Seeking the Aurora Beerealis

As some of the regular readers of this blog may have realized by now, I stem from the country of Norway, which is situated way north of most sensible latitudes in Europe. Sharing a border with my home country is another country called Finland, also a weird place, covered in snow and saunas. However, should you happen to look really carefully at the map, you may find a third country stuck between the two aforementioned ones – and if you can be bothered to look up the statistics for this country you’ll also find that it is both bigger and more populous than either. This, dear beer lover, is the country of Sweden.

Sweden is a country with a long history of aggressive behaviour. A few hundred years ago, the king would round up an army at regular intervals and go marauding down in central Europe, mainly to escape the long winter nights and the endless supply of pickled herring back home. The army would pillage, rape and murder, but eventually they’d meet someone who could actually fight and