2.10 Nordic alcohol customs
Description
This article is from the Nordic countries FAQ, by Antti Lahelma and Johan Olofsson, with numerous contributions by others.
2.10 Nordic alcohol customs
There are a few facts which often tend to be forgotten when discussing
the alcohol habits of North-Europeans.
The maybe most important explanation for the Nordic behavior is the
very long tradition of mead and beer drinking. At least since the
stone age Germanians have left traces of brewing intoxicating
beverages from grain. Wine was grown by Germans first at the time of
Charlemagne, when the Nordics since long had established our own
cultural identity, and still today it's almost impossible to grow wine
in Scandinavia.
Mead can however not be stored. Mead has to be prepared for each time
there is a need for it, as at festivals, and then all of the mead has
to be consumed or it will be wasted. The Nordic all-or-nothing
attitude to alcohol has a plausible explanation in our historic and
geographic conditions.
Secondly beer and mead are made from grain, which otherwise would be
used as food. Richness and power made it possible to afford brewing;
poverty, failure of the crops and starving meant "no booze or you'll
die!" To be able to serve ones guests a plenty of alcohol is a deeply
rooted signal of richness, authority and good times worthy lords and
magnates.
The holiday behavior of Finns staggering off and on their ferries in
Tallin, Sundsvall and Stockholm, and the Swedes reeling off and on the
ferries in Helsingør, Fredrikshavn and Copenhagen, is nothing but the
traditional way of celebration for a people not used to wine.
Parallels are seen in the traditions on Ireland and in Scotland.
Wine has become available and affordable outside of its traditional
areas since only a few decades (no time at all compared to the
millenniums the beer tradition has had to root in the culture) - let's
see if we Northerners will learn to use alcohol in a wine-like manner
before the good times have changed and we are back at the home brewed
mead again. Other cultures have had long time to learn a suitable
pattern for wine consumption: regularly but in dosages so small that
one will be able to function as a human, as a parent and as a worker
also the day after the consuming - and immediately as a witty
companion and a good lover.
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