Funeral Beer
The making and drinking thereof, and considerations of its role in solemn ceremony
I think this is a tough one for modern people to wrap our heads around.
We still get shocked by the idea of people of all ages drinking beer as their primary beverage, after all.
But beer at funerals?!
While in Norway, I learned that older people who lived high up in the mountains, sensing that their time was coming, would move down to the valley for (they presumed) the little time remaining to them.
It’s a thoughtful thing to do, you see. The mountains are steep, and carrying a body down to the graveyard involves complex setups of pulleys or perhaps a wagon ride over rough, winding roads.
Better to move yourself to easy range of the churchyard than saddle your family with that responsibility.
One of the tasks during this stage of life would be to make one’s own funeral beer.
Yes, you read that correctly. People made the beer for their own funerals.
Not always, of course… folks died unexpectedly, or didn’t get to it before they became too unwell.
And when they died, yes indeed, their family and neighbors drank the beer at their funeral.
This article will focus on such traditions in Norway, because that’s where my experience and research is focused.1
There’s two pieces I’d like to pull at here. Let’s start with, perhaps, the simpler one: drinking beer at funerals.
It’s generally accurate to say that beer was present for every part of life, from the celebratory to the mournful, and all sorts of mundane moments in between.
(To the extent that people drank beer daily varies: considerations of ingredient availability, water quality, and other factors all play together to create a complex scene that I’ll dig into at another time.)
At any rate, beer was integral to festivals and ceremonies, and was consumed in a ritual manner.
At funerals, beer was drunk in honor of the newly deceased & the ancestors, and a farewell sip was taken by the attendees before the coffin was carried away. There were expectations that mourners would praise the beer, which should be strong and good. Who wants to send off their beloved with a low-quality beer??
Beer was so important that the funeral could not be held until the beer was made. People would keep malted grain (a key ingredient) on hand to ensure beer could always be brewed upon someone’s death.
“Isn’t it rude to drink at a funeral,” you might ask? To that, I would invite you to consider the changes in social norms that occur over time.
In Norway, a conglomeration of forces, including industrialization, conservative Christian revival movements, and shifts towards a monied economy, led to a widespread push for temperance. By the early 20th century, drinking at funerals was scorned upon and therefore rare, and complete abstinence from alcohol was increasingly common.
But until then, beer at funerals was definitely the norm, and custom and solemnity kept excessive drinking in check.
Not that people didn’t get drunk. There are anecdotes of sons getting blasted at their mothers’ funerals, which was shameful, and warnings to not be that kind of person.
I wonder, gently:
How might the combination of beer-induced consciousness shifts + the inherent solemnity of a funeral create an atmosphere that supports the mourners and their community? What have we potentially lost by removing beer from funerals?
The second consideration: making your own funeral beer.
There’s making beer, and there’s making malt. I am a bit fuzzy on the specifics: I’ve seen and heard references to both (1) people making the malt for the funeral beer, and (2) making the beer itself.
Splitting hairs, perhaps (and an interesting question to keep exploring!), though I think there’s an important distinction to understand:
Malt is shelf-stable, and having malt on hand would allow someone else to brew at any time. Beer, on the other hand, had a relatively short shelf-life. Brewing your own beer would mean you anticipated the funeral to occur within the reasonably near future.
I wonder:
What happens if you made your funeral beer … and didn’t die? Imagine looking out over the fjord, pondering the next (unexpected!) chapter while drinking the beer that was intended for your funeral?
How would you brew and drink beer throughout your life, if you knew that you’d ultimately be making this drink for your own funeral?
I mentioned several forces that led to widespread temperance, but there’s one more we need to understand:
Until distilled spirits were introduced, the most common alcoholic beverage in Norway was beer.
Beer ranges in alcohol content. There was small beer, consumed (sometimes) daily, which typically comes in under 3%. You’re not going to get terribly drunk off that. There was also strong beer, consumed at festivals and ceremonies. That comes in at a higher ABV, often 8-10% and sometimes higher. It’s a lot easier to get drunk off of that, but it was consumed less often and usually at a party, when drunkenness was more acceptable.
Distilled spirits were commonly available starting in the mid-1800s in Norway, though they were present starting a couple hundred years before that. Those pack a big punch, and it’s easy to get drunk quickly.
This led to fairly sudden, substantial issues relating to drunkenness that required some sort of response. It’s hardly surprising that temperance movements surfaced at that time.
This is a topic that pulls at my curiosity, incidentally, and I imagine I’ll be writing more about it.
Suffice to say, for now, that I think we threw some babies out with the bathwater when we cast aside alcohol from community ceremonies.
Some of that bathwater was truly dirty, and needed to be addressed. But I believe there are real benefits that we gain - both individually and communally - from controlled and occasional alcohol-induced consciousness shifts.
I say this tenderly, knowing the destructive and horrifically painful effects of alcoholism on the person who experiences it and on their family and wider community.
Certainly I’m not encouraging alcohol for those who have this and / or other reasons to abstain.
But for those who do imbibe, I believe that thoughtful consideration of the hugely varied circumstances in which people have historically drank alcohol can bring greater richness and balance to our own experience.
Beer at solemn occasions is an area that I believe deserves greater exploration.
Want to learn more about the historic beer scene in Norway in general? I am presenting a virtual webinar on Nov 15, 2025. Sign up here!
Sources include Odd Nordland’s Brewing and Beer Traditions in Norway, Lars Marius Garshol’s Historical Brewing Techniques, and personal conversations with Norwegian traditional brewers.