Scandinavian drinking in 1987

Nordic biers and evil spirits from The Economist March 1, 1987.

The Danes think the Swedes and Finns, their northern neighbours, are either dead drunk or dead sober. This national typecasting is unpleasantly close to the truth. When the new-year binge is over and they stopped pouring akvavit and vodka abruptly down their gullets, quite a lot of Finns and Swedes will be plain dead of alcohol poisoning.

The Danes, in exchange, are regarded by the Swedes and Finns as a happy-go-lucky lot who never let the last glass of lager evaporate before they start on the next. The Danes do, indeed, love the beer that is one of their most successful exports.
Their seasonal excess of it is unlikely to condemn many of them to sudden death, but it catches up with them in the end.

Although the three Nordic countries have different drinking habits and even more different drinking laws, alcohol causes about as many fatalities in each of them. In 1984, for every 10,000 adults, alcohol-related sicknesses killed 19 people in both Denmark and Finland, and 21 in Sweden.

For the Finns and Swedes, drink is sudden death. Acute alcohol poisoning killed 274 people in Finland (population: 4.9 m), and 304 people in Sweden (population: 8.4 m). The Danes (5.1 m) kill themselves more slowly. Danes aged 15 and over drink, on average, the equivalent of 12 litres of pure alcohol each year; seven as beer, three as wine, two as spirits. They suffered only 50 deaths from alcohol poisoning; but cirrhosis of the liver killed 618 Danes in 1984, compared with 316 Finns and 680 Swedes. It all ended up much the same.

These gloomy statistics were published by the Swedish Social Affairs Agency to damp down the festive spirit. They have refuelled the interminable argument about whether people are better served by the extremely restrictive alcohol policies of Sweden and Finland, or by Denmark's extreme liberality on the same subject. In the two northern countries, sale of wine and spirits is restricted to state-monopoly outlets. In all of Sweden there are only 320 - one for every 26,000 people. The Finns have 212, one for 23,000.

For roughly every 300 Danes, by contrast, there is a liquor store (nobody is sure of the exact number, since they do not even have to be licensed.) On top of that some 8,800 restaurants, bars, and cafés in Denmark well wine and spirit; their are only 1,600 such establishments in Finland, and 5,000 in Sweden. The Danes, self-righteously, say this explains why so many of the drunks on Copenhagen's streets are Swedes, who simply do not know how to control themselves when confronted by round-the-clock booze. More southerly people, contemplating the long Nordic winter nights, may wonder more forgivinly point anybody stay sober there at all.