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Comment by bobtheman | Hacker News Reader

I visited Norway and was blown away by the price of alcohol. Given that the sun only comes out for a fraction of an hour in winter I struggled to believe it. At a local bar... (I think I was in trondheim?) I asked how they afforded booze? (it worked out to 15$ USD per pint), "We don't, but we do it anyways"

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The real answer: Folks rarely get very drunk at the bar. Folks have drinks at home, go to the bar and drink modestly, and drink after.

And I'll let you know that my shortest days are 4.5 hours long (with weak sunlight!). Oslo has slighly longer days still.

Why is it so expensive? High vice taxes?

Prices tend to correlate strongly with wages and wages are very high in Norway for all work, so they also have some of the highest prices on basically everything. Another lol example is a Big Mac combo meal in Oslo - you're looking at around $20.

Scandinavian countries have very specific alcohol policies, though, very restrictionist, and the tax is part of this.

This is not just question of "more expensive country, more expensive stuff". Switzerland or Luxembourg are quite expensive, but you will buy affordable and good Italian/Spanish/French wine there, because these countries don't impose anywhere near as much taxation on wine.

If you’re in Romandie in Switzerland I would recommend local wines, that’s one thing the whole French speaking region is well known for (source: I’m from there)

A large Bic Mac meal with plain fries and soda is 123 NOK or $12.91, and a large double Quarter pounder menu is 168 NOK or $17.63.

It's actually relatively cheap right now, I expect a price hike soon given how much grocery prices have increased.

Is that in Oslo or elsewhere? Have prices gone down for some reason?

EDIT: Ahh! I was basing my statement on data from quite a number of years back, and just assuming prices tend to go in one direction in inflationary economies. The nuance here is that the NOK has weakened somewhat dramatically against the dollar, so relative prices aren't quite as insane now as they were in the past.

Ah yes, back when the dollar was 7 NOK and not ~10 NOK, the Big Mac meal would indeed have been the equivalent of $20.

Yes. Wine with between 10-15% alcohol by volume[1] currently has a tax of 5,41 NOK per percent ABV per liter. So a typical 0.75 liter bottle of 12% ABV wine gets a tax of 12*0.75 = 53.19 NOK, or about $5.6 / €4.8.

For booze above 22% ABV the tax is currently 9.23 NOK. So a 0.7 liter bottle of 40% ABV Whiskey or similar would get 258 NOK or $27 / €23 in tax.

And on top of that comes the usual 25% VAT, and high wages to our bartenders etc.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_by_volume

Fuck's sake. I've bought some decent bottles of whisky all in for less than $27.

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