LIQUOR SHOPS IN NORWAY

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29173, 6 April 1960, Page 24

LIQUOR SHOPS IN NORWAY

Monopoly By State (From a Reuter Correspondent) OSLO. In 10 Norwegian towns up and down the country, people are watching and waiting for the appearance of new shops marked with the single letter *‘V”. These shops will not need, in fact they are forbidden to use, such eyecatching devices as neon lighting or original window-displays.

For the “V” stands for Vinmonopol, and the shops are the new local premises of the State wine and spirit monopoly, opening after a sweeping defeat for prohibitionists in the October “spirit revolution.” In Norway, the visitors miss the gay inn signs of Britain or the intriguing displays of continental wine merchants. The premises of the monopoly are the essence of sobriety. The bottles are arranged on shelves, in rows as unexciting as the uniforms of the attendants who wrap the customers’ purchases into shapeless brown paper parcels. In deference to a strong body of teetotal opinion, the State offers no inducement to buy. There are no bottles in the opaque glass windows, and the carefully wrapped bottles brought out by the customer are not recognisable as such.

But the long queues shuffling along all day outside the monopoly shops at Christmas and other holiday seasons prove that there is a demand for their wares. A strong Puritan tradition has affected the laws both for the State and for the retailing of spirits, which is forbidden at week-ends and on public holidays and the days preceding them. And in parts of the country, especially in the south-west, a region humorously known to the Norwegians as “the dark continent” because of extreme religious influence, it has produced total prohibition. Sightseers at the Rockefeller wedding in the village of Lunde last August found that they were unable to buy even a glass of beer. The “spirit poll” is indeed taken very seriously. It takes place according to strict legislative rules, in the first fortnight after the municipal elections, held every four years. On the last occasion, more voters turned out in some towns for the spirit poll than for the election of their local councils.

The result of the poll is binding on local authorities, who may, however, grant special or occasional licences to hotels and restaurants, and make their own regulations about beer. Socalled “tourist-hotels” are special cases, and display a notice saying that they can serve drinks only to persons not resident in the country. The spirit poll is conducted with all the publicity of a national election campaign. The rival “parties” put out floods of posters, and use everything from Scriptural texts to police statistics to urge their cause, control to the corporation by the National Parks Authority.