An American, after his first experience buying wine or hard liquor in Norway, will typically have a "what the f***" expression on his face for several days, or until he's gotten drunk, whichever occurs sooner.
It's not just the outragous expense - a hundred dollars for a fifth of mediocre vodka - it's also the actual buying experience. You find a governmentally run outlet, improbably but suitably named "the wine monopoly," where you get in line, walk up to a counter, and give your order to a decidedly somber clerk. He or she will get your bottle, place it on the counter, accept payment and put it in a bag that is so characteristically neutral that it stands out. It's all designed to remind you that buying wine and booze in Norway is a right you haven't really earned. You boozehound you.
In my birthplace of Oppdal, the wine monopoly came late, but only after a spat over beer that would work well in a long Garrison Keillor short story. The town gets a lot of tourists, and these people were unhappy about it being a dry town and all (there was plenty of moonshine to be found, of course), so in order to keep the tourists happy the town decided to allow one store to sell beer - as long as the locals didn't get to buy any. You can't even count the ways that didn't work, so then they decided the one store could sell to anyone of legal age, but only by the case. After that proved not to reduce binge drinking by much, the next step was to allow beer to be sold in any quantity from that one store, and now you can buy it in the regular supermarkets, and shortly after that the wine monopoly opened, though a lot of people protested and vowed to boycott for ever or until they heard about a decent wine at a good price. People in Oppdal probably don't consume much less alcohol than they did 25 years ago, but they probably drink more pure alcohol.
All this has led to some peculiar drinking practices in Norway - the most critical one being a tendency for young people to binge on alcohol when they get their hands on it. "Open bar" is an invitation to bankruptcy in Norway, both because drinks are expensive (bars, restaurants, etc., have to pay above retail for alcoholic beverages in Norway), and because people will really help themselves when it's free. When a flight from Copenhagen had to be evacuated at the Oslo airport a few years ago, people dutifully left behind their hand luggage, coats, briefcases - but made sure they had their taxfree liquor as they deplaned down the emergency slide.
Norwegian authorities - and this is a non-partisan opinion - have defended this insanity by a) a wish to curb alcohol consumption through laws of supply and demand, and b) wanting to raise funds for covering the societal cost of alcoholism by taxing the consumption of alcohol. In Norway, a major point in any government's platform is its "alcohol policy," intended always to save Norwegians from themselves.
All this is falling apart, as the Swedes are planning to reduce their taxes on alcohol. Since Norwegians will drive great distances to get a deal on liquor, we're headed for a massive drop in government revenue from alcohol. Unless the Norwegian government follows suit and also lowers prices.
All this is reopening the tired arguments about alcohol again. The temperance movement, so long on the ropes from the inecessant pummeling of reality, is getting into the fight again, pointing to all the evils of alcoholism, predicting hoards of drunken family fathers staggering through the streets of Oslo every Wednesday afternoon.
Sent from my Blackberry
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