ALE AND THE ALTHING
Tony Samstag celebrates
the end of Iceland's 80-year ban on beer
Oslo ON Wednesday Iceland finally came in from the cold. It is no longer a beer-free zone. To celebrate the end of this unique form of publication the inhabitants have purchased. 1.5 million litres of beer, almost six litres of the stuff for each man, woman and child.
No one can quite remember why beer remained on the blacklist when 26 years of prohibition ended in 1934. Some think it may have had something to do with pro- tecting Icelandic youth from what was presumed to be a natural thirst, as toddlers are presumed to require protection from some innate appetite for sweets. Light ale, with an alcohol content of less than 2.25 per cent, was made available instead. But the youth of Iceland responded, as did their elders, by drinking themselves silly on wine and spirits at every opportunity and on proper beer when they could get it. The authorities have had very little time to prepare for the great bender, having been caught on the hop, as it were, last May by a 13-to-8 vote in Iceland's 1000- year-old country for the first time since 1908.
It was not easy getting all that beer at such short notice. Even the decision as to which beers were to be sold took many agonising months. The Government calcu- lated that there was not enough shelf space in their small country for more than five
'Here's a cute little practical joke you might enjoy, Mr President.'
different brands, three imported and two domestic. Nineteen European brewers submitted tenders, and the winners were Budweiser (American), Tuborg (Danish) and Kaiser (Austrian). Long before this important announcement, every licensed premises in the land was booked solid for the great day in March.
With this milestone, many an Icelander will mourn yet another instance of the passing of the old ways — as with the repeal, five years ago, of a law requiring the national television station to shut down during one evening a week, so that tradi- tional Icelandic cultural and family pursuits might be preserved. The arrival of a second channel put paid to that. Now Iceland, the old-timers mutter, is being swallowed up by the real world. Soon it will be indisting- uishable from, say, Patagonia.
But at least, on a purely practical level, the appalling logistics of simply flying to Iceland will ease dramatically. The trouble has been not merely the remoteness of the place — unpredictable weather, over- booked and erratic flight schedules, that sort of thing — but the dreadful burden of obligation on all visitors to hump their full allowance of strong beer through customs.
Keflavik airport, serving the Icelandic capital, is one of very few in the world to funnel its travellers through the duty-free shops after their arrival as well as just before their departure, thereby ensuring double exposure to foreign currency. The case of beer to which each incoming visitor is entitled has since the dawn of duty-free aviation been the average Icelander's only source of supply, short of leaving the country. Now presumably, a rather more portable bottle of whisky will be acceptable to one's hosts.
Although the nordic races often deplore their ambiyalent attitude towards alcohol, of which the Icelandic ban on beer has been typical, policies remain severe. With the endearing exception of Denmark, at the southern extremity of the range, where drinking habits have more in common with the rest of Europe, retail sales of wine and spirits are limited to the Vinmonopol, or wine monopoly, chains of antiseptic off- licences staffed by po-faced operatives who are in fact civil servants supervised by government ministries. Their opening hours are few and their wares are taxed prohibitively. In any nordic country, your average litre of whisky will set you back about £25, a very average table wine in a restaurant well over £10, and a pint of beer at least £3.
We British may boggle at such hardship, but on one level at least the state strictures do seem to work. Again with the signifi- cant exception of Denmark, per capita alcohol consumption in the nordic coun- tries is consistently the lowest in Europe. Historically, an abhorrence of alcohol has been built in to the nordic system by a series of political alliances between the religious temperance movements and the social democratic parties. The Lutheran religion remains a political force in its own right, and often a formal adjunct of the state. Alcohol policy is therefore a highly charged subject emotionally, as well as a political embarrassment. One result is a certain impenetrability, as when trying to assess the prevalence of suicide or incest in a Roman Catholic society. There is surpri- singly little discussion in nordic countries of the tendency towards binge-drinking, for example, a logical development in a culture that has made it all but impossible to drink moderately on a daily basis. Estimates of the extent of illicit home- brewing are also in short supply.
And what are we to make of yet another statistical quirk in Iceland, where 7,000 people (from a total population of just under 250,000) are reported to have been treated for alcohol problems?
Inevitably, given the obsession with alcohol as Forbidden Fruit juice, many a nordic joke is predicated on the love of strong drink, its availability or otherwise, and its effects. The Finnish language is known to have more than 100 synonyms for 'drunk', although with so many case endings the Finns may be cheating. But the best story I know is Norwegian, and it concerns an April Fool's joke. Few people who have not lived here are aware of quite how robustly the April Fool tradition is exercised in these latitudes — often in the form of a very practical joke capable of tying the whole country in knots. The classic wheeze, still good for a chortle after all these years, was perpetrated just after the end of the last war, when almost everything was in short supply.
On that fine, cold April morning long ago there appeared in the newspapers a series of official-looking announcements. Patriotic citizens were advised that the Vinmonopol was giving its alcohol away because there was a shortage of glass for bottling. Ola and Kari Nordmann (the Norwegian Mr and Mrs Average) were invited to be their usual public-spirited selves, and to bring appropriate contain- ers. They queued in their tens of thousands, of course they did. With milk churns.
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