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Norwegians flock to Sweden’s liquor stores

Norwegians are heading across the border to make their alcohol purchases in Sweden like never before.

Published: 28 August 2008 16:10 CEST

Norwegians flock to Sweden's liquor stores

Cross-border liquor sales shot up 7 percent in July compared to corresponding figures from the previous year.

Altogether, Norwegians purchased around 2.7 million litres of booze from Sweden’s state-owned liquor retailer Systembolaget, according to the Association of Norwegian Wine and Spirit Suppliers (VBF).

The association reckons that around 450,000 Norwegians stopped in at Systembolaget in July and cites Norway’s high alcohol taxes as the main reason for the increase in cross-border liquor sales.

Never before have Sweden’s Scandinavian neighbours to the west purchased so much alcohol across the border during July.

So far this year, Norwegian liquor purchases have topped 10 million litres of alcohol, which represents an increase of 4 percent from 2007, which was itself a record year.

Spain has second highest rate of daily alcohol drinkers in EU

Photo: Cristina Quicler/AFP

Thirteen percent of people in Spain drink alcohol every day, a similar rate to Italy, where 12 percent enjoy a tipple on a daily basis, and only behind Portugal, where 20 percent of people have an alcoholic drink seven days a week.

That puts Spaniards above the EU average of 8.4 percent daily drinkers, data published by Eurostat in July 2021 reveals.

This consistent alcoholic intake among Spaniards is far higher than in countries such as Sweden (1.8 percent daily drinkers), Poland (1.6 percent), Norway (1.4 percent), Estonia (1.3 percent) and Latvia (1.2 percent).

However, the survey that looked at the frequency of alcohol consumption in people aged 15 and over shows that weekly and monthly drinking habits among Spaniards are more in line with European averages.

A total of 22.9 percent of respondents from Spain said they drunk booze on a weekly basis, 18.3 percent every month, 12.5 percent less than once a month, and 33 percent haven’t had a drink ever or in the last year.

Furthermore, another part of the study which looked at heavy episodic drinking found that Spaniards are the third least likely to get blind drunk, after Cypriots and Italians.

The Europeans who ingested more than 60 grammes of pure ethanol on a single occasion at least once a month in 2019 were Danes (37.8 percent), Romanians (35 percent), Luxembourgers (34.3 percent) and Germans (30.4 percent).

The UK did not form part of the study but Ireland is included.

Overall, Eurostat’s findings reflect how the Spanish habit of enjoying a glass of wine with a meal or a small beer (caña) outdoors with friends continues to be common daily practice, even though 13 percent does not make it prevalent.

Spaniards’ tendency to drink in moderation also continues to prevail, even though a 2016 study by Danish pharmaceuticals company Lundbeck found that one in six people in the country still drinks too much.

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