvaka dance beside the dead persisted until the end of the 19th century

​​The traditional Norwegian dance of the dead, the likvaka, went like this: a crowd of young people gathered in the house of the deceased and danced to lively music, shaking the floor so hard that the corpse lying there in its bed or coffin jumped. Sometimes the dance was arranged so that the dead too danced on their bier, waving their arms and legs. The dancing went on until the day of burial. During it the guests, mostly young people, shouted out the name of the deceased and drank the best ale, and at times the rite of glorifying the dead was accompanied by sexual behaviour and could even grow into an orgy. The tradition survived until the end of the 19th century, when the church began to condemn it severely as un-Christian. The dance was captured by the Norwegian painter Nikolai Astrup, who had himself witnessed a likvaka as a child.

P.S. Search for likvaka on Google and you will find a great many ghastly photographs of dead people in burial dress, with towels over their faces, lying in coffins set in the middle of a room with white sheets.