On October 5th, 1919, 61% of Norwegians voted to prohibit alcohol in their country. 1919 was also the year that Congress voted to ban booze in America, and many Americans don’t realize this was part of a larger, worldwide movement. Between 1907 and 1919, Russia, Norway, Iceland, Finland, Hungary, the United States, and parts of Canada would all vote to at least partially ban the production and distribution of alcoholic beverages. All of the countries listed above would reverse their policies by 1933, finding that the legality of a substance has little to do with the people’s desire to consume it, and that there are always unintended consequences with sweepingly restrictive legislation.
Norway’s law was less restrictive than the American version, but they still found Norwegians eager to circumvent it. Given that nearly all of Norway’s major towns and cities lie on the North Sea, it was easy for Norwegians to get in a boat and travel the three miles out to sea where Norwegian law no longer applied. Helpful and profit-seeking Danes would meet these Norwegian drink-seekers and happily sell them everything from a single swig to an entire case of liquor, which would then be secreted home aboard Norwegian yachts. And the prospect of preventing contraband spirits from entering the country from the sea was downright daunting. The western Norwegian coast contains hundreds of thousands of small islands, any of which could house a smuggler and help him evade a patrol while spiriting his booze home. Many Norwegians also resorted to drinking homemade hooch, much like their American compatriots. And, also like in America, enforcement turned out to be nearly impossible.
Aside from the difficulty of actually applying the law, Norwegian prohibition created other problems for the nation. Spain, France, and Portugal had relied heavily on Norway as a thriving market for their liquors, however they noticed a definitive drop off in their sales once Norwegians switched to Danish “imports” and bathtub gin. They struck back in a way they knew Norway couldn’t ignore: by placing high tariffs on imported Norwegian cod. With around 1.1% of their entire population employed as cod fisherman, not to mention the countless others involved in the packaging and export of the North Sea fish, a decline in cod sales could have a disastrous effect on the small nation. The country brokered an early deal with France that would raise the level of alcohol permitted in imported wines to 14% which would allow more French wines, but it was ultimately too little to appease the continental countries.
Threats of a reduced cod exports, coupled with the difficulty and cost of enforcement, led Norway to call another referendum on the question of prohibition in 1926. This time, the continuance of prohibition failed with only 44% of the nation in favor of keeping the ban. There is speculation that the voting bloc most motivated to end the ban was comprised of the very fisherman who had initially voted to end drunkenness in their country without realizing how the globalized economy would react to the law. Faced with similar issues, America and the rest of the countries that had voted themselves to be alcohol-free soon followed suit with Norway, and the worldwide experiment that was prohibition came to a close.
