Alex, drinking water is very good for you generally. Drinking untreated water direct from clean surface water sources is even better, because it contains algae oils like essential omega-3 fatty acids. Historically, in most places, water would have been much more beneficial than alcohol. Even though ethanol consumption is so enjoyable. Nor is the pleasure restricted to humans.
I'd hate to not be coherent. My suggestion is that in most agricultural societies before industrialization, farmers did make a beer-like beverage from whatever starch was on hand and well suited to brewing. Potatoes were introduced to Europe only in the late 16th century. So prior to this, if there were Norwegian farmers making a beer-like beverage (there probably were) they weren't using potatoes to make it.
Norway isn't really an agricultural society. It never was and never will be. Put simply, it doesn't have enough arable land, for the umpteenth time. The fact the 'farmers party' now form a coalition government in Norway really is something out of Monty Python. Like 'craft beer' potatoes arrived in Norway later than the rest of Europe. And, Alex, before simply regurgitating the words I type and expressing 'you're all out of ideas' please visit Norway some time and find out for yourself. Please don't take my world for it. It really hasn't changed that much in most places. Were it not for the occasional green John Deere tractor you'd struggle to guess which century you were in. Not exactly a celebration of cultural development in any respect, including brewing.
You might want to consider why the phrase 'troll' was coined to describe that kind of thing in the first place. More irony. But whatever helps you understand your world better helps you to understand your world better. Not my responsibility, frankly.
Wow nice perspective. Welcome to my ignore list.
lol 
My first post, but feel I need to give some "inside information" about Norway and Norwegians
Alcholic drinks have been hugely important in Norway at least from the Viking age (first Norwegian written history I can think of). A lot of stories about drinking in Norse mythology and we had the Gulating law (900-1300) which regulated brewing. All farms had to brew beer or they would be fined and if they didn't brew three years in a row they would loose their farm. So brewing beer has been serious business
You also had to attend parties where you drank in honor of the gods, and you had to get drunk or the brewer would be shamed for not having strong enough beer. It didn't matter if you were the priest or the police, you had to get drunk. Maybe it's why we still get wasted each weekend
We have a lot of brewing tradition in Norway, but it's mostly local farm tradition and not widely known. I guess much of the reason is that Norway was under Danish and Swedish ruling between 1380-1905 and thus Norwegian tradition was frowned upon. After the unions, christianity, sobriety and a law called ølloven (the beer law) forbade brewing at home unless you made your own malt (1912-1999).
So there was a long period where we had to keep brewing "hidden". I think this partly explains why brewing tradition in Norway is little known to the rest of the world. Another reason could be "janteloven" (google it) which stand strong in Norway.
But today local breweries are popping up everywhere and some of them are making fantastic beer. This have given a spark to local farm brewing and people want to learn more about old brewing traditions.
I think you might be right, though, Jante Law might well be at least partly responsible. The cultural poverty it promotes certainly scuppers cultural development. Being insular, recalcitrant and suspicious of outsiders don’t exactly promote much in terms of cultural traditions at a national level. It’s a plausible explaination why so-called Norwegian farmhouse brewing is so eclectic rather than a newly rediscovered 'style' of brewing.
Norwegian 'farmhouse' ale is little more than quaint nostalgia celebrating historical poverty and isn't a contender or even competition for modern brewers. In fact, if one were to superimpose chronic levels of historical poverty and social exclusion across northern Europe I'd be very surprised if there wasn't a perfect match with Garshol's maps for traditional farmhouse brewing. Personally, as a humanist, I don't really view it as something to celebrate at all. Nor is it brewing better, in my honest opinion.
That strongly suggests you’re a dedicated follower of fairy tales. Hook, line and sinker. Otherwise you’d have realised without much effort it was mainly meant to be humorous. Blatantly so. Easily lost on people biased by their beliefs, I guess. Not really my responsibility, though. Other people’s biases, that is.
To be fair, I think anyone sufficiently knowledgeable would get so irritated by the inflated sales-pitch language, sweeping statements, assumptions and naive associations, they’d struggle to finish the introduction without uttering at least a few ‘WTFs?’ I think the awkwardly biased logic expressed for what seem to be preconceived ideas and the clumsy language expose someone who’s clearly a non-expert in most relevant fields to good research and didn’t listen hard enough to those who might have offered expert advice. I'd stick some responsibility on the editors too, to be honest. For a non-expert to brazenly attempt to support his opinions by claiming modern brewing scientists are wrong is just completely laughable, however you want to read it. But clearly he’s a man on a mission to sell us something. I had no idea that until 1970 fully over half of the people on the planet were farmers cultivating grains therefore farmhouse brewers. I didn’t even know you had to be a farmer to brew beer. WTF! Most of us modern home brewers must be illegitimate. Mind blowing. Seriously, though, this is what credible evidence looks like, to me. I chose this interesting research for a good reason.
I thought it was quite a solid case, but it's probably advisable to view it simply as a very loose guideline these days, at least until the world's wetlands have been restored to their former glory, which is going to require huge effort and considerable volumes of beer to motivate the volunteers and keep them going
Whether Norwegian farmhouse ale and kveik is better than anything else I believe is a question of preference. Like my opinion that Ægir is boring and that Nøgne Ø knocks their socks off
But saying that Norway have no brewing tradition is plain wrong. But I agree that the quality hasn't been as important as the quantity (at least after we stopped plundering and became a country of poor farmers)
I'm predicting they ban or put massive tariffs on imported beer hoping to force locals to consume traditional Norwegian farmhouse dishwater. But the local will just brew his own and possibly buy beer kits from Ægir 
Or shop across the Swedish border with everyone else sticking two fingers up at the Norwegian farmers who do make lots and lots of money being entitled Vikings, pillaging the land and its people.
My first-hand experience of partying on a number of Norwegian farms throughout the late 90s and early 00s was that something much more higher gravity was being made. I was never offered a 'farmhouse ale' and never observed anyone drinking what might have been one. Nor do I think they were being shy in any way, because some weren't so shy with the 'home burnt'.
Thank you. I do actually find it interesting. I just don't find it such a big deal. And I find the invoking of 'Vikings' as 'Europe's first true craft brewers' (which some have actually claimed with a straight face) based on 'irrefutable evidence' like discovery of what might as well have been a p*ss pot with a few grains suspected of being barley quite laughable; given the Egyptians, for example, were several millennia ahead of the Norse and other Europeans.
But, historically, baker's yeast wasn't really a thing and was only developed to a meaningful commercial level in the latter part of the 19th century elsewhere in Europe. Before then yeast from breweries was used by commercial bakeries using yeast as a biological leavening agent. What would have been used to ferment moonshine washes before baker's yeast became available?
I guess that before commercial yeast was available they would use what they used for brewing beer. But making moonshine is only a 4-500 years old tradition in Norway so if they have been able to keep the strains alive for longer it was probably initially used for beer.
Spontaneous fermentations work well when sufficient desirable yeast grow naturally on the plants used as the sugar source, but the mysterious magical quality of yeast slurry was recognised and applied long before yeast was formally described. There were always alchemist's shoulders to stand on.
![Craft A Brew - Safale S-04 Dry Yeast - Fermentis - English Ale Dry Yeast - For English and American Ales and Hard Apple Ciders - Ingredients for Home Brewing - Beer Making Supplies - [1 Pack]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41fVGNh6JfL._SL500_.jpg)
just remember....
