Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.03.2019, Side 11

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Lögberg-Heimskringla • 1. mars 2019 • 11
Stefan Jonasson
“We don’t know if Ingólfur Arnarson
was a real person, but we do know
he was a beer drinker,” Höskuldur
Sæmundsson boldly declared when
he spoke about the history of beer in
Iceland at last year’s Icelandic National
League of North America convention
in Edmonton, Alberta. Höskuldur is a
brand manager for Ölgerðin, Iceland’s
oldest and largest brewery.
Icelanders have been beer drinkers
since the country was first settled. It is
a common misconception that the early
Icelanders drank mead, a mistake that
probably derives from Norse mythology,
but Iceland was actually a beer-drinking
country. While the Icelanders could
grow barley to produce beer, mead was
brewed from honey, which was not
plentiful on the northern island. Beer
would have been brewed in the fall after
the barley harvest came in. “If you’ve
spent more that five minutes in Iceland,
you probably know that bees are not
our biggest problem,” Höskuldur joked.
“Heaven in Norse mythology is sitting
around eating bacon and drinking beer
until the end of time.”
“Pretty much everything in the
Icelandic sagas can be explained by
beer,” he claimed. Feasts in saga times
appear to have lasted for weeks but in
reality, they lasted for about as long as
the supply of beer held out.
Iceland remained a beer-drinking
country until around the middle of
the 15th century when he cooling
temperature made it more difficult grow
barley to produce beer. The Danish
trade monopoly developed and it
interfered with the supply of imported
beer, escalating prices beyond the reach
of Iceland’s impoverished farmers, and
shifted alcohol consumption towards
distilled spirits, the strongest liquor
that could be imported in the least
amount of space aboard ships. In these
circumstances, Icelanders shifted from
beer to brennivín.
Today, Iceland’s pure water is both
the greatest and the worst thing when it
comes to beer. “Our water is so clean that
we sometimes have trouble emulating
beer produced in places where the water
isn’t as pure.”
At the beginning of the 20th century,
the manufacture of alcohol was banned
in Iceland, although it was still possible
to import it from abroad. Then, in a 1908
referendum, 60 percent of the Icelandic
men (the only voters at the time) voted
to ban alcohol completely. Prohibition
didn’t come into effect until four years
later, although people were allowed
to keep and drink their stockpiles of
alcoholic beverages until 1915. “New
Year’s Eve in 1914 was probably the
most epic party ever,” Höskuldur
quipped.
It was in this social climate that
Ölgerðin Egill Skallagrímsson was
founded by Tómas Tómasson, in 1913,
and the company produced Malt, a
beverage with only one percent alcohol.
Tómas remained on the board of the
company as its CEO until his death in
1978.
Höskuldur said that when Americans
were considering prohibition, many
pointed to Iceland as an example of
where it had worked well, noting that
there had been a precipitous decline in
crime and that jails had been converted
to student housing as a result. (The
American experience was somewhat
different, of course, since prohibition
there came to be linked with an explosion
of organized crime.) There were ways
around prohibition in Iceland, since it
extended to the limit of the country’s
territorial waters, which was only three
miles from the coastline. Moreover,
doctors were allowed to prescribe
alcohol and churches continued to
import wine for religious purposes.
So the supply of alcohol didn’t dry up
completely. In response to the protests
of Spain and Portugal, the prohibition of
wine was lifted in 1923 and, a decade
later, Icelanders voted to end prohibition
on everything but beer.
In 1940, Ölgerðin began producing
Polar Ale to satisfy the occupying forces
during World War II, whose military
bases were exempt from prohibition.
When American troops replaced the
original British and Canadian forces,
Polar Ale became Polar Beer. In 1965,
crews working on boats and airlines
flying internationally were allowed to
bring beer into the country, but no one
else. Beginning in 1980, this allowance
was extended to anyone returning to the
country from abroad.
On Wednesday, March 1, 1989, beer
was finally legalized. The government
liquor stores sold 340 thousand cans of
beer that day. The total population of
Iceland at the time was 260 thousand
– and many of them were children.
“Everybody in Iceland who is 45 or
older remembers where they were at that
moment,” Höskuldur said. There was a
baby boom – “the beer babies” – nine
months later. The U.S. media reported
that Iceland was the last country outside
of the Islamic world to legalize beer.
Ironically, for many years it was
illegal to sell alcohol on Wednesdays
– a rule established because that was
the day that U.S. troops enjoyed leave.
(And there was no TV on Thursdays. Or
in July. But that had nothing to do with
American military personnel.)
Since 1989, the brewing industry in
Iceland has grown rapidly. In addition
to the national brands, there are several
microbreweries. The first microbrewery
in Iceland was Kaldi, which ushered
in a craft beer revolution when it was
established in 2006. There has been an
explosion in the Icelandic beer market,
even though Iceland is one of the most
heavily taxed countries when it comes
to alcohol.
The alcohol content of Icelandic beer
ranges from four percent to 23 percent.
Despite the end of prohibition, Iceland’s
breweries are still required to produce
a reduced alcohol version of all beers,
known as bjórlíki, which is limited to
2.25 percent alcohol. Bjórlíki is the
strongest beer than can be sold in stores
or brewed at home. The stronger beers
have to be purchased from Vínbuðin, the
government liquor stores.
Egils Gull, a light lager, remains
the dominant brew in Iceland. It is
produced with Icelandic barley, which
makes the beer thicker and stickier –
and helps to maintain a strong foam
head. (The purity of Iceland’s water
actually interferes with the ability of its
beer to maintain its foam head.) Bríó,
a German-style pilsner, is produced by
Borg, which is Ölgerðin’s microbrewery
and innovation centre. Ölgerðin’s beers
have won more that three dozen awards
over the last 12 years: Egils Gull was
named world’s best standard lager at the
World Beer Awards in 2011 and Bríó
won gold for the best German-style
pilsner at the World Beer Cup in 2012.
Ölgerðin also produces Brennivín,
the trademark schnapps popularly
known as “Black Death,” but its
consumption has been outpaced by
the growing popularity of beer, which
now dominates Icelanders’ alcohol
consumption. Brennivín came onto the
market in 1935 and while its label was
intentionally made to be unappealing,
it is now one of the most recognizable
Icelandic brands and has become one of
Ölgerðin’s chief exports.
Ölgerðin’s beer exports to Canada
now exceed 160 thousand litres and
continue to increase. The brewery’s
total production is about 10 million litres
annually. There are several challenges
faced in exporting Icelandic beer to the
North American market: the current
strength of the Icelandic króna, distance
to market, brewing capacity, and whether
the product is perceived as sufficiently
distinctive. Of course, the Icelandic
beer industry has many strengths: it has
developed a unique reputation, since
the country is known for its abundance
of clean water and unspoiled natural
resources, not to mention Icelandic
quirkiness.
“We play bigger than our numbers
suggest,” Höskuldur concluded. And the
numbers continue to grow.
PHOTO: THIERRY HINDER / CC BY 2.0 PHOTO: STEFAN JONASSON
Ever since Ingólfur: a brief history of beer in Iceland
Höskuldur Sæmundsson talking about Icelandic beer at last year’s INLNA convention in Edmonton. Egils Gull.
“If you’ve spent more that
five minutes in Iceland, you
probably know that bees are not
our biggest problem,” Höskuldur
joked. “Heaven in Norse
mythology is sitting around
eating bacon and drinking beer
until the end of time.”
“