Attitudes towards drinking in Norway

In 2008 the total amount of alcohol sold in Norway was more than 20 million liters. These 20 liters is pure alchol, and comes from both wine, spirits, alcopop, and any other types of alcoholic beverages. Our personal experience is that people starts drinking at the age of 15. Of course this depends of the suroundings. The things that affect most of the drinking habbits in Norway is maybe where your from, your friends and family. Drinking in Norway is quite usual amongst youth. People from the countryside sometimes have a different view of drinking than in big cities. They often buy their kids alcohol from the age of 15, but in the cities there's quite few people who's allowed to drink. Even though the people on the countryside are allowed to drink, they don't party more than those living in the city. One of the reasons to that might be that there's not so many parties on the countryside, but in the cities there's always a party somewhere. The drinking culture in Norway is that you buy alcohol to get drunk, and if you get wasted you have succeeded. Of course it is not like this everywhere though.

Legal drinking ages in different countries

In most countries the legal drinking age is 18, but many also have other restrictions, for example Norway where you have to be 20 years old to buy any alcoholic beverage above 22 %. In Denmark however you have to be 16 to buy any alcoholic beverage above 1.2 %. The strictest legal drinking age in the world is found in USA where you have to be 21 years old to drink any type of alcholic beverage, but in the rest of the worls the age limit ranges from around 16-18 years of age. In Italy 16 is the legal age of drinking. Most of the nordic countries have 18 as their age limit, except Denmark.

Even though the age limit is very different from Italy and Norway we do not believe that youth drink less alchol in Norway than any other european country. Most youth start drinking at the age of 15, but there's many starting earlier. Even though purchasing alcohol is forbidden in Norway youth has no problem providing alcohol, it just takes a little more planning.