And the selection is great. In Denmark for instance, every store has a selection of alcohol, but it's quite limited and always the same everywhere. You have to hunt for specialty stores. But the monopoly has everything even in smaller cities.
For someone who drinks moderately and enjoys variety and access to obscure alcohol products it's likely a very good deal, as it is in Sweden. If I want a single bottle of lebanese Ksarak it'll cost me roughly fifty euros and I'll walk across the street to pick it up after a week or so. Unless I'm misunderstanding something the danish have to get it from german suppliers, though it'll be a bit cheaper (~33 euros), probably due to taxes.
Sometimes I've engaged in tentative planning of imports, e.g. ukrainian bubbly wine and whatnot, but it typically falls through because people don't actually want to put in the effort to organise a drive or getting someone to mail a package, even if there would be a bit of money in it. On the other hand it's trivial to get into contact with people running rather large scale imports of cheap beer and wine from Germany that sell for less than the monopoly takes.
I don't think there is actually any improvement to gain from getting rid of the monopoly, it would quickly turn our local alcohol availability into something similar to what I've seen in Russia and Bulgaria, fifty shades of Flirt vodka, sour wine and useless lager. The rest I'd have to import myself.
It is a really reasonable deal to buy from there though often. Selection is pretty good and the taxes on beer and wine are less and as a result due to the flat markup you can get really good deals on fine wines and the like.
In my area it's also trivial to find both illegal vodka and legal beer people make at home, which is common outside the larger cities in Sweden. This compensates for the lack of greyzone importers from Germany and Denmark.
You simply can't get anything of that level in a normal store. Dealcoholized Rieseling, Morello cherry juice, cider apple juice, etc.
It's a quite different experience compared to regular profit optimised mass retail.
Now, I'm very aware of the drawbacks for local producers. It's a bit tricky to get things onto the monopoly shelves, you can't have anything the least provocative or advert-like on the label and even if you're only going to sell through your local monopoly shop you still need to price in sending your bottles to a logistics hub in Örebro or wherever. This is surely annoying, but pretty much every monopoly shop has inventory from local smalltime craft brewers and distillers and the like anyway.
As I see it, this is an unexploited business opportunity, one could likely live quite comfortably skimming a margin from small alcohol producers in exchange for lower transport costs and reliable advice in product design that shortens time to market.
Wine Monopoly is by definition a specialty store. It's state subsidised, operating and capital expenses are almost irrelevant so that's why you have everything in smaller cities as well. This comes at a financial cost of course.
RIP all Norwegian drinkers
[typo correction and conversion likely: 4 cl = 40 ml ≈ 1.35 fl oz]
Of course I would love to see Norway lower some of it's sin taxes - these mostly only hurt poor people.
A cocktail with only a single shot of liquor, especially if the rest of the drink is large volume, is pretty weak I agree.