Tromsø, northern Norway, in June

Norway may not be the world's biggest country, but it has considerable geographic variation. This is mainly due to two factors. First, Norway is long and narrow, going roughly north-south. From the northernmost point to the southernmost point is 1700km, or roughly the distance from Manchester to Rome. The climate is fairly northern already in the southern part of Norway, and you can imagine what it's like 1700km further north.

The other main factor is that southern Norway (the "thick" part south of Trondheim) has a mountain chain running through it. The prevailing weather comes in off the North Sea, which means that the sea wind brings a lot of humidity and in summer cooler temperatures. (In winter it keeps things warm.) The mountains not only block the wind, but also cause clouds to rise when they hit the mountains, which cools them and tends to make them drop their rain west of the mountains. This is why Bergen is one of the rainiest cities in Europe.

So, for simplicity, you can split Norway in three parts. North: cold, mountainous and for the most part not very amenable to agriculture. West: humid and cool in summer, so not ideal, either. East: relatively warm and not too humid, about as good as it gets for agriculture at 60 degrees north.

The consequences can be summarized very briefly: wheat has been grown in Norway for a long time, but until the last half a century or so it was in very small amounts. Barley has been the main crop in Norway ever since the introduction of agriculture. However, barley doesn't like the wet western climate, and so oats was always the main crop in the west. Rye was mainly grown on rather marginal land.

Farming in eastern Norway (Østfold)

This had consequences for the beer. People generally did not much approve of oats for beer, so on the west coast people would set aside the most suitable small field for barley for the beer. Or they would trade it from their neighbours, or even buy it in the city. Some reponses say they bought Danish or Baltic barley. Thus, for beer barley dominated even in the oat belt.

Looking at the farmhouse ale survey we get the distribution shown on the map below. Colours:

Green means just about everybody brewed mostly pure barley beer.

Yellow means there was a mix with oats, and some people might brew with just oats, even if barley was preferred.

Blue means they used only rye.

White means they used a mix of barley, oats, and rye.

The red line I've taken from a paper (Hasund 1942) that used the tax surveys of 1667 and 1723 to find out where people grew oats and where they grew barley. (Oats was west of the line.) You can see that the yellow dots for mixed barley/oats are mainly west of that line. As a rule, responses from west of the line describe how people got hold of barley, while responses from the east of it curtly dismiss the issue ("only barley is grown here", "they used only barley") or they even express mild incredulity at the question. As in, "why would anyone make beer from oats"?

The cluster in the south-east is interesting. It reappears on the next map, too. Barley didn't grow too well on the coast in eastern Norway, either, so it might be the same effect there, but those dots are pretty far inland, so I'm not sure.

Very likely these climatic differences will have caused differences in flavour, too, but those are long lost now.

It's worth noting that the places where brewing has survived into the present day are nearly all west of the mountains, but east of the oat line. The exceptions are Stjørdalen and a few places just west of the oat line in Sunnmøre.

Hops are fond of sunlight, and so don't like to be too far north. Norway has a very mild climate for being at 60 degrees, so hops do grow here, but the cool humid cloudy weather in the west is not ideal for them. As is indeed clear from the map below, which shows where people grew their own hops (green), bought the hops (red), or did a bit of both (yellow).

The correspondence with the oat belt is no longer as good, but you still get the impression that the western climate was not good for hops. They'd stopped growing them other places, too, in large part because of convenience. Opinions seem to be divided over whether shop hops or local hops were best, but hops were so marginal in Norwegian farmhouse ale anyway that I'm not sure it mattered much.

I'm not sure where the hops they bought in the stores came from. In the southern parts of Norway some responses mention selling the hops to distributors or pharmacies, but there doesn't seem to have been very much of that. So very likely some of the hops they bought were imported, but probably not all.

Note that while barley was grown as far north as Bardufoss at 69 degrees north (the response is very clear on this), growing hops further north than Velfjord at 65 degrees north seems to have been hard. The yellow dot indicates they were grown around Bodø, and I seem to remember have heard about it in the nearby Lofoten Islands as well. Still, it was probably quite marginal.

Anyway, I thought this was an interesting look at the interaction between climate and beer. Obviously, the climate of the locale affected the local beer.

Farming in western Norway (Flåm, Sogn og Fjordane)

Postscript

What I've published on this blog so far barely even scratches the surface of the survey responses, which run to 1264 pages all told, most of them crammed with information. In the course of the summer I hope to get hold of the results of two Danish surveys. I was planning to get a Swedish one as well, but that archive is closed for the rest of 2015. Next year...

There are also the Finnish, Lithuanian, and probably also Estonian and Latvian surveys, but I don't see how I'm ever going to be able to read those.

Sources

Norwegian Ethnological Survey, responses to questionnaire 35, "Ølbrygging", 1952.

Bygget som 'ølkorn' i det vestlandske havreområdet, Sigvald Hasund, in Or Norges Bondesoge, Glytt og granskningar, vol 1, 1942, p 208-226.

Norges Landbrukshistorie, volume 1, Øye and Solberg, Samlaget, 2002.

Velfjord - Nordland, NEG 7623



Beiarn - Nordland, NEG 7559



Steigen - Nordland, NEG 7534



Vega - Nordland, NEG 7404



Bindal - Nordland, NEG 7376



Lierne - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 21872



Skogn - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 13879



Frosta - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 12395



Egge - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 11215



Ogndal - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 9790



Leksvik - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 7656



Leksvik - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 7486



Sparbu - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 7395



Nordli - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 7383



Harran - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 7374



Høglandet - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 7371



Grong - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 7370



Otterøy - Nord-Trøndelag, NEG 7290



Eresfjord og Vistdal - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 14018



Skodje - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 13881



Sande - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 10280



Veøy - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 9984



Voll - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 9187



Tustna - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 7864



Vartdal - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 7639



Øksendal - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 7533



Surnadal - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 7523



Stordal - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 7516



Dalsfjord - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 7512



Kvernes - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 7494



Haram - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 7339



Vanylven - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 7329



Borgund - Møre og Romsdal, NEG 7326



Granvin - Hordaland, NEG 26351



Masfjorden - Hordaland, NEG 12457



Bømlo - Hordaland, NEG 12414



Lindås - Hordaland, NEG 8673



Åsane - Hordaland, NEG 7981



Voss - Hordaland, NEG 7930



Etne - Hordaland, NEG 7689



Granvin - Hordaland, NEG 7571



Lodalen - Hordaland, NEG 7531



Lindås - Hordaland, NEG 7518



Kinsarvik - Hordaland, NEG 7440



Odda - Hordaland, NEG 7320



Furnes - Hedmark, NEG 13876



Elverum - Hedmark, NEG 9448



Løten - Hedmark, NEG 7336



Elverum - Hedmark, NEG 7335



Tynset - Hedmark, NEG 7319



Hemsedal - Buskerud, NEG 23094



Flå - Buskerud, NEG 13794



Uvdal - Buskerud, NEG 7561



Nes - Buskerud, NEG 7532



Hemsedal - Buskerud, NEG 7491



Krøkhusad - Buskerud, NEG 7282



Herefoss - Aust-Agder, NEG 9823



Østre Moland - Aust-Agder, NEG 7315



Nordre Høland - Akershus, NEG 8938



Setskog - Akershus, NEG 7604



Enebakk - Akershus, NEG 7467



Nes - Akershus, NEG 7334



Astafjord - Troms, NEG 7377



Seljord - Telemark, NEG 28262



Rauland - Telemark, NEG 17498



Seljord - Telemark, NEG 14060



Kviteseid - Telemark, NEG 13429



Mo - Telemark, NEG 8833



Kviteseid - Telemark, NEG 8491



Rauland - Telemark, NEG 7622



Hjartdal - Telemark, NEG 7620



Fyresdal - Telemark, NEG 7430



Heddal - Telemark, NEG 7318



Holla - Telemark, NEG 7310



Seljord - Telemark, NEG 7295



Bø - Telemark, NEG 7281



Budal - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 10491



Haltdal - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 8957



Soknedal - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 8369



Melhus - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 8015



Rennebu - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 7994



Rissa - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 7690



Singsaas - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 7583



Soknedal - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 7529



Hemne - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 7470



Snillfjord - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 7453



Agdenes - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 7437



Vinje - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 7397



Meldal - Sør-Trøndelag, NEG 7325



Breim - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 13867



Gloppen - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 13833



Fjaler - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 13654



Fjaler - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 11059



Eid i Nordfjord - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 8925



Selje - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 8159



Davik - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 7869



Hornindal - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 7771



Gulen - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 7615



Jølster - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 7398



Leikanger - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 7373



Kyrkjebø - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 7343



Balestrand - Sogn og Fjordane, NEG 7298



Klepp - Rogaland, NEG 9500



Hjelmeland - Rogaland, NEG 9155



Høgland - Rogaland, NEG 8785



Erfjord - Rogaland, NEG 8492



Helleland - Rogaland, NEG 7680



Avaldsnes - Rogaland, NEG 7544



Suldal - Rogaland, NEG 7490



Bjerkreim - Rogaland, NEG 7483



Sokndal - Rogaland, NEG 7406



Sjernarøy - Rogaland, NEG 7403



Forsand - Rogaland, NEG 7284



Trøgstad - Østfold, NEG 7663



Rakkestad - Østfold, NEG 7618



Spydeberg - Østfold, NEG 7590



Askim - Østfold, NEG 7328



Vestre Gausdal - Oppland, NEG 13430



Østre Toten - Oppland, NEG 8805



Vestre Slidre - Oppland, NEG 7738



Skjåk - Oppland, NEG 7538



Øvre Gausdal - Oppland, NEG 7415



Toten - Oppland, NEG 7412



Vågå - Oppland, NEG 7402



Etnedal - Oppland, NEG 7372



Bodin - Nordland, NEG 8148



Lardal - Vestfold, NEG 20097



Spangereid - Vest-Agder, NEG 21221



Spangereid - Vest-Agder, NEG 21220



Laudal - Vest-Agder, NEG 9969



Nes - Vest-Agder, NEG 9392



Kvås - Vest-Agder, NEG 8104



Laudal - Vest-Agder, NEG 8044



Randesund - Vest-Agder, NEG 7971



Bjelland - Vest-Agder, NEG 7839



Åseral - Vest-Agder, NEG 7599



Bakke - Vest-Agder, NEG 7411



Bardufoss - Troms, NEG 22700

