Iceland legalised vodka in 1935 and beer in 1989

On 1 March 1989 Iceland legalised beer, and ever since, that day has been celebrated there under its own name: Bjórdagurinn, beer day. The party is earned. Until that date an Icelander could walk into the state liquor shop and come out with a bottle of vodka, but not with a six-pack.

Icelandic prohibition began in 1915 and at first it was what you expect of prohibition: everything banned. The strange part came afterwards, because it was not lifted all at once but in pieces, and not one of those pieces was decided by a doctor.

1. The first piece was opened by Spain. Iceland lived off cod and Spain was one of its big buyers. In the early twenties, Spanish wine exporters leaned on their government and the message that reached Reykjavík was simple: if Iceland does not buy Spanish wine, Spain does not buy Icelandic fish. Early in that decade wine became legal on the island again. Trade legalised it.

2. The second piece was opened by a vote. In 1933 Icelanders went to a referendum on spirits and the side that wanted the ban lifted won. In 1935 distilled drinks were legalised: gin, vodka, schnapps, anything that passed through the state shop.

3. And beer was left out. Specifically, any beer above 2.25 per cent. Nobody forgot about it. It was the price of getting the 1935 vote through. The temperance associations carried weight in parliament, particularly among rural members, and their argument was household arithmetic: beer is cheap, and cheap things get drunk more. They also said that teenagers would fall for a beer sooner than for a glass of spirits.

So for fifty-four years, from 1935 to 1989, Iceland had one of the oddest sets of rules in Europe: the strong stuff legal, the weak stuff banned. Anyone who wanted a drink bought vodka, because vodka was what there was. Bars took to serving alcohol-free beer with a shot of spirits poured in, reconstructing by approximation the drink the state would not let them sell.

The final repeal was not signed by science either. Between 1935 and 1988 parliament threw out more than twenty attempts at repeal, almost always on the same health argument: beer is cheap, cheap things get drunk more, and the young would fall for it first. What finally moved the vote of May 1988 was something else: beer could be bought in the airport duty free, so the ban applied to some Icelanders and not to others.

The final sum is the one worth keeping. The Althingi, the Icelandic parliament, voted the repeal through in May 1988, and beer reached the shops on 1 March 1989: seventy-four years after prohibition began and fifty-four after vodka. On the Icelandic state shop's shelves, arranged from the weakest to the strongest, the product that took longest to arrive was the first in the row.